About the book: 1953 / The story was written in 1894–1895, published in the first four books of the magazine “Russian Wealth” for 1895. For the first separate edition, published in 1902, Korolenko subjected the story to significant revision: a number of episodes were added, new characters were introduced, including Nilov, and major stylistic changes were made; the volume of the work almost doubled. The material for the story was the writer’s impressions and observations related to his trip in the summer of 1893 to America, to the World Exhibition in Chicago. Detailed records of this journey were published in volume II of V. G. Korolenko’s “Diary” (State Publishing House of Ukraine, 1926). Korolenko showed in his story the characteristic features of American “democracy”, based on bribery and fraud, encouraged by the ruling classes, police abuse of workers, corruption American press, the tragic fate of a simple person who thinks to find happiness in a “free country”, but who finds it in a suicide noose. “They tear each other’s throats - that’s freedom...” - these words of one of the characters in the story perfectly depict the essence of the American way of life, which appeared before the eyes of the writer. “It’s bad for a Russian person in a foreign land and, perhaps, the worst thing is in America,” Korolenko wrote about his American impressions to E. L. Ulanovskaya: “... there the Russian person is more sad, anywhere else, including such a Russian person, who knew the Yakut region».