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We Never Make Mistakes: Two Short Novels Paperback – April 17, 2004

by Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn (Author), Paul W. Blackstock (Translator)

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This volume collects two quietly powerful short novels.

In "An Incident at Krechetovka Station," a Red Army lieutenant is confronted by a disturbing straggler soldier and must decide what to do with him. "Matryona's House" is the tale of an old peasant woman, whose tenacious struggle against cold, hunger, and greedy relatives is described by a young man who only understands her after her death.

Print length

140 pages
Language

English
Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company
Publication date

April 17, 2004
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.4 x 8.3 inches
ISBN-10

039331474X
ISBN-13

978-0393314748
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (April 17, 2004)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 140 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 039331474X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393314748
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 4.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.4 x 8.3 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,543,100 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #6,492 in Classic American Literature
- #36,429 in Classic Literature & Fiction
- #78,079 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
13 ratings

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4 star		18%
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Jonathan S. Watson

The horror of Soviet dictatorship - from a different point of view

Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2018

Verified Purchase

The title story was so clear and frightening that I have postponed reading the second. It was like a mini-recall of Orwell's 1984, done in a setting of ordinary life..

3 people found this helpful

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John Desmond

Not surprising that he won the Nobel

Reviewed in the United States on October 29, 2013

Verified Purchase

These two novellas each in its way illuminate a little piece of Soviet life under Stalin. In a very subtle way, they both describe the oppression and despair of daily life in Russia. It is still amazing to me that one cannot find the last two volumes of his "Red Wheel" series in English. You'd think that a Nobel laureate would not have trouble finding a publisher.

6 people found this helpful

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GREGORY E MCCONEGHY

Kindle edition unreadable.

Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2020

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Problem with formatting on Kindle make it unreadable.

3 people found this helpful

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SCOT

Blackstock was the real deal

Reviewed in the United States on October 26, 2016

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Blackstock was the real deal.

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Amazon Customer

kindle version is almost unreadable

Reviewed in the United States on October 29, 2020

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Kindle version is almost unreadeble.

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keetmom

Gently presented slices of Soviet life

Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2012

Aleksander Solzhenitsyn experienced some of the worst of Soviet life, yet his writings that make up this small book reveal no bitterness or anger. He served in the Red Army during WWII which must have been horror enough but was then sentenced to 8 years in the Gulag for some veiled criticisms he made of Stalin in a letter to a friend. His more celebrated writings came later but these two short stories were (somewhat surprisingly) published in Novy Mir in 1963 during a brief period in which political censorship must have been softened. Matryona's Place is a very moving account of the toils of life of an old lady in a collectivized village in the Russian hinterland. It is the tale of two outcasts, the narrator a former political prisoner and his landlady Matryona, whose independent spirit and idiosyncratic ways have caused her to be marginalized by her family, community and the powers that be. Although very sad, it is a celebratory tale told with compassion and great affection for an ordinary woman whose selflessness and suffering stand for the spirit and values of traditional Russia.

The other story, An Incident at Krechetovka Station, is more sinister and overtly political. The wartime setting and the confused logistics of troop movements and supply trains also make it harder to appreciate at a first reading. Both accounts are strongly reflective of Solzhenitsyn's own experiences and all the more interesting for that.

2 people found this helpful

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S. A. Saghbini

powerful

Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2009

Two powerful short stories...One about war injustice and unfair system that treats people based on suspicion that has no real roots...The red army lieutenant, Zotov,sends a straggler to miserable fate just because the guy didn't know what the Stalingrad previous name was?...The one answer he received upon inquiring of the guy's fate was"don't worry we'll take care of your Tveritinov,We never make mistakes"...

the second novella is the tale of Matryona;an old poor peasant widow,narrated by her roomate; she helps everybody for free and dies in misery because of the greed of her relatives who complained after her death that "she never accumulated property against the time of her death"...

those were written beautifully similar to his magnificent novella "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich"..

5 people found this helpful

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Ryan Locker

2 extremely powerful parables of the human spirit

Reviewed in the United States on July 26, 1999

These two great stories are written in that harsh realistic style so charateristic of Solzhenitsyn's works. Both stories are important on two fronts: They are both allow for primary-source insight into what many Westerners have a skewed perception of (the poverty and oppression in Stalanist Russia), and secondly, both stories present severe criticsm of human nature in such grand metaphoric form as to allow them to penetrate the reader's own soul. The phrase "thought provoking," does these stories no justice, the parables are better described as painfully applicable.

13 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Amazon Customer

Ropey kindle edition.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 14, 2019

Verified Purchase

Very poor text for kindle, almost unreadable in places.
Still, it's less than the price of a pint, so probably worth keeping and putting up with the text crappiness.

J

Great read. Reminder of the constant attack we have suffered at their hands.

Reviewed in Canada on April 26, 2019

Verified Purchase

This should be a manditory read read in school.

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We Never Make Mistakes: Two Short Novels Paperback – April 17, 2004

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