Contemporaries called Korolenko "the conscience of the epoch". His popularity was very great, almost the entire reading Russia listened to his every word. Some were attracted by the author's capacity for compassion and love, others by his optimism and belief that man is guided by the desire for justice. The ideal image of a Russian writer and intellectual was seen in him by Leo Tolstoy and Ivan Bunin, Maxim Gorky and Anton Chekhov. Russian Russian literature history Korolenko entered first of all as the author of numerous novels and short stories that made up a kind of chronicle of Russian life at the turn of the XIX–XX centuries. The most famous of them ("Makar's Dream", "Children of the underground", "the Blind musician", "the River plays", "Without a language", etc.) are presented in this collection.