Small demon

About his novel "Small demon" Fedor Sologub (1863-1927) wrote that it was "... a mirror made skillfully ... ugly and beautiful reflected in it equally precisely." This mirror was polished for more than ten years, and then the manuscript for another five years picked up the editorial offices of Russian magazines - the society obviously did not like its own reflection, the novel seemed “too risky and strange”. The history of the provincial teacher of the Predvonov, a small sadist and a voluptuous, looked like a verdict of the entire Russian education system based on depersonalization and violence, turning a person into a screw that drives crazy. It took the shocks of the first Russian revolution so that the educated society wake up and read into the predictions of the gloomy man (Vladimir Hippius) Published by a separate book in 1907, the “small demon” became perhaps the most popular book in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century