The Snowstorm

The unnamed narrator of the story and his manservant Alyeshka start on an evening trip by sledge from Novocherkassk in the Caucasus to a destination in central Russia.

Disturbed by this situation, the narrator orders the phlegmatic driver to turn back, giving the horses their head to seek out the post station from which they started out.

To add to the anxiety, the driver tells a story of some recent travelers who got lost and froze to death in a similar storm.

Again they hear the bells of the courier troika, which is now returning to their original starting point, having delivered the mail and changed horses.

As the narrator's driver tries to turn around, his shafts hit the horses tied to the back of the third mail troika, making them break their straps, bolt, and run.

The narrator begins to daydream, losing himself in the monotonous and desolate snowstorm and musing lyrically about the snow and wind: “Memories and fancies followed one another with increased rapidity in my imagination.” The narrator conjures up stream-of-consciousness images of his youth: the old family butler on their baronial estate, summers in the country, fishing, languid July afternoons, and finally a peasant drowning in their pond and nobody being able to help.

Unlike other text that Tolstoy published at this time (Two Hussars and A Landowner's Morning), reception of "The Snowstorm" among the literati of contemporary Russia, was generally favorable.

[3] Herzen thought it marvellous[4] and Alexander Druzhinin wrote in the Biblioteka dlya chteniya[5] that there had been nothing quite like it since the days of Pushkin and Gogol.

"[8] Ejxenbaum finds "The Snowstorm" notable for its plot arrangement, the weaving together of reality and dreams, rather than its fabula (story line).