“Finally, in reading the works of Tolstoi, Turgenev, Dostoevski, Gorki, Chehkov, Andreev, and others, what is the general impression produced on the mind of a foreigner? It is one of intense gloom. Of all the dark books in fiction, no works sound such depths of suffering and despair as are fathomed by Russians.”
from Essays on Russian Novelists by William Lyon Phelps, p.78