Written work

Harmful Air

Вредный воздух

byLeo Tolstoy

«Byl», or true story. Part of the Azbuka cycle (1872–1875), the primers Tolstoy wrote for peasant children, included in the Fourth Russian Reader (1875). In the village of Nikolskoye the cowherd woman and the village elder die in a well from the harmful air gathered at the bottom; the young carpenter Ivan, who goes down to save them, is pulled out half dead, and an old man explains what foul air is.