Produced by Eric Eldred, and David Widger cover The Seven who were Hanged A STORY by Leonid Andreyev Authorized Translation From The Russian By Herman Bernstein. Contents FOREWORD INTRODUCTION THE SEVEN WHO WERE HANGED CHAPTER I AT ONE O’CLOCK, YOUR EXCELLENCY! CHAPTER II CONDEMNED TO BE HANGED CHAPTER III WHY SHOULD I BE HANGED? CHAPTER IV WE COME FROM ORYOL CHAPTER V KISS—AND SAY NOTHING CHAPTER VI THE HOURS ARE RUSHING CHAPTER VII THERE IS NO DEATH CHAPTER VIII THERE IS DEATH AS WELL AS LIFE CHAPTER IX DREADFUL SOLITUDE CHAPTER X THE WALLS ARE FALLING CHAPTER XI ON THE WAY TO THE SCAFFOLD CHAPTER XII THEY ARE HANGED Andreyev Leonid Andreyev DEDICATION To Count Leo N. Tolstoy This Book is Dedicated by Leonid Andreyev The Translation of this Story Is Also Respectfully Inscribed to Count Leo N. Tolstoy by Herman Bernstein FOREWORD Leonid Andreyev, who was born in Oryol, in 1871, is the most popular, and next to Tolstoy, the most gifted writer in Russia to-day. Andreyev has written many important stories and dramas, the best known among which are “Red Laughter,” “Life of Man,” “To the Stars,” “The Life of Vasily Fiveisky,” “Eliazar,” “Black Masks,” and “The Story of the Seven Who Were Hanged.” In “Red Laughter” he depicted the horrors of war as few men had ever before done it. He dipped his pen into the blood of Russia and wrote the tragedy of the Manchurian war. In his “Life of Man” Andreyev produced a great, imaginative “morality” play which has been ranked by European critics with some of the greatest dramatic masterpieces. The story of “The Seven Who Were Hanged” is thus far his most important achievement. The keen psychological insight and the masterly simplicity with which Andreyev has penetrated and depicted each of the tragedies of the seven who were hanged place him in the same class as an artist with Russia’s greatest masters of fiction, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev and Tolstoy. I consider myself fortunate to be able to present to the English-reading public this remarkable work, which has already produced a profound impression in Europe and which, I believe, is destined for a long time to come to play an important part in opening the eyes of the world to the horrors perpetrated in Russia and to the violence and iniquity of the destruction of human life, whatever the error or the crime. _New York._ HERMAN BERNSTEIN. INTRODUCTION [Translation of the Foregoing Letter in Russian] I am very glad that “The Story of the Seven Who Were Hanged” will be read in English. The misfortune of us all is that we know so little, even nothing, about one another—neither about the soul, nor the life, the sufferings, the habits, the inclinations, the aspirations of one another. Literature, which I have the honor to serve, is dear to me just because the noblest task it sets before itself is that of wiping out boundaries and distances.