In interwar Russia, the short story developed in parallel with the novella and the novel, but due to its smaller size, it had greater diversity, sharpness of themes, and reflection. Through the stories of the 1920s and 1930s, a panorama of the country is presented, with changes in social structure and behavior, with heroism, mistakes, happiness, and misery. Without these stories, we would have a much poorer understanding of that heroic and tragic era, marked by losses and difficulties, but also by hope for a better tomorrow. Each passing year had its own face, its own entity, different from the previous one. The pens of the storytellers recorded in an unparalleled way the three-year period of the Civil War, the transformation of Russian society, and the collectivization of the rural economy. They recorded the way the old made way for the new, the characters and behavior of the people who tried to adapt and find their place in the new conditions.

At the same time, especially in the 1920s, political and social satire experienced a great flourishing. Its subjects became demagoguery, bribery, flattery, conformism, and hypocrisy.

The "Anthology of Russian Short Stories of the Interwar Period" presents an epic image of a transforming society, a comprehensive picture of the social and intellectual life of the era. It is a panorama of a changing Russia.