The Seven Who Were Hanged(1908)

The story is based on a true story: the unsuccessful assassination attempt on the Minister of Justice of the Russian Empire in February 1908. It impressed Andreyev so much that he wrote the story in just a month. The characters were based on seven criminals sentenced to hang and chapters are devoted to the feelings of each convict before their execution.

Critics saw the story as a protest against the death penalty. All three screen adaptations (1920, 1924 and 1929) in Russia were banned from distribution: at the time, the Soviet government sought heroic deaths, not existential horror before execution.

Translated by Herman Bernstein, Publisher Ogilvie, 1909