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Soon after publication of the first edition of my book In the Steps of Jack London, I got a call from a literary scholar A.V. Khrabrovitsky. He told me that the new issue of "Literaturnoe Nasledstvo" (Literary Heritage) published a diary of Leo Tolstoy's doctor, D. Makovitsky. The diary mentions the visit of Americans to Yasnaya Polyana. I want to quote this extremely interesting note that confirms a memorable visit and supplies important details. The note of D. Makovitsky is dated by May 12, 1906. "William English came to us from the State of New York with the two Strunsky sisters. Gorbunov recommended them. Everyone showed them attention, showed them around and so on. . . . In the evening, L.N. (Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy) talked about English. He said he liked him, because he was a friend of Hunter. English was the fiancé of the elder Strunsky sister, who herself is a writer. She even brought her book about love. 'I was pleased to see,' said Lev Nikolayevich, 'that he himself wanted to tell about her book but, instead, he let her talk and listened to her attentively'."

Giving a favorable response to my book, A. Khrabrovitsky pointed out some new remarks on London made by distinguished Russian cultural activists. The necessity to write more about the complex fate of London's works in Russia was quite obvious. By the spring of 1906, when London's friend Anna Strunsky was presenting her and Jack's epistolary novel to Leo Tolstoy, Jack London was virtually unknown in Russia. However, a year later and towards the end of 1907, Russian magazines managed to publish the following of his masterpieces: The Call of the Wild, People of the Abyss, White Fang, and such wonderful stories as "The Love of Life" and "The Great Interrogation." While the author was still alive, our readers got acquainted with the vastness of London's work and the various genres of his writing, including his science fiction, social and satire stories, and even his plays. At least 12 editions of his stories and novels have been published, featuring Martin Eden, The Sea-Wolf, Iron Heel, The Valley of the Moon, and The Star Rover. By that time, a 22-volume The Complete Works of Jack London came out in our country, with a second edition forthcoming. A 19-volume collection of selected works, in different translations, had been completed, together with a series of collections that came out as a supplement to such magazines as The North, New Life, and The Living Word. It was a real competition among publishers to put London's writing into print in Russia.

This writer from overseas, just like those writers before him, Mark Twain, Bret Hart, and Edgar Allan Poe, immediately captured the hearts of the Russian readers. American fiction complemented Russian culture in the same manner that Russian culture, represented through Tolstoy, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Chekov enriched the culture of the United States. Not only Twain, Poe, and Bret Harte, but also Washington Irving, Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and other, American authors, found a grateful readership in Russia.

This reader was able to feel for the first settlers of the American Far West and anxiously followed the adventures of hunters/pioneers and The Last of the Mohicans — the inhabitants of the virginal forests of America. Russian readers showed sincere compassion for the ways of the people in the plantation South and, with true interest, learned about adventures on the great Mississippi River. The works of American writers were a window to a different, amazing world. This time, in Jack London the Russian readers encountered a new, wonderful writer, with a whole gallery of unfamiliar characters.

Alexander Kuprin was the first Russian writer to fully appreciate the work of Jack London. He was the one to declare the appearance of a new "original and extremely talented writer," in whom he found "tremendous personal experience and traces in his stories of actual sufferings, labors, and observations." He noted the sincerity and natural authenticity of London's "Northern Stories," emphasized their "charming, remarkable impression, their open content." "White Silence" and "The Law of Life," Kuprin referred to as "courageously cruel." "This American," wrote Kuprin, "is far above Bret Harte; he is on a level with Kipling — this marvelous writer of Indian ways of life. Besides the differences in tone, style, and manner of expression, there is another difference between them, however: Jack London is far simpler, and this difference speaks to his advantage. . . ."

Russian authors continued talking about the life-confirming pathos of Jack London's writings in contrast with the decadent literature that became popular after the defeat of the Revolution of 1905. The newspaper Odesskie Novosti (Odessa News) counterpoised London's works with the regressing art and expressed happiness that his works were being read by the majority of the Russian adult population. Newspaper reviewers called this American writer a singer of life and courage and compared him to Gorky. "Jack London," wrote the Caucus newspaper of Tiphlis, "is a reliable and strong weapon in the struggle with the corrupting influence of pornographers and erotomaniacs of literature." A reviewer of the Moscow Bulletin of Literature and Life called London a "bard of true life," while the Kharkov newspaper Yuzhny Krai (Southern Land) named him a "singer of courage."

However, Jack London's stories received a very negative review by Kornei Chukovsky. He absolutely did not like them, but the critics did not back up his opinion. Half a century later, I asked Chukovsky if his attitude towards the American had changed. "Yes," he answered, "but not completely." In any event, he did not include a negative article about Jack London in the edition of his Collected Works. The love of free will, criticism of the existing order, and brave call towards a new ways of life—all of these featured characteristics of Jack London's view of the world were clear and understandable to those fighting for major changes. This is also one of the reasons for his popularity in pre-revolutionary Russia.

The way Jack London used and treated the problems that preoccupied all of his contemporaries—the ideas of Nietzsche, Spencer, Marx, the questions of Capitalism and Socialism, female equality, and the temperance law — attracted attention of the reading public. It was very curious to see how this artist from overseas expressed those problems in a way peculiar only to him. He presented universal ideals with careful attention to love—tender and inspiring, like that of Martin Eden; devoted and sacrificial, like that of the Indian woman Passuk in "Grit of Women;" and destructive, like that of Paula in Little Lady of the Big House. His belief in the foremost importance of love for a woman, expressed by the protagonist of the novel The Star Rover, can't leave anyone indifferent.

After the Revolution of 1917, London's works were published even more often. Thanks to mass education programs, a curious readership emerged in the country. This readership wanted to know more and demanded more and new publications of engaging stories, written by this original American author. In the 1920s, when in his own country the interest in London's works began to decline, two multi-volume editions and three sets of The Complete Works of Jack London appeared in Soviet Russia. Also around that time, novels and stories of his were published posthumously.

By 1954, the general circulation of his books in the Soviet Union reached 13 million copies. London was the first among foreign authors to reach such a wide audience. Towards the end of 1966, the circulation had more than doubled and, by January of 1991, it neared 84 million copies. By the 21st century the circulation in Russia approached 100 million. Several multi-volume editions appeared in Ukrainian, Georgian, Armenian, and in other languages of the peoples of the Soviet Union. London's books, once made available, sold out almost immediately, which evidenced the demand of an enormous audience of readers.

It would be wrong to say, however, that Jack London's way to the heart of the Russian readers was a smooth path. In the 1930s, some Soviet and Western literary scholars, under the influence of sociology and primitive dogmatic schemes, were suspicious of the popularity of the American writer. Unsuccessfully, they tried to "fit" him into far-fetched theories. Academic V. Freacher called him a "farm writer." "No, he is a proletarian writer," argued France Yung, while I. Matsa referred to him as "an artist of the regressing working class." Also, there were those who counted London among the artists of Imperialism. One of the authors of A Course in Western Literature of the XX Century, a textbook for college-level students, characterized London as one of the most popular writers of the young generation, "whose works satisfy the longing for adventures and anarchism in its bourgeois part. However, the real working youth reads London only in regard to his Socialist ideas, criticism of the bourgeois world, and courageous romanticism."

The harshest criticism of London's literary path came from literary scholar S. Dinamov: "He could have been a singer for the proletariat. Instead, he became a representative, an agent of the bourgeois in the world of working people; he became a Social patriot and a chauvinist." In modern criticism, such phraseology seems rather funny. Unfortunately, this was the process of paying dues, an example of the categorical thinking of the 1930s. Later, Soviet literary figures emphasized the critical direction of a series of London's works, found contradictions, and showed the unevenness of his creative work. They paid less attention to the universally humane significance of his aesthetics, to his love of freedom and respect for human beings. They neglected such positive qualities of his heroes as the ability for enterprise (a typical American characteristic), purposefulness, decency, the competence to concentrate in a stressful situation, and the ability not to crash spiritually after a failure, but instead, to be able to find another opportunity for action. Essentially, such a person was Jack London. Jack London's ideal, his positive hero, is a person true to his or her word, strong, and, if necessary, capable of struggle with nature and society. He is easily drawn into the excitement of a competition, the tension of life; he is delighted at overcoming adversity.

The secret of the author's life-confirming works, however, is not solely in the victory of his heroes over circumstances or over a rival, although it is exactly that which gives his works their optimistic mood. It is not always that his heroes come out on top. Many of his novels and stories end tragically. London is convinced that those who get defeated are either weak-spirited, or they stepped away from the laws of honest struggle, did not pay attention to the experience of their predecessors, and did not take into account the pitiless laws of nature. Jack London believed that if one held one's position to the end, without fear, giving everything for the sake of the goal, then the victory would come. As a consequence, a person who was not defeated spiritually would be a winner even in death.

While admiring and praising a winner, London, as a true humanist, sympathized with a person defeated in a fair fight. For example, in the story "A Piece of Steak," his sympathies were clearly with the aging sportsman. He knew how to present the truth: difficult phases of the fight, the psychology of a fighter, and fickle luck in the struggle. Upon finishing my research about the life and work of Jack London, I asked myself these questions: What features stand out most in his nature, what character had this talented man? Restless, willful, hot-tempered, courageous? Yes! Sensitive, independent, and goal-oriented? Yes, yes, yes! It is precisely the way we know him.

The last correspondence from Becky, of Glen Ellen, was written in big letters, with a thick marker. She apologized for her bad handwriting, a consequence of her vision worsening. Becky was happy, however, that she was granted a long life, many good friends, and a good memory. She finished her letter with warm words: "Your friend, Becky." Soon afterwards, Russ Kingman informed me that the daughter of London became absolutely blind, and in March of 1992, I learned she had passed away. In October of that year, she would have been 90 years old. Soon thereafter, all London fans suffered another tragic loss. In the fall of the following year, in the 75th year of his life, Russ Kingman — this self-sacrificing researcher, recognized authority and founder of the Jack London Research Center, never failing supporter of friendship between American and Russian people, suddenly died. He had dreamed of visiting the Soviet Union and had hoped that his book about his favorite writer would some day be published in our country. Not without bitterness, he wrote that while the "Raduga" Publishing Company was delaying the publication of his book (for six years!), it was published in France, Spain, and Japan. Our correspondence had been very vigorous. Russ periodically informed me of the appearance of new works and events devoted to Jack London. The closing phrase of his letter, dated January 1992, shocked me: "Now I have at my disposal apparent supportive data that Jack's problems with health were the result of lupus." Surprised, I was waiting for the proof of such a statement. It never followed. In vain, I looked through correspondence and memoirs of contemporaries and in the works of literary scholars for a mere hint on Russ' diagnosis. The only thing I was able to find was a quote from Russ' letter to an unknown correspondent. According to that quote, his conclusion was based on the results of the analysis performed on Jack London in an Oakland hospital, in 1913. On the basis of this analysis, the doctor had concluded and told Jack London that he had lupus.

In turn, Kingman said he was "almost sure" that it was lupus and not scurvy that London got while in Alaska and that it was precisely this illness that was the reason for his depression and kidney failure which led to uremia. Russ Kingman's hypothesis, expressed in a letter in 1984, remains unproven and, most likely, is erroneous. Probably, that was the reason he never mentioned it in our long conversations during my visit to Glen Ellen. Undoubtedly, he felt his conjecture was debatable, and he was never able to find the necessary facts to prove his "discovery." Indeed, no one close to London, even his doctors, noticed or mentioned the possibility of lupus in London.