Leonidas Andreief, the author of _The Red Laugh_ and of some volumes
of short stories, was born at Orel in 1871. He studied first at the
college of his own town, then at St Petersburg University. As a
student at St Petersburg, he made a miserable livelihood by giving
infrequent lessons at wretched rates, and his first literary efforts
belong to this period. His first short story, the subject of which
was, in fact, autobiographical--the sorry life of the poor student,
always half starving--was derisively rejected. But he gained entry
into an important St Petersburg review with another and characteristic
short story, _Silence_, and with it won the attention of the Russian
literary world. Now his popularity in Russia almost transcends that
of Gorky. Russian critics have said of Andreief, as Victor Hugo said
of the author of the _Fleurs du Mal_, that he has "invented a new
thrill," and Andreief seems, indeed, to be most at home in a region of
horror, though it is very much psychologised horror, a horror full of
fine shades. _The Red Laugh_ is a literary outcome of the late war in
Manchuria; it sets forth the anachronism of war as that anachronism is
felt by a writer of genius.