The novel “Berries from Our Fields” was created by the writer and translator Mitrofan Nilovich Remezov. It was first published in 1888 in the Russkaya Mysl (Russian Mind) magazine. The writer was one of the founders and editors of this magazine. Russkaya Mysl published stories and novels by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Gleb Ivanovich Uspensky, Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko, Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin and Dmitry Narkisovich Mamin-Sibiryak.
From the mid-1880s, Alexander Ivanovich Ertel began to send his works to the magazine. Russkaya Mysl was the first to publish two of his novels — “The Gardenins; Their Retainers, Their Friends, and Their Enemies” and “The Change”. He was friends with the editors and staff of Russkaya Mysl and maintained a lively correspondence with them, where he shared some thoughts on his works.
One of the editors, Mitrofan Nilovich Remezov, also shared Ertel’s active social attitude. Remezov was a member of the Tambov Governorate Committee during the preparatory work for the liberation of serfs and later worked as an arbitrator in the Shatsky Uyezd of his native Tambov Governorate. Mitrofan Remezov worked in the Russkaya Mysl editorial office from its very foundation and contributed greatly to its development and elevation to the best Russian periodicals. His regular column “Modern Art” introduced the readers to new art exhibitions and theater performances. Most of his theater reviews were devoted to productions of the Maly Theater in Moscow and were characterized by a deep analysis of the content of the plays and the acting.
Remezov’s translations of works by such popular French writers as Alphonse Daudet and Guy de Maupassant also attracted the readers’ attention to the magazine. In 1887–1888, Russkaya Mysl published his translations of the stories “The Clock of Bougival” and “The Vision of the Judge of Colmar” and the novels “Tartarin of Tarascon” and “The Immortal” by Alphonse Daudet, which were later printed as separate books. In 1890, the magazine published the novel “Our Heart” by Guy de Maupassant in three issues. In 1892, Remezov translated for Russkaya Mysl the newly-published French novel “Cosmopolis” by the poet and novelist Paul Bourget, which was printed in the magazine from late 1892 to early 1893.
Mitrofan Remezov also placed his own works in Russkaya Mysl. Between the 1880s and the 1890s, the magazine published his stories “The Forgotten Notebook”, “Beautiful Dunka”, “Aglaia”, “General Granov’s Children”, novels “Nobody’s Money” and “Berries from Our Fields” (under the pseudonym M. Anyutin).
