We Never Make Mistakes - Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Author); In "An Incident at Krechetovka Station," a Red Army lieutenant is confronted by a disturbing straggler soldier and must decide what to do with him. "Matryona's House" is the tale of an old peasant woman, whose tenacious struggle against cold, hunger, and greedy relatives is described by a young man who only understands her after her death. These two great stories are written in that harsh realistic style so charateristic of Solzhenitsyn's works. Both stories are important on two fronts: They are both allow for primary-source insight into what many Westerners have a skewed perception of (the poverty and oppression in Stalinist Russia), and secondly, both stories present severe criticsm of human nature in such grand metaphoric form as to allow them to penetrate the reader's own soul. The phrase "thought provoking," does these stories no justice, the parables are better described as painfully applicable. (NR KAT. 5)