This edition presents Leo Tolstoy’s so-called ‘Caucasian works’: the short stories ‘The Raid,’ ‘The Wood-Felling,’ and ‘The Prisoner of the Caucasus,’ as well as the novellas *The Cossacks* and *Hadji Murat*. These works reflect the impressions the writer gathered during his three-year service in the Caucasus. In 1851, he traveled there to join his older brother Nikolai—an officer in the active army—and lived for nearly three years in a Cossack village on the banks of the Terek River. *The Cossacks* is rightly considered Tolstoy’s major work of the 1850s; he worked on it intermittently for a decade (1853–1863). Although he wrote the novella *Hadji Murat* during the final period of his life, its creative origins date back to the 1850s; looking back, sifting through memories, and rereading old diaries, Tolstoy reflects fondly on that challenging yet remarkable era—a time of great trials and profound revelations.