The story "Straw" is included in S. Karonin's cycle "Stories about trifles." This cycle, by design, is a direct continuation of “Stories about the Parashkinites.” If the first cycle shows the economic impoverishment of the post-reform Russian village, “de-peasantization”, its robbery by bourgeois and serf predators, then “Stories about Trifles” reveal the spiritual impoverishment of the peasant masses, the process of depersonalization / of Man, their loss of not only ideals, but also the ability to think / This depersonalization is a direct result of the poverty and lack of rights of the peasantry of autocratic Russia. “Stories about trifles” were published in “Otechestvennye zapiski” and the magazine “Slovo” in 1881–1883. The story “Straw” was first published in “Otechestvennye zapiski” No. 7 for 1883 under the title “The Happiness of Ivan Chikhaev.” Then, with some amendments, it was included in the Collected Works of S. Karonin, vol. I, M., 1890.