is not mine... take me as I am, for I've gotten used to polishing my stuff and simply cannot work in any other way," he wrote to Chertkov in one of his 1888 letters. "My clergymen talk like clergymen do, and my muzhiks talk like muzhiks talk in real life... this folkish, vulgar and intricate language is not of my invention, I've listened for years to Russian people talking... and I can say that in my books they talk like they do in real life, not in literary fashion," he insisted later, speaking to biographer Anatoly Faresov. Contemporary critics often dismissed Leskov as a mere "anecdote collector". Years later scholars found a uniqueness in Leskov's prose mostly in that it was almost entirely based on anecdotes; bizarre or absurd real life events. Some of his collections, like Notes of a Stranger (1884) and Trifles from the Life of Archbishops (1878–79) "were nothing but collections of anecdotes, a fact which made them no less powerful, expressive pieces of prose," critic E. Viduetskaya argued. Leskov, who liked to unite his stories and sketches into cycles (The Voice of Nature (1883), The Uniters (1884), Aleksandrit (1885), a series of Christmas stories (1881–1885), etc.) has been credited with creating a comprehensive picture of contemporary Russian society using mostly short literary forms. Enchanted by the ways of life, customs and habits of different, often obscure, ethnic and social groups in Russia, but (unlike Chekhov and Pisemsky who were interested in tendencies) focusing on the bizarre and strange elements of it, Leskov was helped by the unique linguistic memory he'd been endowed with. A profound analysis of Russia through its language was for him a major aim. "The author develops his own voice by learning how to make the voices of his characters his own", he remarked, adding: "A man shows his character best in the smallest things." "I prefer to build a story upon a real fact, not fiction," he once remarked. This had to do more with his own concept of literature as a branch of history, in other words, being an intrinsically documentary art form. He attributed great social importance to history, seeing it as a major factor in healthy social development. Most of Leskov's characters had real life prototypes, while some of them bore the names of real persons ("Cadet Monastery", "A Man at the Guard", "Vladyka's Judgment", "Penniless Engineers", etc.) "Truth