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The Big Oven is an 1899 Russian short story^[1] attributed to Leo Tolstoy about a man (in other tellings of the tale, a couple) whose house has a malfunctioning oven. Thinking his neighbour to be jealous of his large house, the character ignores out of hand his neighbour's suggestion to have the oven repaired. But even taking into account the ensuing Russian winter, he finds that the oven requires a disproportionately large amount of firewood to maintain a livable minimum temperature in the house...and ends up having to tear down his fences, outbuildings, and outer rooms for fuel to keep the oven going, until eventually he is left with nothing but the oven itself and has to go away and live with strangers.

The story is a hypothetical fable decrying the folly of stubbornness and ignorance.

Danny Kaye recorded a dramatic reading of The Big Oven for Little Golden Records in the early 1960s, based on a translation by Nathan Haskell Dole. This recording has been used in English as a second language education.^[2]

References

^ Толстой, Лев Николаеви (1899) «Большая печка», viewed Russian original and electronic translation 30 July 2020
^ See, for example, Step by Step听力教程第一册lesson024, 2006-02-20, checked 2010-11-15.

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Stories from the New Speller

v t e Leo Tolstoy
Bibliography
Novels	Childhood (1852) Boyhood (1854) Youth (1856) The Cossacks (1863) War and Peace (1869) Anna Karenina (1878) Resurrection (1899) Hadji Murat (1912)
Novellas	A Landowner's Morning (1856) Two Hussars (1856) Family Happiness (1859) Polikúshka (1860) The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886) Walk in the Light While There is Light (1888) The Kreutzer Sonata (1889) The Devil (1889) Master and Man (1895) Father Sergius (1898) The Forged Coupon (1904)
Short stories	"The Raid" (1852) "The Cutting of the Forest" (1855) "Sevastopol Sketches" (1855) "Recollections of a Billiard-marker" (1855) "The Snowstorm" (1856) "Lucerne" (1857) "Albert" (1858) "Three Deaths" (1859) "The Porcelain Doll" (1863) "God Sees the Truth, But Waits" (1872) "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" (1872) "The Bear Hunt" (1872) "What Men Live By" (1881) "Diary of a Lunatic" (1884) "Quench the Spark" (1885) "An Old Acquaintance" (1885) "Where Love Is, God Is" (1885) "Ivan the Fool" (1885) "Evil Allures, But Good Endures" (1885) "Wisdom of Children" (1885) "The Three Hermits" (1886) "Promoting a Devil" (1886) "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" (1886) "The Grain" (1886) "Repentance" (1886) "Croesus and Fate" (1886) "Kholstomer" (1886) "The Two Brothers and the Gold" (1886) "A Lost Opportunity" (1889) "A Dialogue Among Clever People" (1892) "The Coffee-House of Surat" (1893) "The Young Tsar" (1894) "Too Dear!" (1897) "Work, Death, and Sickness" (1903) "Three Questions" (1903) "Alyosha the Pot" (1905) "After the Ball" (1911)
Plays	The Power of Darkness (1886) The First Distiller (1886) The Light Shines in the Darkness (1890) The Fruits of Enlightenment (1891) The Living Corpse (1900) The Cause of It All (1910)
Non-fiction	A History of Yesterday (1851) Confession (1882) The Gospel in Brief (1883) What I Believe (1884) What Is to Be Done? (1886) The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894) What Is Art? (1897) "A Letter to a Hindu" (1908) The Inevitable Revolution (1909) A Calendar of Wisdom (1910)
Unfinished	The Decembrists (1884) "Posthumous Notes of the Hermit Fëdor Kuzmich" (1905)
Family	Sophia (wife) Alexandra (daughter) Ilya (son) Lev Lvovich (son) Tatyana (daughter)
Life and legacy	Yasnaya Polyana Tolstoyan movement Christian anarchism Departure of a Grand Old Man (1912 film) Lev Tolstoy and the Russia of Nicholas II (1928 documentary) Lev Tolstoy (1984 film) The Last Station (1990 novel, 2009 film) Story of One Appointment (2018 film) A Couple (2022 film)
Honors	Tolstoy Farm Tolstoj quadrangle crater
Related	The Triumph of the Farmer or Industry and Parasitism (1888) Vladimir Chertkov Aylmer and Louise Maude Translators of Tolstoy Tolstoy scholars
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