I ot sudeb zashchity net.Pushkin, "Tsygany"Turgenev's acceptance of a fate that governs human existence found expression in the use of the supernatural in certain of his stories. In the past most critics tended to turn away from these stories, in distress at not being able to reconcile this trait with their interpretation of Turgenev the realist, who portrayed the Russian social byt of the nineteenth century. And yet, a total of ten stories (almost a third of his total output of stories) in which there is a touch of the supernatural and the irrational cannot be dismissed as mere caprice.