In January 1907, the St. Petersburg Yiddish daily Der fraynd began to bring out installments of S. An-sky's new novella, In shtrom: Ertselung fun der yidisher revolutsionerer bavegung (With the Flow: A Tale of the Jewish Revolutionary Movement in Russia). An-sky also had it published at the time in Russian, the language in which he had originally written the work. The two texts vary to a significant extent, but it appears that the Yiddish translation had at least the author's approval and probably his active participation. (In what follows, I shall refer to both versions.)

An-sky's novella was only one among a number of fictional works published in the wake of the 1905 revolution “on the Jewish street.” In fact, Mordkhe Spektor's short novel, Avrom Zilbertsvayg, appeared (likewise in installments) in Der fraynd over much the same period as Ansky's In shtrom. And Yitskhok Mayer Weissenberg's A shtetl had first come out as a special supplement to the Warsaw daily Der veg, also at the start of 1907. Der mabl (The Flood), Sholem Aleichem's sprawling and panoramic novel, was commissioned by Louis Miller and published in serialized form in his New York newspaper, Di varhayt, starting in late March 1907; shortly thereafter it was brought out again by Spektor's Warsaw paper, Undzer lebn. (Astonishingly, under financial pressure, Sholem Aleichem – newly arrived in the United States – had produced his novel in a mere two months.)