 On 17 December 1888 Nikolai Khudekov asked Chekhov to write a story for "Peterburgskaya Gazeta" which he was an editor of.Chekhov came up with "The Cobbler and the Devil" (published on 25 December) and informed Alexey Suvorin of that.Suvorin, the "Novoye Vremya"s editor, took it almost as an insult, so Chekhov promised to produce a similar kind of fable for this newspaper before the New Year Eve.