- Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov was born on January 27 (15), 1826 in the village of Spas-Ugol, Kalyazinsky district, Tver province (now Taldomsky district, Moscow region).
- Saltykov's father, Yevgraf Vasilyevich, a pillar nobleman, served as a collegiate adviser. He came from an old noble family.
- Mother, Olga Mikhailovna, nee Zabelina, Muscovite, merchant's daughter. Michael was the sixth of her nine children.
- For the first 10 years of his life, Saltykov lives in his father's family estate, where he receives primary education at home. The first teachers of the future writer were the elder sister and serf painter Pavel.
- 1836 - 1838 - studying at the Moscow Noble Institute.
- 1838 - for excellent academic success, Mikhail Saltykov is transferred to the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, that is, trained at the expense of the state treasury.
- 1841 - Saltykov's first poetic experiments. The poem "Lear" was even published in the Library for Reading magazine, but Saltykov quickly realizes that poetry is not for him, since he does not have the necessary abilities. He leaves poetry.
- 1844 - the end of the Lyceum in the second category, with the rank of X class. Saltykov enters the service in the office of the Military Department, but serves all the staff. He manages to get the first full-time position only after two years, this is the position of assistant secretary.
- 1847 - the first story by Mikhail Saltykov "Contradictions" is published.
- The beginning of 1848 - in the "Notes of the Fatherland" the story "A Tangled Case" was published.
- April of the same year - the tsarist government was too shocked by the revolution that took place in France, and Saltykov was arrested for the story "A Tangled Case", more precisely for "... a harmful way of thinking and a pernicious desire to spread ideas that have already shaken the whole of Western Europe ...". He was exiled to Vyatka.
- 1848 - 1855 - service in Vyatka, under the provincial government, first as a clerk, then as a senior official for special assignments under the governor and governor of the governor's office. Link Saltykov ends in the post of adviser to the provincial government.
- 1855 - with the death of Emperor Nicholas I, Shchedrin gets the opportunity to "live where he wants" and returns to St. Petersburg. Here he enters the service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, a year later he was appointed an official for special assignments under the minister. Sent on a business trip to the Tver and Vladimir provinces.
- June 1856 - Saltykov marries the daughter of the vice-governor of Vyatka, Elizaveta Apollonovna Boltina.
- 1856 - 1857 - the satirical cycle "Provincial Essays" is published in the journal "Russian Bulletin" with the signature "Outdoor Councilor N. Shchedrin". The writer becomes famous, he is called the successor of N.V. Gogol.
- 1858 - appointment as vice-governor in Ryazan.
- 1860 - 1862 - Saltykov serves as vice-governor in Tver for two years, after which he retires and returns to St. Petersburg.
- December 1862 - 1864 - Mikhail Saltykov collaborated with the Sovremennik magazine at the invitation of N.A. Nekrasov. After leaving the editorial staff of the journal, the writer returns to public service. Appointed Chairman of the Penza State Chamber.
- 1866 - moving to Tula to the post of manager of the Tula State Chamber.
- 1867 - Saltykov was transferred to Ryazan to the same position. The fact that Saltykov-Shchedrin could not hold out for a long time in one place of service is explained by the fact that he did not hesitate to ridicule his superiors in grotesque "fairy tales". In addition, the writer behaved too atypically for an official: he fought against bribery, embezzlement and simply theft, defended the interests of the lower strata of the population.
- 1868 - the complaint of the Ryazan governor becomes the last in the writer's career. He was dismissed with the rank of real state councilor.
- September of the same year - Saltykov is a member of the editorial board of the Otechestvennye Zapiski magazine, which is headed by N.A. Nekrasov.
- 1869 - 1870 - the tales "The Tale of How One Man Feeded Two Generals", "The Wild Landowner", the novel "The History of a City" are published in "Notes of the Fatherland".
- 1872 - the son Konstantin is born to the Saltykovs.
- 1873 - the birth of daughter Elizabeth.
- 1876 - Nekrasov falls seriously ill, and Saltykov-Shchedrin replaces him as editor-in-chief of Otechestvennye Zapiski. He worked unofficially for two years, in 1878 he was approved for this position.
- 1880 - the publication of the novel "Lord Golovlev".
- 1884 - "Notes of the Fatherland" banned.
- 1887 - 1889 - the novel "Poshekhonskaya antiquity" is published in the "Bulletin of Europe".
- March 1889 - a sharp deterioration in the health of the writer.
- May 10 (April 28), 1889 - Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin dies. According to his own will, he was buried at the Volkovo cemetery in St. Petersburg next to
This classic of Russian literature is most quoted and least read. Few can boast of having read it in its entirety. But it is even more difficult to imagine a person who, when asked who his favorite writer is, will answer: "Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin."
And yet, the mere mention of his name invariably causes a mixed feeling of joy and some shame. This eternal writer. Eternal because you can’t deceive him, you won’t leave him. He "undresses" everyone and everyone - naked, to shame. But at the heart of this is not a bilious desire to criticize, but absolute honesty and knowledge of human nature.
Saltykov-Shchedrin's contemporaries did not notice his death in 1889. Everything turned out to be extremely everyday and in its own way natural. He lived and was, wrote something, said something, someone liked it, but someone did not. Then it seemed to many that life had stopped and there was no point in waiting for changes. But, as Mikhail Evgrafovich himself wrote about that time, time became motley. Motley because there was not and was not visible in the near future, not a single color. Everything was fragmented, atomized, everyone was against everyone and against everyone at once. But Saltykov-Shchedrin still concluded that there was nothing new. All the same, human nature is unchanging, and nothing good or new can be expected.
Alexander Kuprin was the first to return to Saltykov-Shchedrin. He returned 22 years after the death of the writer in 1911 in his story "Giants". The storyline is simple and uncomplicated. A drunken gymnasium teacher (and a drunken gymnasium teacher is the hero of Saltykov-Shchedrin's "Provincial Essays") puts portraits of Pushkin, Gogol, Nekrasov in front of him and begins to grade them. Suddenly he notices a piercing and terrible look directed at him from the corner. And it seemed to him that the lips in the portrait opened and uttered such words that he could not imagine from any of the Russian classics. Waking up in the morning in a cold sweat, the teacher takes the portrait of Saltykov-Shchedrin and takes it out of the classroom to the pantry. He is afraid of this look, the portrait cannot be destroyed - state property. It seems that Kuprin in this story expressed his attitude towards Saltykov-Shchedrin, which was based primarily on respect. No matter how cruel and bilious his late colleague was, he left all his heirs a sick conscience for Russia. It is sick, not calm. And thus he left to his successors that impulse of indifference, which made them great writers.
Shortly before his death, Saltykov-Shchedrin told Unkovsky, one of his few close friends: "It's not a pity that you will die, but that after death only anecdotes will be remembered." Like looking into the water. His words, like almost all works, turned out to be prophetic.
Father, Evgraf Vasilyevich Saltykov.
“Father was decently educated for that time ...
It had no practical meaning at all and liked to breed on beans.
In our family, it was not stinginess that reigned, but some kind of stubborn hoarding.
M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin.
Of all the Russian writers of the nineteenth century, Saltykov-Shchedrin seems to me one of the most sentimental. His sentimentalism is brought to the absolute, and it is for this reason that the most cynical Russian pamphlets, satire, written on the verge of what is permitted, came out from under his pen. This is an inner experience when he suffered for everyone and passed everything through himself. It is impossible to imagine that after what was written, this extremely closed person sobbed uncontrollably from the life around him. This feeling is difficult to explain, but understandable. If we remember his "Conscience Lost" or "Pravda", placed in a strange tale about how a boy dies from overflowing feelings from worship, because his heart is seized with delight, and he cannot bear it, then this will be the real Shchedrin. The one we didn't notice. And at the heart of his attitude to the world lay the highest religious feeling - absolute faith in God.
He was neither a Westerner nor a Slavophile. And his view of the surrounding Russian reality was not at all a manifestation of rejection of the regime. And he was never a fighter with him. Moreover, he himself was part of the power system of that time, for a long time he served as vice-governor in the Ryazan and Tver provinces.
Mother, Olga Mikhailovna Zabelina.
“She appeared between us only when, according to the complaint of the governesses, she had to punish.
She appeared angry, implacable, with her lower lip bitten, resolute in her hand, angry.
M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin.
This cliché of a fighter against the tsarist regime, firmly glued to Saltykov in the Soviet era, is still alive today by inertia. His formation began in the Moscow boarding school, and, as one of the best students, he was transferred to the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. And according to the rules of lyceum good manners, writing poetry was a must. It's hard to believe, but Mikhail Saltykov, in his lyceum years, passionately dreamed of becoming a poet on a par with Pushkin. And in that same thirteenth lyceum graduation, in a damn dozen, Saltykov writes poems about the Russian plains, about coachmen, about love for the motherland.
Mikhail Evgrafovich in childhood. Saltykov's childhood years passed in a rich landowner's patrimony,
located on the border of Tver and Yaroslavl provinces.
As one of the best graduates of the Lyceum, he was immediately appointed to the War Ministry. And from the first day of service, with all his soul, he harbors a fierce hatred for this work. As he himself later stated, “to write two hundred petitions from insignificant people to insignificant people does not mean being in the public service. Nevertheless, public service consisted of this. Here two points converged in the young Saltykov, which later will be considered by many as the writer's eternal nihilism towards the entire social order. But I don't think that was the case. Saltykov's inner discomfort consisted in the cosmic distance between his brilliant education and real everyday life. Excess education is not always a luxury, most often a heavy burden that not everyone is able to endure. When you have “specialists in holes and slits” subordinate to you, it’s easier to say - a company of folders, and in Fourier’s head with his ideal ideas of a social structure, internal discomfort is guaranteed. He was close in spirit and Petrashevsky with his circle. But fate favored Mikhail Evgrafovich. At the peak of the Nikolaev repressions of 1848, for the two novels “Contradiction” and “A Tangled Case” published in the “Notes of the Fatherland”, he was sent to Vyatka not as a successful official, but as a compiler of meaningless annual reports. This city, which we know as Kirov, became the place of life for Saltykov for seven whole years. It was a kind of link, it was indefinite. But he was not allowed to write. It was here that he would take his literary pseudonym Nikolai Shchedrin, which would later become part of his family name. In the "Provincial Essays" the main character is himself, Shchedrin, who travels around the provincial towns and villages for twelve months a year. Rides and cries all the time. Crying is not in the literal sense, he constantly whines from internal discomfort.
House in Vyatka on Voznesenskaya street,
where is M.E. Saltykov lived during the exile.
Photo from 1880.
The Vyatka exile ended not due to his constant letters to St. Petersburg, but according to the law of nature. The death of Nicholas I gave Russia hope and a thaw. This definition does not belong at all to Ilya Ehrenburg, as we still believe, but to Fyodor Tyutchev. Saltykov in 1855 was immediately forgiven. And what's more, his "Provincial Essays", far from a masterpiece of his literary work, were immediately printed.
Today there is no consensus on which work of Saltykov-Shchedrin should be considered the main one. The inertia of the Soviet era and, above all, the fact that The Golovlevs were included in the compulsory school set, leave the first place for this novel. The main reason for this was the personal opinion of the leader of the world proletariat, Vladimir Lenin, that this particular work is the best panorama of Russian life from business to secular, from peasant to bureaucratic. But this is just one opinion. There is another, the most popular today, that the main work of Saltykov-Shchedrin is still his novel "The History of a City".
Petersburg. House on Liteiny Prospekt,
where the editorial office of Otechestvennye Zapiski was placed.
Saltykov lived at the turn of two eras. In the Russian social, I emphasize, social, and not political tradition, there has always been a certain predeterminedness - a sinusoidal cycle of development - either “freezes” or “thaws”. Now turning to the West, then returning to the East. And the eternal search for the ideal social structure.
The idea of this novel with a very strange content came to Saltykov after meeting Nekrasov. They met in 1857 and did not like each other very much. Strictly speaking, all outstanding Russian writers in real life were far from angels. Their works and themselves are two different things. And this is very mildly said. Nikolai Nekrasov is an outstanding and controversial personality. With us, he was always almost a revolutionary, a defender of the people. And what about Nekrasov, who goes out to Panaev and says: “We are refreshing a newcomer here.” Refresh, it means pluck. A merchant came, lost ten thousand rubles at cards, and fled. That's the trouble with Nekrasov! But the question is different - it is extremely difficult to imagine a graduate of the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum Mikhail Saltykov as the closest literary associate of Nekrasov. But the two human extremes miraculously converged professionally.
Journal work requires accuracy in the timely delivery of texts, and Nekrasov was forced to agree to accept reviews from Saltykov. His accuracy and commitment pleased the editor-in-chief of Sovremennik.
Wife Elizaveta Apollonovna Boltina.
The reviews titled "Our Modern Life" in Otechestvennye Zapiski soon bored Saltykov and decided to write them in a metaphorical style. For this, the city of Foolov was invented. The plot of the novel was simple - at first the pre-reform, and then the post-reform city of Foolov was depicted. We are talking about the reforms of Alexander II after the abolition of serfdom.
There is a huge gap between the first chapter of the "History of a City" - ironic, extremely snarky, containing the entire list of mayors - and the terrible finale, which ends with the cry of Grim-Burcheev: “It has come! History has stopped flowing. The last doom has come to Russia. And what a wonderful start it all was.
Son Constantine.
It begins with a list of mayors, one of whom doubled the population of the city, the other turned out to be with a stuffed head, and the third was completely a girl. And what, you say? Yes, this is us, the whole typology of Russian power! And if the first person does not correspond to this paradigm of public life, that is, you and I, do not expect anything good. Saltykov rigidly and specifically describes the entire typology of Russian political elements. And the basis for it is not a criticism of political power, but an analysis of the state of society. We understand that Grim-Burcheev is this Nicholas I, whom Saltykov was very offended for exile. But it's not that.
Daughter Elizabeth.
Writing a novel for Saltykov-Shchedrin at that moment was not the main meaning of his life. The new emperor, as compensation for the forced exile, offered a good and decent post of vice-governor of the Tver region. And Saltykov began transformations there. It should be noted that almost the entire intellectual elite of that time was convinced that it was necessary to go in for practical farming, to direct all their knowledge and experience (which was not there) to the development of capitalism in the country. Inspired Saltykov wrote: "Five years later, as soon as the peasant is released, the economy will flourish." But it was not there. Saltykov-Shchedrin himself, with the Vitenevo estate he bought, went bankrupt in a matter of months. He sincerely believed that he should personally set an example of free housekeeping. But he could not understand that it was one thing to fight on the pages of a magazine and in bureaucratic life for the freedom of a peasant, and another thing to teach him this freedom. To learn and teach others to become an owner. It was a revelation to him how freedom immediately became will.
The brilliant poet Athanasius Fet was just as romantic at that time. But the peasants quickly robbed him. After that, he became the most cruel serf-owner, and was doomed to oblivion by Soviet literary criticism. But during his lifetime he became a prosperous landowner, by our standards a decent business executive, constantly scolding Leo Tolstoy for excessive liberalism. But until the 70s of the nineteenth century, he was a sincere liberal who did not understand what a downtrodden, depraved and insidious people he was dealing with.
For Shchedrin, this was a personal disappointment. He could not understand and inwardly agree that the freedom given to the people would be used primarily for deception. After all, he conceived the "History of a City" as an innocent joke, but a very terrible and gloomy prophecy came out. His disappointment was all the more painful because he could not come to terms with the fact that he spoke different languages \u200b\u200bwith the peasants. And the whole paradox of the Russian intellectual elite of that time was that only Nikolai Nekrasov understood the essence of what was happening. It was the same Nekrasov who wrote "To whom it is good to live in Rus'."
Today, from the screens of Russian television, one can hear the thought, rather wild, that the abolition of serfdom was a political mistake of Alexander II. I think that this is stupidity and substitution of concepts. In my opinion, the bottom line is that freedom and democracy are worth something. And each member of society cannot receive it by decree or order from above. It needs to be earned, including the head. And it was this disappointment that hurt Saltykov-Shchedrin the most.
He guessed the path of Russia's development at least a century ahead. Intuition, all his passion and intransigence. We are considered to be the founder of Russian modernism Vsevolod Garshin. Based on his published stories, it is. But modernity, as an artistic phenomenon, rests on two foundations - the fusion of creativity and real life, and, sadly (and this is what Garshin has), on the aestheticization of vulgarity. According to the second reason, Garshin is the ancestor. And what about the first one? I think that the championship here belongs to Saltykov-Shchedrin. Of course, he was not a modernist writer, Shchedrin belonged to the last of the Mohicans of the Russian "golden" literary age. But he clearly guessed the path of Russia's movement.
We are often misled into calling for the immediate modernization of all social life along Western lines. Modern is not a Western phenomenon. It is alien to the West due to its gradual pace of development. Modern is a phenomenon characteristic of countries with a catching-up type of evolution. It originated in the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, German empires and Sweden. Literary and artistic modernity always precedes political modernity. He is a constant companion of socialism or the collapse of the state. Extremely painful and tragic. The German and Austro-Hungarian empires did not stand the test of him and did not survive the twentieth century. The Russian Empire was transformed into the Soviet Union, which collapsed at the end of the 20th century. The Swedish socialism that is commonly spoken of today is a pure product of modernity. But the Swedes got sick of them - they saved the national tradition and mono-nationality. The great culture of the "Silver Age" in its grandeur brought something that many people cannot put up with even in the 21st century - the loss of Christian guidelines - mass culture, same-sex marriages, and so on.
Monument to M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in Kursk.
Saltykov-Shchedrin felt the future and understood a lot. His works are perceived by many as encrypted texts. But this is not encryption, but a generalization, a search for the matrix of that history, the maximum typing, in which we live today. All these generalizations are framed in the form of dialogues.
He died early, at just 63 years old. This self-eating has made itself felt. Of all the experiences, Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin wanted to write his main work, Forgotten Words. He explained his desire simply: “Now there are a lot of words that no one remembers anymore. No one remembers what conscience is, no one remembers what sacrifice is, and they don’t remember God at all.”
Saltykov-Shchedrin as a writer is a mystery to us all. In our not very readable time, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin remains the most popular Russian classic. Our time is his second literary birth. And he is far from a school or children's writer, let's not be mistaken in this, saying "tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin." The first satirist of Russia, and in fact - a mirror of the entire Russian and Russian society, not crooked, although sometimes unpleasant, outlived his time and entered the minds of everyone, regardless of our desire, whether we know about him or not.
Born into a wealthy family of Evgraf Vasilyevich Saltykov, a hereditary nobleman and collegiate adviser, and Olga Mikhailovna Zabelina. He was educated at home - his first mentor was the serf painter Pavel Sokolov. Later, young Michael was educated by a governess, a priest, a seminary student, and his older sister. At the age of 10, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin entered the Moscow Noble Institute, where he demonstrated great academic success.
In 1838, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin entered the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. There, for his academic success, he was transferred to study at public expense. In the lyceum, he began to write "free" poetry, ridiculing the surrounding shortcomings. Poems were weak, soon the future writer stopped doing poetry and did not like being reminded of the poetic experiences of his youth.
In 1841 the first poem "Lyra" was published.
In 1844, after graduating from the Lyceum, Mikhail Saltykov entered the service of the Office of the War Ministry, where he wrote free-thinking works.
In 1847 the first story "Contradictions" was published.
On April 28, 1848, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin was sent to a service transfer to Vyatka for the story "A Tangled Case" - away from the capital into exile. There he had an impeccable working reputation, did not take bribes and, enjoying great success, was well received in all houses.
In 1855, having received permission to leave Vyatka, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin left for St. Petersburg, where a year later he became an official for special assignments under the Minister of the Interior.
In 1858, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin was appointed vice-governor in Ryazan.
In 1860 he was transferred to Tver as a vice-governor. During the same period, he actively collaborated with the magazines Moskovsky Vestnik, Russkiy Vestnik, Library for Reading, Sovremennik.
In 1862, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin retired and tried to found a magazine in Moscow. But the publishing project failed and he moved to St. Petersburg.
In 1863, he became an employee of the Sovremennik magazine, but due to microscopic fees, he was forced to return to the service again.
In 1864, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin was appointed chairman of the Penza State Chamber, and was later transferred to Tula in the same position.
In 1867 he was transferred to Ryazan as head of the Treasury.
In 1868, he again retired with the rank of a truly state councilor and wrote his main works “History of a City”, “Poshekhonskaya Antiquity”, “Diary of a Provincial in St. Petersburg”, “History of a City”.
In 1877, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin became the editor-in-chief of Otechestvennye Zapiski. He travels around Europe and meets Zola and Flaubert.
In 1880, the novel "Lord Golovlev" was published.
In 1884, the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski was closed by the government, and Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin's health deteriorated sharply. He is ill for a long time.
In 1889, the novel "Poshekhonskaya antiquity" was published.
In May 1889, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin fell ill with a cold and died on May 10. He was buried at the Volkovskoye cemetery in St. Petersburg.
Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin is a Russian writer, journalist, publicist and public figure. Born in 1826 on January 27 in the Tver province, a descendant of an old noble family. He excelled in his studies at the noble institute, thanks to which in 1838 he was transferred to the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. At the age of 22 he was exiled to Vyatka, where he worked for the next 8 years in low positions in the government of the province.
Upon returning to St. Petersburg, Mikhail Saltykov joined the Ministry of the Interior and also continued to write. After retiring, he moved to St. Petersburg and began to work as an editor in the Sovremennik magazine. In the future, he returned to public service, and was also a member of the editorial board of the Otechestvennye Zapiski magazine. The ban on this publication in 1884 greatly affected the writer's health, which was reflected in various works. He died on April 28, 1889 and was buried at the Volkovskoye cemetery according to his own last will next to I.S. Turgenev.
Creative stages of life
Mikhail Saltykov graduated from the Lyceum in the second category. Among the standard lyceum "sins" like smoking, rudeness and careless appearance, he was also credited with writing disapproving poems. However, the poems of the future writer turned out to be weak, and he himself understood this, so he quickly abandoned poetic activity.
According to the debut work of Saltykov-Shchedrin "Contradictions", it is noticeable that the young prose writer was greatly influenced by the novels of George Sand and French socialism. “Contradictions” and “A Tangled Case” aroused indignation among the authorities, and Mikhail Evgrafovich was exiled to Vyatka. During this period of his life, he practically did not engage in literature. It turned out to return to her in 1855, when, after the death of Nicholas I, the young official was allowed to leave the place of exile. "Provincial Essays", published in the "Russian Bulletin", made Shchedrin a well-known and revered author in a wide circle of readers.
Being the vice-governor of Tver and Ryazan, the writer did not stop writing for many magazines, although readers found most of his works in Sovremennik. From the works of 1858-1862, the collections "Satires in Prose" and "Innocent Stories" were formed, each published three times. During his service as the manager of the state chamber of Penza, Tula and Ryazan (1864-1867), Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov published only once with the article “Testament to my children”.
In 1868, the publicist completely left the civil service and, at the personal request of Nikolai Nekrasov, became one of the key employees of the Otechestvennye Zapiski magazine. Ten years later he became editor-in-chief. Until 1884, when Otechestvennye Zapiski were banned, Saltykov-Shchedrin devoted himself entirely to working on them, publishing almost two dozen collections. During this period, one of the author's best and most popular works, The History of a City, was published.
Having lost his most beloved publication, Mikhail Evgrafovich published in Vestnik Evropy, which included the most grotesque collections: Poshekhon Antiquity, Tales, and Little Things in Life.
The main motives of creativity
Saltykov-Shchedrin became a popularizer of the socio-satiric fairy tale. He exposed in his stories and stories human vices, relations between power and people, bureaucratic crime and tyranny, as well as landlord cruelty. The novel "Lord Golovlyovs" depicts the physical and spiritual decay of the nobility of the late 19th century.
After the closure of Otechestvennye Zapiski, Saltykov-Shchedrin directed his writing talent to the Russian government, creating exclusively grotesque works. A distinctive feature of the author's style is the depiction of the vices of the bureaucratic and power apparatus not from the outside, but through the eyes of a person who enters this environment.
Years of life: from 01/15/1826 to 04/28/1889
Russian writer, publicist. Known as the satirical works of Saltykov-Shchedrin, and his psychological prose. Classic of Russian literature.
M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin (real name Saltykov, pseudonym N. Shchedrin) was born in the Tver province, on the estate of his parents. His father was a hereditary nobleman, his mother came from a merchant family. Saltykov-Shchedrin was the sixth child in the family, he received his initial education at home. At the age of 10, the future writer entered the Moscow Noble Institute, from where two years later he was transferred to the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, as one of the best students. Saltykov-Shchedrin's literary predilections began to appear in the lyceum, he writes poems that are published in student publications, but the writer himself did not feel a poetic gift in himself, and subsequent researchers of his work do not rate these poetic experiments highly. During his studies, Saltykov-Shchedrin became close to the graduate of the Lyceum M. V. Butashevich-Petrashevsky, who had a serious influence on the worldview of the future writer.
After graduating from the lyceum in 1844, Saltykov-Shchedrin was enrolled in the office of the Minister of War and only two years later he received his first full-time position there - assistant secretary. At that time, literature interested the young man much more than service. In 1847-48, the first novels by Saltykov-Shchedrin, Contradictions and A Tangled Case, were published in the Otechestvennye Zapiski magazine. Shchedrin's critical remarks towards the authorities came just at the time when the February Revolution in France was reflected in Russia by the tightening of censorship and punishments for "free-thinking." Saltykov-Shchedrin was actually exiled to Vyatka for the story "A Tangled Case", where he received a position as a clerk under the Vyatka provincial government. During the exile, Saltykov-Shchedrin served as a senior official for special assignments under the Vyatka governor, held the position of governor of the governor's office, and was an adviser to the provincial government.
In 1855, Saltykov-Shchedrin was finally allowed to leave Vyatka, in February 1856 he was assigned to the Ministry of the Interior, and then appointed an official for special assignments under the minister. Returning from exile, Saltykov-Shchedrin resumes his literary activity. Written on the basis of materials collected during his stay in Vyatka, "Provincial Essays" quickly gain popularity among readers, Shchedrin's name becomes known. In March 1858, Saltykov-Shchedrin was appointed vice-governor of Ryazan, and in April 1860 he was transferred to the same position in Tver. At this time, the writer works a lot, collaborating with various magazines, but mostly with Sovremennik. In 1958-62, two collections saw the light: "Innocent Stories" and "Satires in Prose", in which the city of Foolov first appeared. In the same 1862, Saltykov-Shchedrin decided to devote himself entirely to literature and resigned. For several years the writer took an active part in the publication of Sovremennik. In 1864, Saltykov-Shchedrin returned to the service again, and until his final retirement in 1868, his writings practically did not appear in print.
Nevertheless, Shchedrin's craving for literature remained the same, and as soon as Nekrasov was appointed editor-in-chief of Otechestvennye Zapiski in 1868, Shchedrin became one of the journal's chief contributors. It was in Otechestvennye Zapiski (of which Saltykov-Shchedrin became editor-in-chief after Nekrasov's death) that the most significant works of the writer were published. In addition to the well-known "History of a City", which was published in 1870, a number of collections of Shchedrin's stories were published during the period 1868-1884, and in 1880 - the novel "Lord Golovlev". In April 1884, Otechestvennye Zapiski were closed by personal order of the chief censor of Russia, the head of the Main Directorate for Press Affairs, Yevgeny Feoktistov. The closure of the magazine was a great blow to Saltykov-Shchedrin, who felt that he had been deprived of the opportunity to address the reader. The health of the writer, already not brilliant, was finally undermined. In the years following the prohibition of Otechestvennye Zapiski, Saltykov-Shchedrin published his writings mainly in Vestnik Evropy, in 1886-1887 the writer’s last lifetime collections of stories were published, and after his death, the novel Poshekhonskaya Starina. Saltykov-Shchedrin died on April 28 (May 10), 1889 and was buried, according to his wishes, at the Volkovskoye cemetery, next to I. S. Turgenev.
Bibliography
Novels and novels
Contradictions (1847)
A Tangled Case (1848)
(1870)
(1880)
Refuge of Mon Repos (1882)
(1890)
Collections of short stories and essays
(1856)
Innocent Tales (1863)
Satires in Prose (1863)
Letters from the Province (1870)
Signs of the Times (1870)
