Biography Korolenko

Korolenko Vladimir Galaktionovich (1853-1921) - Russian writer, publicist, public figure.

Born in Zhytomyr in the family of a county judge. He studied at the Zhytomyr and Rivne gymnasiums. In 1871 he entered the St. Petersburg technological Institute, in 1874 he moved to the Petrovsky Agricultural and Forestry Academy in Moscow. In the 70s, he became close to the leaders of revolutionary populism. In 1876, he was expelled from the Academy for filing a collective student protest and exiled to Kronstadt under police supervision.

In 1877 he entered the Mining Institute in St. Petersburg. In 1879 and 1880 was arrested several times. In 1881 for refusing to swear allegiance to the tsar Alexander III exiled to Yakutia. In 1885 he settled in Nizhny Novgorod, where he launched an active literary and social activity. In 1886 he married E.S. Ivanovskaya. In 1893 he traveled to America.

Since 1896 - one of the leaders, and in 1904-1918 (with interruptions) the executive editor of the magazine " Russian wealth". From 1896 he lived in St. Petersburg. In 1900, he was elected an honorary academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (in 1902, together with A.P. Chekhov, he refused the title in protest against the illegal cancellation of the election of M. Gorky to the Academy; in 1918 he was reinstated in the Academy).

In September 1900 he moved with his family to Poltava. “Moving to Poltava,” recalled Korolenko’s daughter Sofia Vladimirovna, “was a happy event in the life of our family. VG Korolenko, who grew up in Ukraine, loved its climate and nature… We often went to the city garden and admired the beauty of Poltava. After St. Petersburg with its rains and fogs, Poltava seemed new to us wonderful world «.

At first, the writer lived in Staritsky's house on the street. Aleksandrovskaya (now Oktyabrskaya), since 1903 - in the house of Dr. Budagovska on the street. Malo-Sadovaya (now Korolenko). Now in the house is the Literary and Memorial Museum of V.G. Korolenko.

The writer's house became the center cultural life Poltava, letters from L.N. Tolstoy, A.P. Chekhov, M.M. Kotsyubinsky (visited Korolenko in 1903), M. Gorky, A.V. Lunacharsky (1920), V.P. Kataev came.

Korolenko quickly became involved in the literary and social life of the Poltava region. He established friendly relations with figures of Ukrainian culture - Panas Mirny, M. Kotsiubinsky, I. Tobilevich, Kh. Alchevskaya, G. Khotkevich and others. In 1901 he sent new biographical information about T. G. Shevchenko to the journal 1902 participated in the preparation of the Russian-Ukrainian almanac dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the death of N.V. Gogol. In 1905, he spoke at rallies in Poltava aimed at preventing Jewish pogroms in the city. He condemned in the press the massacre of peasants during the Sorochinsky tragedy of 1905 (he published an open letter in the newspaper Poltavshchina on January 12, 1906, in which he denounced the lawlessness and mass cruelty of senior adviser A. Filonov, led the suppression of peasant uprisings). In 1911 he spoke at the opening of the monument to N.V. Gogol in Sorochintsy.

The years of life in Poltava were filled with intense creative work. Here he completed the essays “At the Cossacks”, wrote the second cycle of Siberian stories (“Frost”, “Feudal lords”, etc.), the stories “MiG” and “Not Scary”. In Poltava, V. Korolenko continued his work as an editor of the Russian Wealth magazine, a publicist and newspaper correspondent for metropolitan and provincial newspapers. In 1905, the writer began work on The History of My Contemporary. In 1910, Korolenko worked hard on a series of articles called "Everyday Phenomenon" directed against courts-martial and mass death sentences.

Since 1905, almost every summer, he rested on x. Houses. In 1912 he visited Finland, in 1914 he was treated abroad, in France. Returned home in 1915.

Korolenko played a big role in protecting the Jews of Poltava from pogroms in the period 1905-1907. He took an active part in the defense of Beilis. During the years of the civil war in Ukraine and the terror of military communism, Korolenko spoke out against pogroms, stood up for both Jews and people of other nationalities repressed by the Soviet authorities.

Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko (1853 - 1921) - an outstanding Russian writer. Born in 1853 in the city of Zhytomyr in the family of an official. He studied at the Zhytomyr gymnasium, later - at the Rovno real gymnasium. Big role in shaping the worldview Korolenko played democratic literature 1960s, works by N. G. Chernyshevsky, N. A. Dobrolyubov, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, N. A. Nekrasov, T. G. Shevchenko; their views had a huge impact on all his work. In 1871, Korolenko entered the St. Petersburg Institute, but could not study due to lack of funds. Worked as a proofreader, draftsman geographical maps. In 1874 he entered the Petrovsky Agricultural and Forestry Academy in Moscow. As a student, he prepared for propaganda activities among the peasants. In March 1876, Korolenko was expelled from the academy, and then arrested for protesting on behalf of the majority of students against the administration, which performed purely police functions. From 1879, a long period of exile began in Korolenko's life (to the Vyatka province, in Eastern Siberia, and etc.). In August 1881, he was exiled to the Yakutsk region, after defiantly refusing to sign the oath to Alexander III. Korolenko was allowed to return to European Russia in the autumn of 1884. From 1885 he lived in Nizhny Novgorod, under police surveillance.

Korolenko's first story, "Episodes from the Life of a Seeker" (1879), reflected popular views to a certain extent. However, in the two subsequent stories "Yashka" (1881) and "The Fake City" (1881), the writer's rest from the popular illusion was outlined, which was facilitated by direct acquaintance with the people during the period of exile. Already for early stories and Korolenko's essays characteristically realistic image folk life, attention to people who do not care hard fate full of indomitable desire to achieve truth and freedom. The steadfastness and courage of a Russian revolutionary girl served as the theme of the story "Wonderful" (1880, published abroad in 1893, in Russia - 1905). Protests against social injustice Yakut peasant, hero of the story "Son of Makar" (1885). The ability of a Russian person to accomplish a feat of the strength of his soul is mentioned in the essay "The River Plays" (1892). In the work of Korolenko, a deep inner beauty people from the people rising up to fight for their liberation. In the center of the story "Musician" (1886) is the spiritual drama of a blind man who "saw" the world through high art. This soulful work, which was the result of a blind musician with people from the people, helps to overcome personal grief, from which there seemed to be no way out. This idea of ​​the story was pointed out by M. I. Kalinin in his speech on October 25, 1919 at a meeting dedicated to the defense of Tula from Denikin's gangs: "The greatest word artist Korolenko in his blind "Blind Musician" clearly showed how problematic, fragile this individual human happiness is... A person... can be happy if he is soldered with his class with all the threads of his soul, with all his body and all his heart and only then will his life be complete and whole."

In the works of Korolenko, Russian reality was reflected, associated with the collapse of the patriarchal forms of peasant life and the penetration of capital into the village. Significant was his speech with essays on the famous handicrafts of the village of Pavlova, near Nizhny Novgorod ("Pavlovsk Essays", 1890). The populists considered this village an example of handicraft production, which allegedly escaped the influence of capitalism on free exploitation. Resolutely rejecting these false assertions, Korolenko painted a true picture of the ruin of the handicraftsmen, of their complete dependence on the capitalist buyers. “There is simply no peasant,” Korolenko wrote in his essays “In the Year of the Hungry,” “there are poor and rich people, owners and workers.” Korolenko expressed his disagreement with the fiction of late populism, which, in his words, considered reality "through the prism of lies." A significant place in the work of Korolenko is occupied by the story "Without a Language" (1895), which depicts the misadventures of a Ukrainian peasant who ended up in America. The hero of the story faced slavery, unemployment, the criminal power of money. Driven to a frenzy, he exclaims: "Let the thunder break this accursed city and some mayor you have chosen. Let the thunder break this copper freedom of theirs, there on the island ...".

In the years preceding the revolution of 1905, Korolenko continued the cycle of his stories: "The Sovereign Coachmen" (1901), "Frost" (1901), "Marusina Zaimka" (1903), "Feudal lords" (1901). Here the humanist writer draws hard life people of forced labor, denounces the remnants of the feudal serf system, touches on the topic of the inhumanity of the bourgeois system. Despite the uncertainty of his political ideals, Korolenko believed in the victory of the people. By the same time, the story "Nestrashnoe" (1903) belongs, which, by the power of exposing bourgeois intelligence and by the skill of execution, can be classified as one of the best works of Korolenko.

In 1900 Korolenko was elected an honorary academician. In 1902, he, like A.P. Chekhov, refused this title in protest against the fact that M. Gorky was not approved by the tsarist government as an honorary academician.

Korolenko's journalistic talent was manifested with particular force in his essays "In the year of famine" (1892 - 1893), "The Sultan's Sacrifice" (1895 - 1896), "Sorochinsky tragedy" (1907), "Everyday phenomenon" (1910) . In an essay on the so-called. Sultan's case, the democratic writer defended the Votyak (Udmurt) peasants, who were accused by the tsarist police of ritual murder. Korolenko proved that this process was started by the Black Hundreds in order to incite national hatred. Maxim Gorky wrote on this occasion: "The" Sultan's sacrifice "of the Votyaks - a process no less shameful than the" Beilis case ", would have taken on an even gloomier character if V. G. Korolenko had not intervened in this process and forced the press to turn attention to the idiotic obscurantism of autocratic power. During the years of reaction, Korolenko published a pamphlet called Everyday Phenomenon, in which he accused the tsarist government of an "orgy of executions" and police abuse of workers and peasants after the revolution of 1905-1907. Since the 2nd half of the 90s, he took part in the publication of the liberal folk magazine "Russian wealth" (his role was mainly to edit the fiction department). According to Korolenko's letters, one can judge his serious differences from the editorial staff of the magazine, which shared populist, liberal-bourgeois views. At the same time, the writer could not understand the shared significance of the revolutionary struggle of the working class, and this sharply distinguished his position from the position of the proletarian writer Maxim Gorky.

To last period Korolenko's work includes his largest work "The History of My Contemporary", in which it is easy to see artistic expression biographies of the author milestones Korolenko at the same time acquaints the reader with the development of the social movement of the 60s and 70s, with outstanding historical events that time. The last chapters of the epic, covering the activities of the people's intelligentsia, were written after the great October socialist revolution. Not understanding its true meaning, the writer, however, saw that the revolution won because the broadest masses of the people took part in it. In The History of My Contemporary, he was able to show how naive the populists' calculations were for the heroism of the "chosen ones" in the absence of support from the working masses.

Korolenko published literary critical articles and memoirs. The most significant of them: "In Memory of Belinsky" (1898), "About Gleb Ivanovich Uspensky" (1902), "A.P. Chekhov" (1904), "L. N. Tolstoy" (1908), a great work about N.V. Gogol "The tragedy of the great humorist" (1909).

The realist work of Korolenko with all its content opposed the decadent bourgeois literature of the pre-revolutionary era. It reflected the popular protest against the bourgeois feudal order tsarist Russia, against national inequality and oppression. In 1907, V. I. Lenin called Korolenko a "progressive writer." The democratic nature of his work was noted in 1913 by Lenin's Pravda. Pointing out that Korolenko “stands aside from the labor movement,” Pravda wrote at the same time: “We honor in him both a sensitive, future artist, and a writer-citizen, a writer-democrat.” Appreciating public and artistic value Korolenko's work, setting him as a writer as an example for young writers, M. Gorky wrote: "This great handsome writer personally told me a lot about the Russian people that no one could say before him."

Korolenko is an excellent master of stories, essays, novels. Using extensive life material, deploying complex action even in a small work, he always remains in naturally developing compositions. In an effort to more accurately reproduce life, Korolenko willingly introduced elements of journalism into his stories and stories. This feature is often indicated by subtitles from his stories: "Sketches from the road album", "From the notes of a reporter", "From notebook traveler", etc. Korolenko outstanding artist words, his art was highly appreciated by L. N. Tolstoy, A. P. Chekhov, M. Gorky. Korolenko had a significant influence on writers who emerged from the popular environment. “In the early years, Korolenko strongly influenced me,” wrote A.S. Sirofimovich. The realistic method Korolenko played positive role in the development of Ukrainian, Belarusian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Yakut prose. Korolenko's works have been translated into many languages Soviet Union. In connection with the 25th anniversary of his death, which took place in 1946, the Council of Ministers of the USSR decided to perpetuate the memory of the outstanding Russian writer with a number of events. Creativity Korolenko, remarkable for the versatile richness of content, the nobility of ideas, the perfection art form, occupies a prominent place in the history of Russian classical literature.

, USSR

Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko (July 15 (27), 1853, Zhytomyr - December 25, 1921, Poltava) - Russian writer of Ukrainian origin, journalist, publicist, public figure, who earned recognition for his human rights activities both during the years of the tsarist regime, and during the civil war and Soviet authorities.

For their critical views Korolenko was subjected to repression by the tsarist government. significant portion literary works The writer is inspired by his childhood experiences in Ukraine and exile to Siberia.

Verse is the same music, only combined with the word, and it also needs a natural ear, a sense of harmony and rhythm.

Korolenko was born in Zhytomyr, Ukraine, the son of a county judge. The writer's father came from a Cossack family. Severe and withdrawn, but at the same time incorruptible and fair, Galaktion Afanasyevich Korolenko (1810–1868) had a huge impact on the formation of his son's worldview. Subsequently, the image of the father was captured by the writer in his famous story "In Bad Society".

Korolenko began to study at the Zhytomyr gymnasium, and after the death of his father completed his secondary education at the Rivne gymnasium. In 1871 he entered the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, but due to financial difficulties he was forced to leave it and in 1874 go on a scholarship to the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy in Moscow.

FROM early years Korolenko joined the revolutionary populist movement. In 1876, for participating in populist student circles, he was expelled from the academy and exiled to Kronstadt under police supervision.

People are not angels, woven from one light, but not cattle, which should be driven into a stall.

Korolenko Vladimir Galaktionovich

In Kronstadt young man I had to earn my living by doing my own work. He was engaged in tutoring, was a proofreader in a printing house, tried a number of working professions.

At the beginning of 1879, the writer's first short story, From the Life of a Seeker, was published in the St. Petersburg magazine Slovo. But already in the spring of 1879, on suspicion of revolutionary activity Korolenko was again expelled from the institute and exiled to Glazov in the Vyatka province.

Man is created for happiness, like a bird for flight.

Korolenko Vladimir Galaktionovich

After refusing to sign a penitent, loyal petition to the new Tsar Alexander III in 1881, Korolenko was transferred into exile in Siberia (he was serving deadline references in Yakutia in the Amginskaya Sloboda).

However, the harsh living conditions did not break the will of the writer. The difficult six years of exile became a time of formation mature writer provided rich material for his future writings.

In 1885, Korolenko was allowed to settle in Nizhny Novgorod. The Nizhny Novgorod decade (1885–1895) is the period of the most fruitful work of Korolenko the writer, a surge of his talent, after which the reading public of the whole Russian Empire. In 1886, his first book, Essays and Stories, was published, which included the Siberian short stories of the writer.

The real triumph of Korolenko was the release in 1886-1887 of his the best works- "In Bad Society" (1885) and "The Blind Musician" (1886). In these stories Korolenko with profound knowledge human psychology takes a philosophical approach to solving the problem of the relationship between man and society.

The material for the writer was memories of childhood spent in Ukraine, enriched with philosophical and social implications a mature master who went through the difficult years of exile and repression. According to the writer, the fullness and harmony of life, happiness can be felt only by overcoming one's own egoism, taking the path of serving the people.

In the 90s, Korolenko traveled a lot. He visits various regions of the Russian Empire (Crimea, Caucasus). In 1893, the writer is present at world exhibition in Chicago (USA). The result of this trip was the philosophical and allegorical story "Without a language" (1895).

Korolenko is recognized not only in Russia, but also abroad. His works are published in foreign languages.

In 1895-1900 Korolenko lives in St. Petersburg. He edits the magazine "Russian wealth". During this period, the remarkable short stories "Marusina Zaimka" (1899), "Instant" (1900) were published.

In 1900, the writer moved to Ukraine, where he always wanted to return. He settled in Poltava, where he lived until his death.

AT last years life (1906–1921) Korolenko worked on a large autobiographical novel"History of my contemporary", which was supposed to summarize everything that he experienced, to systematize philosophical views writer. The novel was left unfinished.

The writer died while working on the fourth volume of his work. Died of pneumonia.

Korolenko's popularity was enormous, and the tsarist government was forced to reckon with his publicistic speeches. The writer drew public attention to the most pressing topical issues of our time.

He exposed the famine of 1891-1892 (series of essays “In the year of famine”), denounced the tsarist punishers who brutally cracked down on Ukrainian peasants fighting for their rights (“The Sorochinsky tragedy”, 1906), the reactionary policy of the tsarist government after the suppression of the 1905 revolution ( "Everyday phenomenon", 1910).

In 1911-1913, Korolenko actively opposed the reactionaries and chauvinists who fanned the falsified "Beilis case", he published more than ten articles in which he exposed the lies and falsifications of the Black Hundreds. This activity characterizes Korolenko as one of the outstanding humanists of his time.

In 1900, Korolenko was elected an honorary academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, but in 1902 he left it in protest against the exclusion of Maxim Gorky.

After the 1917 revolution, Korolenko openly condemned the methods by which the Bolsheviks carried out the construction of socialism. The position of Korolenko as a humanist, who condemned the atrocities of the civil war, who stood up to protect the individual from Bolshevik arbitrariness, is reflected in his Letters to Lunacharsky (1920) and Letters from Poltava (1921).

Before last day Korolenko fought for truth and justice. Contemporaries called Korolenko "the conscience of Russia."

He was married to Evdokia Semyonovna Ivanovskaya. Two children: Natalia and Sophia.

Major works
* History of my contemporary. 1906–1921
* In bad company. From childhood memories of my friend. 1885.
* Blind musician. 1886.

Other works
* Wonderful (essay from the 80s). 1880.
* Yashka. 1880.
* Killer. 1882.
* Makar's dream. 1883.
* Adjutant of His Excellency. Commentary on a recent event. 1884.
* Falconer. From stories about vagabonds. 1885.
* Fedor Homeless. 1886.
* The forest is noisy. Polish legend. 1886.
* The legend of Flora, Agrippa and Menahem, the son of Yehuda. 1886.
* Omollon. 1886.
* Symbol. 1886.
* Behind the icon. 1887.
* At the eclipse. Essay from nature. 1887.
* Prokhor and students. A story from student life in the 70s. 1887.
* At the factory. Two chapters from an unfinished story. 1887.
* Machine operators. 1887.
* At night. Feature article. 1888.
* Circassian. 1888.
* Birds of heaven. 1889.
* Judgment Day (Yom Kippur). Little Russian fairy tale. 1890.
* Shadows. Fantasy. 1890.
* In desert places. From a trip to Vetluga and Kerzhents. 1890.
* Talents. 1890.
* The river is playing. Sketches from the road album. 1891.
* Temptation. Page from the past. 1891.
* At-Davan. 1892.
* Paradox. Feature article. 1894.
* Without language. 1895.
* Factory of death. Sketch. 1896.
*On a cloudy day. Feature article. 1896.
* Artist Alymov. From stories about people you meet. 1896.
* Ring. From archives. 1896.
* Need. Eastern fairy tale. 1898.
* Stop, sun, and don't move, moon! 1898.
* Humble. rural landscape. 1899.
* Marusina Zaimka. Essay on life in the far side. 1899.
* The twentieth number. From an old notebook. 1899.
* Lights. 1900.
* The last beam. 1900.
* Instant. Feature article. 1900.
* Freezing. 1901.
* "Sovereign coachmen". 1901.
* Pugachev legend in the Urals. 1901.
* Gone! A story about an old friend. 1902.
* Sofron Ivanovich. From stories about people you meet. 1902.
* Not terrible. From a reporter's notes. 1903.
* Feudal lords. 1904.
* Fragment. Etude. 1904.
* In Crimea. 1907.
* Ours on the Danube. 1909.
* Legend of the Tsar and the Decembrist. A page from the history of liberation. 1911.
* Nirvana. From a trip to the ashes of the Danube Sich. 1913.
* On both sides. The story of my friend. 1914.
* Brothers Mendel. The story of my friend. 1915.

* In 1886, Korolenko's story "In Bad Society" was shortened without his participation and released "for children's reading titled "Children of the Underground". The writer himself was dissatisfied with this option.

Publication of works
* Collected works in 6 bindings. St. Petersburg, 1907–1912.
* complete collection works in 9 volumes. Petrograd, 1914.
* Collected works in 10 volumes. M., 1953–1956.
* Collected works in 5 volumes. M., 1960–1961.
* Collected works in 6 volumes. M., 1971.
* Collected works in 5 volumes. M., 1989–1991.
* History of my contemporary in 4 volumes. M., 1976.
* Russia would be alive. Unknown journalism 1917-1921 - M., 2002.

Screen versions of works
* Blind Musician (USSR, 1960, director Tatiana Lukashevich).
* Among the Gray Stones (USSR, 1983, directed by Kira Muratova).

The house-museum "Dacha Korolenko" is located in the village of Dzhankhot, 20 kilometers southeast of Gelendzhik. The main building was built in 1902 according to the drawings of the writer, and utility rooms and buildings were completed over several years. The writer lived in this residence in 1904, 1908, 1912 and 1915.

* In Nizhny Novgorod, on the basis of school No. 14, there is a museum that contains materials on the Nizhny Novgorod period of the writer's life.
* Museum in the city of Rovno on the site of the Rivne Men's Gymnasium.
* In the homeland of the writer, in the city of Zhytomyr, in 1973 his house-museum was opened.
* In the city of Poltava, there is the Museum-estate of V. G. Korolenko, in which he lived for the last 18 years of his life.

In 1977, the minor planet 3835 was named Korolenko.
In 1973, a monument was erected in the homeland of the writer in Zhytomyr (sculptor V. Vinaykin, architect N. Ivanchuk).

The name of Korolenko was given to the Poltava Pedagogical Institute, Kharkov State scientific library, the Chernihiv Regional Library, schools in Poltava and Zhytomyr, the Glazov State Pedagogical Institute.

In 1990, the Writers' Union of Ukraine established the Korolenko Literary Prize for the best Russian-language literary work in Ukraine.

Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko photo

Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko - quotes

Verse is the same music, only combined with the word, and it also needs a natural ear, a sense of harmony and rhythm.

People are not angels, woven from one light, but not cattle, which should be driven into a stall.

Man is created for happiness, like a bird for flight.

In the end, the duck still died, and we threw it on the road, and we ourselves drove on. - "Freezing"

Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko- Russian writer, public figure, publicist and journalist.

Was born July 15 (27), 1853 in Zhitomir. The writer's father was a stern county judge and collegiate assessor. His mother was from Poland, which is why the writer knew the Polish language from childhood. Elementary education Korolenko received at the Zhytomyr gymnasium, then the family moved to Rovno, where he entered the local school.

After the death of his father, Korolenko entered the Technological Institute in St. Petersburg, which he could not complete due to financial difficulties. In 1874 he transferred to the landowning academy in Moscow, where he studied on a scholarship. Due to the fact that the writer in his youth participated in the populist movements, he was expelled and exiled to Kronstadt. In 1877 he returned to St. Petersburg and entered the Mining Institute. It was around this time that his literary career began.

The first short story by V. G. Korolenko, “Episodes from the Life of a “Seeker””, appeared in 1879. In the spring of the same year, on suspicion of revolutionary activity, he was again expelled from educational institution and sent to Glazov. And when in 1881 he refused the oath to Alexander III, he was exiled to Siberia for several years. The most fruitful years for the writer were 1885-1895. The real triumph of Korolenko was the release of his best works - “The Dream of Makar” (1885), “In Bad Society” (1885) and “The Blind Musician” (1886). .

In the 1890s, Korolenko traveled a lot. He visits various parts of the Russian Empire (Crimea, Caucasus). In 1893, the writer is present at the World Exhibition in Chicago (USA). The result of this trip was the story "Without a language" (1895). Korolenko is recognized not only in Russia, but also abroad. His works are published in foreign languages.

Korolenko Vladimir Galaktionovich
Born: July 15 (27), 1853.
Died: December 25, 1921.

Biography

Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko (July 15 (27), 1853, Zhytomyr - December 25, 1921, Poltava) - Russian writer of Ukrainian-Polish origin, journalist, publicist, public figure, who deserved recognition for his human rights activities both during the years of tsarist power and during the Civil wars and Soviet power. For his critical views, Korolenko was subjected to repression by the tsarist government. A significant part of the writer's literary works is inspired by impressions of childhood spent in Ukraine and exile to Siberia.

Honorary Academician Imperial Academy Sciences in the category of fine literature (1900-1902, since 1918).

Childhood and youth

Korolenko was born in Zhytomyr in the family of a county judge. According to family tradition, the writer's grandfather Afanasy Yakovlevich came from a Cossack family, ascending to the Mirgorod Cossack colonel Ivan Korol: 5-6; grandfather's sister Ekaterina Korolenko - grandmother of academician Vernadsky. The writer's father, stern and withdrawn, and at the same time incorruptible and fair, Galaktion Afanasyevich Korolenko (1810-1868), who had the rank of collegiate assessor in 1858 and served as a Zhitomir district judge, had a huge influence on the formation of his son's worldview. Subsequently, the image of the father was captured by the writer in his famous story"In bad society." The writer's mother, Evelina Iosifovna, was Polish, and the Polish language was native to Vladimir in childhood.

At Korolenko was the elder brother Julian, the younger - Illarion and two younger sisters- Maria and Evelina. The third sister, Alexandra Galaktionovna Korolenko, died on May 7, 1867 at the age of 1 year and 10 months. Buried in Rivne.

Vladimir Korolenko began his studies at the Rykhlinsky Polish boarding school, then studied at the Zhytomyr gymnasium, and after his father was transferred to Rivne, he continued his secondary education at the Rivne real school, graduating after his father's death. In 1871 he entered the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, but due to financial difficulties he was forced to leave it and in 1874 go on a scholarship to the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy in Moscow.

Revolutionary activity and exile

From an early age, Korolenko joined the revolutionary populist movement. In 1876, for participating in populist student circles, he was expelled from the academy and exiled to Kronstadt under police supervision. In Kronstadt, a young man earned his living as a draftsman: 47-48.

At the end of his exile, Korolenko returned to St. Petersburg and in 1877 entered the Mining Institute. This period includes the beginning literary activity Korolenko. In July 1879, the first short story by the writer, Episodes from the Life of a Seeker, was published in the St. Petersburg magazine Slovo. This story Korolenko originally intended for the magazine " Domestic notes”, However, the first attempt at writing was unsuccessful - the editor of the journal M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin returned the manuscript to the young author with the words: “It would be nothing ... but green ... very green.” But back in the spring of 1879, on suspicion of revolutionary activity, Korolenko was again expelled from the institute and exiled to Glazov in the Vyatka province.

On June 3, 1879, together with his brother Hilarion, the writer, accompanied by gendarmes, was taken to this county town. The writer remained in Glazov until October, when, as a result of two complaints from Korolenko about the actions of the Vyatka administration, his punishment was toughened. On October 25, 1879, Korolenko was sent to the Biserovsky volost with the appointment of residence in Berezovsky repairs, where he stayed until the end of January 1880. From there, for unauthorized absence to the village of Afanasievskoye, the writer was sent first to the Vyatka prison, and then to the Vyshnevolotsk transit prison.

From Vyshny Volochyok sent to Siberia, but returned from the road. On August 9, 1880, together with another batch of exiles, he arrived in Tomsk for further travel to the east. Located at present st. Pushkin, 48.

“In Tomsk, we were placed in a transit prison, a large stone one-story building,” Korolenko later recalled. - But the next day, a governor's official came to the prison with a message that the supreme commission of Loris-Melikov, having considered our cases, decided to release several people, and to announce to six that they were returning to the borders. European Russia under police supervision. I was among them ... "From September 1880 to August 1881 he lived in Perm as a political exile, served as a timekeeper and clerk at railway. He gave private lessons to Perm students, including the daughter of a local photographer, Maria Moritsovna Geinrikh, who later became the wife of D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak.

In March 1881, Korolenko renounced his individual oath to the new Tsar Alexander III and on August 11, 1881 was exiled from Perm to Siberia. He arrived in Tomsk for the second time, accompanied by two gendarmes on September 4, 1881, and was taken to the so-called prison castle, or, as the prisoners called it, the "Containing" prison (now rebuilt 9 building TPU on Arkady Ivanov Street, 4).

He served his term of exile in Siberia in Yakutia in the Amginskaya Sloboda. The harsh living conditions did not break the will of the writer. The difficult six years of exile became the time of the formation of a mature writer, they provided rich material for his future writings.

Literary career

In 1885, Korolenko was allowed to settle in Nizhny Novgorod. The Nizhny Novgorod decade (1885-1895) was the period of the most fruitful work of the writer Korolenko, a surge of his talent, after which the reading public of the entire Russian Empire started talking about him.

In January 1886, in Nizhny Novgorod, Vladimir Galaktionovich married Evdokia Semyonovna Ivanovskaya, whom he had known for a long time; he will live with her for the rest of his life.

In 1886, his first book, Essays and Stories, was published, which included the Siberian short stories of the writer. In the same years, Korolenko published his "Pavlovsk Essays", which were the result of repeated visits to the village of Pavlova in the Gorbatovsky district. Nizhny Novgorod province. The work describes the plight of the metalworkers of the village, crushed by poverty.

The real triumph of Korolenko was the release of his best works - “The Dream of Makar” (1885), “In Bad Society” (1885) and “The Blind Musician” (1886). In them, Korolenko, with a deep knowledge of human psychology, takes a philosophical approach to resolving the problem of the relationship between man and society. The material for the writer was memories of childhood spent in Ukraine, enriched with observations, philosophical and social conclusions of a mature master who hard years exile and repression. According to the writer, the fullness and harmony of life, happiness can be felt only by overcoming one's own egoism, taking the path of serving the people.

In the 1890s, Korolenko traveled a lot. He visits various parts of the Russian Empire (Crimea, Caucasus). In 1893, the writer is present at the World Exhibition in Chicago (USA). The result of this trip was the story "Without a language" (1895). Korolenko is recognized not only in Russia, but also abroad. His works are published in foreign languages.

In 1895-1900 Korolenko lives in St. Petersburg. He edits the magazine "Russian wealth". During this period, the short stories "Marusina Zaimka" (1899), "Instant" (1900) were published.

In 1900, the writer settled in Poltava, where he lived until his death.

In 1905 he built a dacha on the Khatki farm, and until 1919 he spent every summer here with his family.

In the last years of his life (1906-1921) Korolenko worked on a large autobiographical work"The History of My Contemporary", which was supposed to summarize everything that he experienced, to systematize the philosophical views of the writer. The work was left unfinished. The writer died while working on his fourth volume from pneumonia.

He was buried in Poltava at the Old Cemetery. In connection with the closure of this necropolis on August 29, 1936, the grave of V. G. Korolenko was transferred to the territory of the Poltava City Garden (now it is the Pobeda Park). tombstone completed Soviet sculptor Nadezhda Krandievskaya.

Journalism and social activities

Korolenko's popularity was enormous, and the tsarist government was forced to reckon with his publicistic speeches. The writer drew public attention to the most acute, topical issues of our time. He exposed the famine of 1891-1892 (the series of essays “In the Year of the Hungry”), drew attention to the “Multan case”, denounced the tsarist punishers who cruelly cracked down on Ukrainian peasants fighting for their rights (“Sorochinsky tragedy”, 1906), reactionary politics the tsarist government after the suppression of the revolution of 1905 ("Everyday Phenomenon", 1910).

In his literary social activities drew attention to the oppressed position of the Jews in Russia, was their consistent and active defender. In 1911-1913, Korolenko spoke out against the reactionaries and chauvinists who fanned the falsified "Beilis case", he published more than ten articles in which he exposed the lies and falsifications of the Black Hundreds.

In 1900, Korolenko, along with Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Vladimir Solovyov and Pyotr Boborykin, was elected an honorary academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in the category of fine literature, but in 1902 he resigned the title of academician in protest against the expulsion of Maxim Gorky from the ranks of academicians. After the overthrow of the monarchy Russian Academy Sciences in 1918, she elected Korolenko an honorary academician again.

Relation to the revolution and civil war

In 1917, A. V. Lunacharsky said that Korolenko was suitable for the post of the first president of the Russian Republic. After October revolution Korolenko openly condemned the methods by which the Bolsheviks carried out the construction of socialism. The position of Korolenko, a humanist who condemned the atrocities of the civil war, who stood up to protect the individual from Bolshevik arbitrariness, is reflected in his Letters to Lunacharsky (1920) and Letters from Poltava (1921).

Korolenko and Lenin

V. I. Lenin first mentioned Korolenko in his work “The Development of Capitalism in Russia” (1899). Lenin wrote: "The preservation of the mass of small establishments and small proprietors, the preservation of ties with the land and the extremely wide development of work at home - all this leads to the fact that quite a few" handicraftsmen "in the manufacture gravitate towards the peasantry, towards turning into a small proprietor, to the past, and not to the future, they still deceive themselves with all sorts of illusions about the possibility (through extreme strain of work, through frugality and resourcefulness) to become an independent master”; “for individual heroes of amateur performance (like Duzhkin in Korolenko’s Pavlovsk Essays), such a transformation into a manufacturing period is still possible, but, of course, not for the mass of poor detailed workers.” Lenin, thus, recognized the truthfulness of one of the artistic images Korolenko.

Lenin mentioned Korolenko for the second time in 1907. Since 1906, articles and notes by Korolenko about the torture of Ukrainian peasants in Sorochintsy by the real state councilor Filonov began to appear in the press. Soon after the publication in the newspaper "Poltavshchina" open letter Korolenko with Filonov's revelations, Filonov was killed. Korolenko was persecuted for "incitement to murder." March 12, 1907 in State Duma the monarchist V. Shulgin called Korolenko a "killer writer." In April of the same year, Aleksinsky, a representative of the Social Democrats, was to speak in the Duma. For this speech, Lenin wrote "Draft Speech on the Agrarian Question in the Second State Duma." Mentioning in it a collection of statistical materials from the department of agriculture, processed by a certain S. A. Korolenko, Lenin warned against confusing this person with the famous namesake, whose name had recently been mentioned at a meeting of the Duma. Lenin noted: “Mr. S. A. Korolenko processed this information - do not confuse it with V. G. Korolenko; not a progressive writer, but a reactionary official, that's who this Mr. S. A. Korolenko is.”

There is an opinion that the pseudonym "Lenin" was chosen under the impression of the Siberian stories of V. G. Korolenko. Researcher P. I. Negretov writes about this with reference to the memoirs of D. I. Ulyanov:271.

In 1919 Lenin, in a letter to Maxim Gorky, sharply criticized Korolenko's journalistic work on the war:271. Lenin wrote:

It is wrong to confuse the "intellectual forces" of the people with the "forces" of the bourgeois intellectuals. I will take Korolenko as a model: I recently read his pamphlet War, Fatherland and Mankind, written in August 1917. After all, Korolenko is the best of the "near-Cadet" ones, almost a Menshevik. And what a vile, vile, vile defense of the imperialist war, covered up with sugary phrases! Pitiful tradesman, captivated by bourgeois prejudices! For such gentlemen, 10,000,000 killed in the imperialist war is a cause worthy of support (acts, with sugary phrases "against" the war), and the death of hundreds of thousands in a just civil war against the landowners and capitalists, it provokes gasps, groans, sighs, hysterics. No. It’s not a sin for such “talents” to spend weeks in prison if this must be done to prevent conspiracies (like Krasnaya Gorka) and the death of tens of thousands ... In 1920, Korolenko wrote six letters to Lunacharsky, in which he criticized the extrajudicial powers of the Cheka to impose death sentences, called for abandoning the idealistic policy of war communism, which destroys National economy, and restore natural economic relations. According to reports, the initiative for Lunacharsky's contact with Korolenko came from Lenin. According to the memoirs of V. D. Bonch-Bruevich, Lenin hoped that Lunacharsky would be able to change Korolenko’s negative attitude towards the Soviet system. Having met Korolenko in Poltava, Lunacharsky suggested that he write letters to him outlining his views on what was happening; at the same time, Lunacharsky inadvertently promised to publish these letters along with his answers. However, Lunacharsky did not answer the letters. Korolenko sent copies of the letters abroad, and in 1922 they were published in Paris. This edition soon appeared with Lenin. The fact that Lenin read Korolenko's letters to Lunacharsky was reported on September 24, 1922 in Pravda: 272-274.

A family

He was married to Evdokia Semyonovna Ivanovskaya, a revolutionary populist.
Two children: Natalia and Sophia. (Two more died in infancy.)
The wife's sisters P. S. Ivanovskaya, A. S. Ivanovskaya and the wife's brother V. S. Ivanovsky were populist revolutionaries.

Ratings

Contemporaries highly valued Korolenko not only as a writer, but also as a person and as public figure. The usually restrained I. Bunin said about him: “You rejoice that he lives and is well among us, like some kind of titan who cannot be touched by all those negative phenomena that our current literature and life are so rich in. When L. N. Tolstoy lived, I personally was not afraid for everything that was going on in Russian literature. Now I, too, am not afraid of anyone or anything: after all, the beautiful, immaculate Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko is alive. A. Lunacharsky after February Revolution expressed the opinion that it was Korolenko who should have become president Russian republic. M. Gorky Korolenko evoked a feeling of "unshakable trust." Gorky wrote: “I was friends with many writers, but not one of them could inspire me with the feeling of respect that V[ladimir] G[alaktionovich] inspired from my first meeting with him. He was my teacher for a short time, but he was, and that is my pride to this day.” A. Chekhov spoke of Korolenko as follows: “I am ready to swear that Korolenko is very good man. Going not only next to, but even behind this guy is fun.”