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. Moreover, his "Provincial Essays", far from being 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 Garshin has it), 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.
(pseudonym - N. Shchedrin)
(1826-1889) Russian writer
Saltykov-Shchedrin (as his name is usually written in our time) became the first Russian writer, whose works were read in the same way as the most current newspaper reports.
Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin belonged to an old noble family, and by his mother - to a no less ancient merchant family. He was a distant relative of the famous historian I. Zabelin. Mikhail's childhood years were spent in a secluded corner of the Russian province, known as Poshekhonye. There was a family estate of his father.
In the family, the mother was the main person: she not only ran the household, but also engaged in all commercial activities.
The first ten years of Mikhail's life were spent at home. Guest teachers studied with him, and by the age of six, the future writer spoke fluent German and French, knew how to read and write. Only in 1836, Mikhail arrived in Moscow and entered the Nobility Institute. After studying there for a year and a half, he transferred to one of the most prestigious educational institutions of that time - the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum.
Already in the first year of study, Saltykov's literary abilities appeared. During all six years of his stay at the Lyceum, he was declared "Pushkin's successor", that is, the first student in Russian literature. But he did not go further than student reviews, and for all the years of study he never began to write.
In 1844, Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov completed his course of study and entered the service of the Military Ministry. The service immediately became an unpleasant duty for him. Literature is his main passion. He attends well-known meetings of writers in St. Petersburg in the house of N. M. Yazykov. Apparently, there Saltykov met Vissarion Belinsky, under whose influence he begins to collaborate in the journals Otechestvennye Zapiski and Sovremennik. Soon he becomes a regular reviewer of these magazines and regularly publishes articles in them about various book novelties.
At the end of the forties, the publicist adjoins the circle of M. Petrashevsky, well-known in St. Petersburg. However, he is practically not interested in philosophical disputes. The main interest of Mikhail Saltykov is the life of Russia and the West. The young man was looking for a sphere for the active use of his abilities.
At the end of the forties, the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski published two of Saltykov's first stories - "A Tangled Case" and "Contradiction". The sharp observations on contemporary reality contained in them attracted the attention of the authorities. The writer was dismissed from the service and in the spring of 1848 he was seconded to the city of Vyatka. He spent eight years there.
Departure from St. Petersburg also played a positive role in his life. When the Petrashevsky Society was destroyed in 1849, Saltykov managed to avoid punishment, since he was absent from the city for more than a year.
While in Vyatka, Mikhail Saltykov went through all the steps of the then bureaucratic ladder: he was a copyist of papers, a police officer under the governor, and in the summer of 1850 he became an adviser to the provincial government. By the nature of his work, he traveled to a number of Russian provinces, checking various institutions. Almost constantly, he kept memoirs, which he later used as the basis for his works.
Only in 1856 did his term of exile end. Then Tsar Alexander II ascended the Russian throne. This year brought changes to Saltykov's personal life. He married the seventeen-year-old daughter of the governor, Elizaveta Boltina, and returned to St. Petersburg with her. However, at that time Saltykov had not yet decided to leave the service and devote himself entirely to literary work. Therefore, he again enters the service of the Ministry of the Interior. At the same time, the writer began publishing Provincial Essays.
At first, he brought them to the editors of Sovremennik, where the manuscript was read by N. Nekrasov and Ivan Turgenev. Despite an enthusiastic assessment, Nekrasov refused to publish Saltykov's essays in his journal, fearing censorship. Therefore, they were published in the Russky Vestnik magazine, signed by the pseudonym N. Shchedrin.
Since that time, all of Russia has started talking about Mikhail Saltykov. The essays caused a flood of reviews in various publications. But the articles of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov were dearest of all to Saltykov.
The success of the "Provincial Essays" inspired the writer, but he still could not leave the service. The reason was purely material: after reading the publication, the mother deprived Mikhail of any financial assistance.
The authorities were also wary of him. They found a plausible pretext to remove him from Petersburg. He was appointed vice-governor, first in Ryazan, and then in Tver. There Saltykov first got the opportunity to put his principles into practice. He ruthlessly dismissed bribe-takers and thieves from service, abolished corporal punishment and sentences that he considered unfair, and also initiated court cases against landowners who violated the laws. The result of Saltykov's activities were numerous complaints. He was fired for health reasons.
After leaving the service, Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov moved to St. Petersburg, where he tried to publish his own journal Russkaya Pravda. But soon he suffers a financial collapse, two years later he returns to the service and leaves the capital.
The new appointment of Saltykov, apparently, was also dictated by the desire to remove him from active publicistic activity. After the "Provincial Essays" he releases a new cycle - "Innocent Stories", as well as the play "The Death of Pazukhin". The last straw that overflowed the patience of the authorities was the cycle of satirical sketches "Pompadours and Pompadours", in which Saltykov caustically ridicules those who sought to hide their emptiness behind beautiful words.
He was transferred as head of the Treasury to Ryazan, six months later he was transferred to Tula, and less than a year later to Penza. Frequent relocations prevented him from concentrating on literary work. Nevertheless, Mikhail Saltykov did not stop sending satirical essays to St. Petersburg, which regularly appeared in the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski. Finally, in 1868, by decision of the chief of the gendarmes, Count Shuvalov, he was finally dismissed with the rank of real state councilor.
In December 1874, Saltykov's mother dies, and he receives a long-awaited inheritance, which allows him to settle down to live in St. Petersburg. There he becomes one of the main contributors to the journal Domestic Notes. After the death of Nekrasov in 1877, Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov became the executive editor of this publication. On its pages, he prints all his new works.
Over the next twenty years, Saltykov-Shchedrin created a kind of satirical encyclopedia of Russian life. Along with the series of essays "Letters about the provinces", "Signs of the times", "Letters to my aunt" and "Diary of a provincial in St. Petersburg", it also includes large-scale works, primarily "The History of a City". Saltykov created the first fantastic grotesque novel in Russian literature. The image of the city of Glupov became a household name and determined the whole direction of the subsequent development of Russian literature.
In the bowels of the essays, the idea of the novel "Lord Golovlev" gradually took shape. Shchedrin tells the terrible story of the death of an entire family. The image of Arina Petrovna is inspired by communication with his own mother. After all, he took his pseudonym to distinguish him from the cruel landowner, nicknamed Saltychikha. The protagonist of the novel, Porfiry Golovlev, nicknamed Judas, is very colorful. Shchedrin shows how greed is gradually destroying him, crowding out everything human.
The last decades of Mikhail Saltykov's life are spent in a constant struggle with a serious illness - tuberculosis. At the insistence of doctors, the writer repeatedly traveled to France, Switzerland and Italy for treatment. But even there he did not let go of the pen. Saltykov worked on the novel "Modern Idyll" and new essays on life in European countries.
After repeated warnings in the spring of 1884, the authorities closed the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski. But the writer did not reconcile himself to the fact that he was deprived of the main podium for speeches. He continues to be published in Russkiye Vedomosti, Vestnik Evropy and other publications. To lull the vigilance of the censors, the writer resumes work on a cycle of fairy tales. They were a kind of outcome of his life. The writer dressed them in a fable-parable form, but the attentive reader immediately understood who the author means by minnows, wolves, eagles-philanthropists.
Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov was an extremely vulnerable person. When a hail of negative reviews hit him in 1882, he wanted to stop writing. But the popularity of the writer and the friendly support of friends, including, for example, Ivan Turgenev, helped to overcome depression.
Shortly before his death, Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote in a letter to his son: "Most of all, love your native literature and prefer the title of a writer to anyone else."
Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin was born on January 27, 1826 in the village of Spas-Ugol, Tver province. The boy was born into an old noble family. Childhood years were spent in the father's family estate. Having received a good education at home, at the age of ten, Mikhail was accepted as a boarder at the Moscow Noble Institute, and in 1838 he was transferred to the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. Here, under the influence of the works of Belinsky, Herzen, Gogol, he begins to write poetry.
In 1844, after graduating from the Lyceum, Saltykov served as an official in the Office of the Military Ministry. “... Duty is everywhere, coercion is everywhere, boredom and lies are everywhere...”, he gave such a description of bureaucratic Petersburg.
The first stories of Mikhail Evgrafovich "Contradictions", "A Tangled Case" attracted the attention of the authorities, frightened by the French Revolution of 1848, with their acute social problems. After that, the writer was sent to Vyatka, where he lived for eight years.
In 1850, he was appointed to the post of adviser in the provincial government of the city. This made it possible for the writer to observe the bureaucratic world and peasant life.
Five years later, after the death of Nicholas I, Saltykov-Shchedrin returned to St. Petersburg and resumed his literary work. In the next two years, the writer created "Provincial Essays", for which the reading Russia called him Gogol's heir.
Further, until 1868, with a short break, Saltykov was in the public service in Ryazan, Tver, Penza, and Tula. The frequent change of duty stations is explained by conflicts with the heads of the provinces, over whom the writer "laughed" in grotesque pamphlets.
After a complaint from the Ryazan governor, Saltykov-Shchedrin was dismissed in 1868 with the rank of real councilor of state. Then he moved to St. Petersburg and accepted Nikolai Nekrasov's invitation to become co-editor of the Otechestvennye Zapiski magazine. Now the writer devotes himself entirely to literary activity.
In 1870, Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote The History of a City, the pinnacle of his satirical art. For the next five years, Mikhail Evgrafovich was treated abroad. In Paris he met with Turgenev, Flaubert, Zola. In the 1880s, Saltykov's satire reaches its climax: "Modern Idylls"; "Gentlemen Golovlevs"; "Poshekhon stories". In the last years of his life, the writer created his masterpieces: "Tales"; "Little nothings of life"; "Poshekhonskaya antiquity".
Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin died on May 10, 1889. According to the will, the writer was buried next to the grave of Ivan Turgenev at the Volkovskoye cemetery in St. Petersburg.
Bibliography of Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
Chronicles and novels
"Pompadours and Pompadourses" (1863-1873)
"Lord Golovlevs" (1875-1880)
"History of one city" (1869-1870)
"Poshekhonskaya antiquity" (1887-1889)
"The Refuge of Mon Repos" (1878-1879)
Fairy tales
"Wild Landowner" (1869)
"The Tale of How One Man Feeded Two Generals" (1869)
"Conscience Lost" (1869)
"Toy business little people" (1880)
"Poor Wolf" (1883)
"The wise scribbler" (1883)
"Selfless Hare" (1883)
"The Tale of the Zealous Chief" (1883)
Dried Vobla (1884)
"Virtue and Vice" (1884)
"Karas-Idealist" (1884)
"Bear in the Voivodeship" (1884)
"The Deceiver Newsboy and the Gullible Reader" (1884)
Eagle Patron (1884)
"The Unremembering Sheep" (1885)
"The Faithful Trezor" (1885)
"Fool" (1885)
"Sane Hare" (1885)
"Kissel" (1885)
"Konyaga" (1885)
"Liberal" (1885)
"Watching Eye" (1885)
"Bogatyr" (1886; banned, published only in 1922)
"Crow Petitioner" (1886)
"Idle Talk" (1886)
"Adventure with Kramolnikov" (1886)
"Christ Night"
"Christmas tale"
"Neighbours"
"Village Fire"
"Way-way"
stories
"Anniversary"
"Good soul"
"Spoiled Children"
"Neighbours"
"Chizhikovo Mountain" (1884)
Essay books
"In the hospital for the insane"
"Gentlemen of Tashkent" (1873)
"Lord Molchaliny"
"Provincial essays" (1856-1857)
"Diary of a provincial in St. Petersburg" (1872)
"Abroad" (1880-1881)
"Letters to my aunt"
"Innocent Stories"
"Pompadours and Pompadourses" (1863-1874)
"Satires in prose"
"Modern idyll" (1877-1883)
"Well-intentioned speeches" (1872-1876)
Comedy
"The Death of Pazukhin" (1857, banned; staged 1893)
"Shadows" (1862-65, unfinished, staged 1914)
The memory of Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
Named after Mikhail Saltykov:
streets in:
Volgograd
Kramatorsk
Krivoy Rog
Lipetsk
Novosibirsk
Orel
Penza
Ryazan
Taldome
Tver
Tomsk
Tyumen
Khabarovsk
Yaroslavl
street and lane in Kaluga
lane in Shakhty
State Public Library. Saltykov-Shchedrin (St. Petersburg)
Before the renaming, Saltykov-Shchedrin Street was in St. Petersburg
Memorial museums of Saltykov-Shchedrin exist in:
Kirov
Tver
Monuments to the writer are installed in:
Lebyazhye, a monument to Saltykov Shchedrin
the village of Lebyazhye, Leningrad Region
in the city of Tver on Tverskaya Square (opened on January 26, 1976 in connection with the celebration of the 150th anniversary of his birth). Depicted seated in a carved chair, leaning his hands on a cane. Sculptor O. K. Komov, architect N. A. Kovalchuk. Mikhail Saltykov was vice-governor of Tver from 1860 to 1862. The writer's impressions from Tver were reflected in "Satires in Prose" (1860-1862), "History of a City" (1870), "Lord Golovlyov" (1880) and other works.
the city of Taldom, Moscow Region ((opened on August 6, 2016 in connection with the celebration of the 190th anniversary of his birth). Depicted sitting in an armchair, in his right hand is a piece of paper with the quote “Do not get bogged down in the details of the present, but educate yourself in the ideals of the future "(from" Poshekhonskaya antiquity "). The chair is an exact copy of the real Saltykov chair, stored in the museum of the writer in the school of the village of Ermolino, Taldom district. The writer's homeland - the village of Spas-Ugol - is located on the territory of the Taldom municipal district, the center of which is the city of Taldom. Sculptor D. A. Stretovich, architect A. A. Airapetov.
Busts of the writer are installed in:
Ryazan. The opening ceremony took place on April 11, 2008, in connection with the 150th anniversary of the appointment of Mikhail Saltykov to the post of vice-governor in Ryazan. The bust was installed in a public garden next to the house, which is currently a branch of the Ryazan Regional Library, and previously served as the residence of the Ryazan Vice-Governor. The author of the monument is Ivan Cherapkin, Honored Artist of Russia, Professor of the Moscow State Academic Art Institute named after Surikov.
Kirov. The stone statue, the author of which was the Kirov artist Maxim Naumov, is located on the wall of the building of the former Vyatka provincial government (Dinamovskiy proezd, 4), where Mikhail Evgrafovich served as an official during his stay in Vyatka
Spas-Ugol village, Taldomsky district, Moscow region
The Saltykiada project, conceived and born in Vyatka, dedicated to the 190th anniversary of the birth of M.E. Saltykov Shchedrin, uniting literature and fine arts. It included: the procedure for open defense of graduation projects of students of the Department of Technology and Design of Vyatka State University, at which the solemn transfer of the statuette of the symbol of the All-Russian Prize M.E. museum. The M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin Prize was presented to Evgeny Grishkovets (September 14, 2015). Exhibition "M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. The Image of Time” where the project of a sculptural monument to the writer was presented. Exhibition of works by Maxim Naumov "Saltykiada" in the Kirov Regional Art Museum named after the Vasnetsov brothers (March - April 2016). In October 2016, within the framework of the Saltykov Readings, a presentation of the multi-information album "Saltykiada" was held.
At the exhibition “Saltykiada. The History of One Book”, which took place on March 16, 2017, presented 22 new graphic works of the cycle, as well as works from the collections of the Vyatka Art Museum.
Postage stamps dedicated to Mikhail Saltykov were issued in the USSR.
In the USSR and Russia, postal envelopes were issued, including those with special cancellation.
Saltykov-Shchedrin M.E. Biography.
Saltykov-Shchedrin, Mikhail Evgrafovich
(real name Saltykov, pseudonym - N. Shchedrin) (1826 - 1889)
Saltykov-Shchedrin M.E.
Biography
Russian writer, publicist. Saltykov-Shchedrin was born on January 27 (according to the old style - January 15), 1826 in the village of Spas-Ugol, Kalyazinsky district, Tver province. The father came from an old noble family. Mikhail Saltykov's childhood years were spent in his father's family estate. The first teachers were the serf painter Pavel and Mikhail's elder sister. At the age of 10, Satlykov was accepted as a boarder at the Moscow Noble Institute, where he spent two years. In 1838, as one of the most excellent students, he was transferred as a state-owned pupil to the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. In the lyceum he began to write poetry, but later he realized that he did not have a poetic gift and left poetry. In 1844 he graduated from the course at the Lyceum in the second category (with the rank of X class) and entered the service in the office of the Military Ministry. The first full-time position, assistant secretary, received only two years later.
The first story ("Contradictions") was published in 1847. On April 28, 1848, after the publication of the second story - "A Tangled Case", Saltykov was exiled to Vyatka for "... a harmful way of thinking and a pernicious desire to spread ideas that had already shaken the whole Western Europe..." On July 3, 1848, Saltykov was appointed a clerk under the Vyatka provincial government, in November - a senior official for special assignments under the Vyatka governor, then he was twice appointed to the post of governor of the governor's office, and from August 1850 he was appointed adviser to the provincial government. Lived in Vyatka for 8 years.
In November 1855, after the death of Nicholas I, Saltykov received the right to "live wherever he wanted" and returned to St. Petersburg. In February 1856 he was assigned to the Ministry of the Interior (he served until 1858), in June he was appointed an official for special assignments under the minister, and in August he was sent to the Tver and Vladimir provinces "to review the paperwork of the provincial militia committees" (was convened in 1855 on the occasion of the Eastern War ). In 1856 Saltykov-Shchedrin married 17-year-old E. Boltina, the daughter of the Vyatka vice-governor. In 1856, on behalf of the "court adviser N. Shchedrin", "Provincial essays" were published in the "Russian Bulletin". Since that time, N. Shchedrin became known to all reading Russia, who called him Gogol's heir. In 1857 "Provincial Essays" were published twice (the next editions came out in 1864 and 1882). In March 1858 Saltykov was appointed vice-governor of Ryazan, and in April 1860 he was transferred to the same post in Tver. He always tried to surround himself at his place of service with honest, young and educated people, dismissing bribe-takers and thieves. In February 1862 Saltykov-Shchedrin retired and moved to St. Petersburg. Having accepted the invitation Nekrasov N.A. , is a member of the editorial board of the Sovremennik magazine, but in 1864, as a result of intra-journal disagreements on the tactics of social struggle in the new conditions, he parted with Sovremennik, returning to public service. In November 1864, Saltykov-Shchedrin was appointed manager of the state chamber in Penza, in 1866 he was transferred to the same position in Tula, and in October 1867 - in Ryazan. The frequent change of duty stations is explained by conflicts with the heads of the provinces, over whom the writer "laughed" in grotesque pamphlets. In 1868, after a complaint from the Ryazan governor, Saltykov was dismissed with the rank of real councilor of state. Returning to St. Petersburg, in June 1868 Saltykov-Shchedrin accepted the invitation of N.A. Nekrasov to become co-editor of the Otechestvennye Zapiski magazine, where he worked until the magazine was banned in 1884. Saltykov-Shchedrin died on May 10 (April 28, according to the old style), 1889 in St. Petersburg, shortly before his death, starting work on a new work, Forgotten Words. He was buried on May 2 (according to the old style), according to his desire, at the Volkov cemetery, next to I.S. Turgenev.
Among the works of Saltykov-Shchedrin are novels, stories, fairy tales, pamphlets, essays, reviews, polemical notes, journalistic articles: "Contradictions" (1847: a story), "A Tangled Case" (1848; a story), "Provincial Essays" (1856- 1857), "Innocent Stories" (1857-1863; the collection was published in 1863, 1881, 1885), "Satires in Prose" (1859-1862; the collection was published in 1863, 1881, 1885), articles on peasant reform, "Testament my children" (1866; article), "Letters about the province" (1869), "Signs of the times" (1870; collection), "Letters from the province" (1870; collection), "History of a city" (1869-1870; edition 1 and 2 - in 1870, 3 - in 1883), "Modern Idylls" (1877-1883), "Pompadours and Pompadours" (1873; years of publication - 1873, 1877, 1882, 1886), "Lords of Tashkent" (1873; years of publication - 1873, 1881, 1885), "Diary of a provincial in St. Petersburg" (1873; years of publication - 1873, 1881, 1885), "Well-meaning speeches" (1876; years of publication - 1876, 1883), "In the environment of moderation and accuracy "(1878; years of publication - 1878, 1881, 1885)," Lord Golovlev "(1880; years of publication - 1880, 1883), "The Refuge of Mon Repos" (1882; years of publication - 1882, 1883), "All the Year Round" (1880; years of publication - 1880, 1883), "Abroad" (1881), "Letters to Auntie "(1882), "Modern idyll" (1885), "Unfinished conversations" (1885), "Poshekhon stories" (1883-1884), "Tales" (1882-1886; publication year - 1887), "Little things in life" ( 1886-1887), "Poshekhonskaya antiquity" (1887-1889; a separate edition - in 1890), translations of the works of Tocqueville, Vivien, Cheruel. Published in the magazines "Russian Herald", "Sovremennik", "Ateney", "Library for Reading", "Moscow Bulletin", "Time", "Domestic Notes", "Collection of Literary Fund", "Bulletin of Europe".
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Information sources:
"Russian Biographical Dictionary"
Project "Russia congratulates!" - www.prazdniki.ru
(Source: "Aphorisms from around the world. Encyclopedia of wisdom." www.foxdesign.ru)
. Academician. 2011 .
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Saltykov Shchedrin, Mikhail Evgrafovich (real name Saltykov, pseudonym N. Shchedrin) (1826 1889) Russian writer. Aphorisms, quotes Saltykov Shchedrin ME Biography. Literature is withdrawn from the laws of corruption. She alone does not recognize death. There are legions... Consolidated encyclopedia of aphorisms
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Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin (real name Saltykov, pseudonym Nikolai Shchedrin). Born January 15 (27), 1826 - died April 28 (May 10), 1889. Russian writer, journalist, editor of the Otechestvennye Zapiski magazine, Ryazan and Tver vice-governors.
Mikhail Saltykov was born into an old noble family, in the estate of his parents, the village of Spas-Ugol, Kalyazinsky district, Tver province. He was the sixth child of a hereditary nobleman and collegiate adviser Evgraf Vasilyevich Saltykov (1776-1851).
The writer's mother, Zabelina Olga Mikhailovna (1801-1874), was the daughter of the Moscow nobleman Mikhail Petrovich Zabelin (1765-1849) and Marfa Ivanovna (1770-1814). Although Saltykov-Shchedrin asked not to be confused with the personality of Nikanor Shabby, on behalf of whom the story is being told, in the footnote to The Poshekhonskaya Antiquity, Saltykov-Shchedrin asked that much of what is reported about Shabby is completely similar to the undoubted facts of the life of Saltykov-Shchedrin, which allows us to assume that the Poshekhonskaya Antiquity is partly autobiographical.
The first teacher of Saltykov-Shchedrin was the serf of his parents, the painter Pavel Sokolov; then the elder sister, the priest of the neighboring village, the governess and the student of the Moscow Theological Academy studied with him. Ten years old, he entered the Moscow Noble Institute, and two years later he was transferred, as one of the best students, to a state-owned pupil at the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. It was there that he began his career as a writer.
In 1844 he graduated from the lyceum in the second category (that is, with the rank of X class), 17 out of 22 students, because his behavior was certified as no more than “quite good”: to the usual school misconduct (rudeness, smoking, carelessness in clothes) he "writing poetry" of "disapproving" content was added. In the lyceum, under the influence of Pushkin's legends, fresh even then, each course had its own poet; in the thirteenth year, this role was played by Saltykov-Shchedrin. Several of his poems were placed in the "Library for Reading" in 1841 and 1842, when he was still a lyceum student; others, published in Sovremennik (edited by Pletnev) in 1844 and 1845, were also written by him while still in the Lyceum; all these poems are reprinted in Materials for the Biography of I. E. Saltykov, attached to the complete collection of his works.
Not a single one of Saltykov-Shchedrin's poems (partly translated, partly original) bears traces of talent; the later ones are even inferior in time to the earlier ones. Saltykov-Shchedrin soon realized that he had no vocation for poetry, stopped writing poetry and did not like being reminded of them. However, in these student exercises, one can feel a sincere mood, mostly sad, melancholy (at that time, Saltykov-Shchedrin was known to his acquaintances as a “gloomy lyceum student”).
In August 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. Literature already then occupied him much more than service: he not only read a lot, being especially fond of the French socialists (a brilliant picture of this hobby was drawn by him thirty years later in the fourth chapter of the collection Abroad), but also wrote - at first small bibliographic notes (in Otechestvennye Zapiski, 1847), then the novels Contradictions (ibid., November 1847) and A Tangled Case (March 1848).
Already in the bibliographic notes, despite the unimportance of the books about which they are written, one can see the author's way of thinking - his aversion to routine, to conventional morality, to serfdom; in some places there are also sparkles of mocking humor.
In the first story of Saltykov-Shchedrin, "Contradictions", which he never subsequently reprinted, sounds, stifled and muffled, the very theme on which the early novels of J. Sand were written: recognition of the rights of life and passion. The hero of the story, Nagibin, is a man, exhausted by greenhouse upbringing and defenseless against the influences of the environment, against the "little things of life." The fear of these trifles both then and later (for example, in "The Road" in "Provincial Essays") was apparently familiar to Saltykov-Shchedrin himself - but with him it was that fear that serves as a source of struggle, and not despondency. Thus, only one small corner of the author's inner life was reflected in Nagibin. Another protagonist of the novel - the “female fist”, Kroshina - resembles Anna Pavlovna Zatrapeznaya from Poshekhonskaya Antiquity, that is, it was probably inspired by Saltykov-Shchedrin's family memories.
Much larger is A Tangled Case (reprinted in Innocent Tales), which was heavily influenced by The Overcoat, perhaps Poor People, but contains some remarkable pages (for example, the image of a pyramid of human bodies that is dreamed of by Michulin). “Russia,” the hero of the story reflects, “is a vast, plentiful and rich state; yes, a person is stupid, he is starving to himself in a rich state. “Life is a lottery,” tells him the familiar look bequeathed to him by his father; “It is so,” answers some unfriendly voice, “but why is it a lottery, why shouldn’t it just be life?” A few months earlier, such reasoning would perhaps have gone unnoticed - but The Tangled Case appeared just when the February Revolution in France was reflected in Russia by the establishment of the so-called Buturlin Committee (named after its chairman D. P. Buturlin), endowed with special powers to curb the press.
As a punishment for freethinking, already on April 28, 1848, he was exiled to Vyatka and on July 3 he was appointed a clerical officer under the Vyatka provincial government. In November of the same year, he was appointed senior officer for special assignments under the Vyatka governor, then twice served as governor of the governor's office, and from August 1850 he was an adviser to the provincial government. Little information has been preserved about his service in Vyatka, but, judging by the note on the land unrest in Sloboda district, found after the death of Saltykov-Shchedrin in his papers and set out in detail in the “Materials” for his biography, he warmly took his duties to heart when they brought him into direct contact with the masses of the people and enabled him to be useful to them.
Saltykov-Shchedrin learned provincial life in its darkest sides, which at that time easily eluded the gaze, as well as possible, thanks to business trips and the consequences that were assigned to him - and a rich stock of observations made by him found their place in the "Provincial Essays". He dispersed the heavy boredom of mental loneliness with extracurricular activities: fragments of his translations from Tocqueville, Vivienne, Cheruel and notes written by him about the famous book of Beccaria have been preserved. For the Boltin sisters, daughters of the Vyatka vice-governor, of whom one (Elizaveta Apollonovna) became his wife in 1856, he compiled a Brief History of Russia.
In November 1855, he was finally allowed to leave Vyatka (from where, until then, he had only once gone to his village in Tver); in February 1856 he was assigned to the Ministry of the Interior, in June of the same year he was appointed an official for special assignments under the minister, and in August he was sent to the provinces of Tver and Vladimir to review the paperwork of the provincial militia committees (convened, on the occasion of the Eastern War, in 1855). In his papers, there was a draft note drawn up by him in the execution of this assignment. She certifies that the so-called noble provinces appeared before Saltykov-Shchedrin in no better shape than the non-noble, Vyatka; Abuses in the equipment of the militia were found to be numerous. Somewhat later, he compiled a note on the structure of the city and zemstvo police, imbued with the then little widespread idea of decentralization and very boldly emphasizing the shortcomings of the existing order.
Following the return of Saltykov-Shchedrin from exile, his literary activity resumed with great brilliance. The name of the court adviser Shchedrin, who signed the Gubernskie Ocherki, which appeared in Russkiy vestnik since 1856, immediately became one of the most beloved and popular.
Collected into one whole, "Provincial Essays" in 1857 withstood two editions (subsequently - many more). They laid the foundation for a whole literature, called "accusatory", but they themselves belonged to it only in part. The outer side of the world of slander, bribes, all sorts of abuses fills entirely only some of the essays; the psychology of bureaucratic life comes to the fore, such large figures as Porfiry Petrovich, as a “mischievous man”, the prototype of the “pompadours”, or “torn”, the prototype of the “Tashkent”, like Peregorensky, come forward, with whose indomitable snitching even administrative sovereignty must be considered.
