Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin

Mikhail Saltykov was born on 27 January 1826 in the village of Spas-Ugol (modern-day Taldomsky District of the Moscow Oblast of Russia) as one of the eight children (five brothers and three sisters) in the large Russian noble family of Yevgraf Vasilievich Saltykov (1776–1851) and Olga Mikhaylovna Saltykova (née Zabelina; 1801–74). His father belonged to an ancient Saltykov noble house that originated as one of the branches of the Morozov boyar family. According to the Velvet Book, it was founded by Mikhail Ignatievich Morozov nicknamed Saltyk (from the Old Church Slavonic word "saltyk" meaning "one's own way/taste"), the son of Ignaty Mikhailovich Morozov and a great-grandson of the founder of the dynasty Ivan Semyonovich Moroz who lived during the 14–15th centuries. The Saltykov family also shared the Polish Sołtyk coat of arms. It gave birth to many important political figures throughout history, including the tsaritsa of Russia Praskovia Saltykova and her daughter, the Empress of Russia Anna Ioannovna. Saltykov's mother was an heir to a rich Moscow merchant of the 1st level guild Mikhail Petrovich Zabelin whose ancestors belonged to the so-called trading peasants and who was granted hereditary nobility for his handsome donation to the army needs in 1812; his wife Marfa Ivanovna Zabelina also came from wealthy Moscow merchants. At the time of Mikhail Saltykov's birth, Yevgraf was fifty years old, while Olga was twenty five. Mikhail spent his early years on his parents' large estate in Spasskoye on the border of the Tver and Yaroslavl governorates, in the Poshekhonye region. "In my childhood and teenage years I witnessed serfdom at its worst. It saturated all strata of social life, not just the landlords and the enslaved masses, degrading all classes, privileged or otherwise, with its atmosphere of a total lack of rights, when fraud and trickery were the order of the day, and there was an all-pervading fear of being crushed and destroyed at any moment," Education Mikhail's early education was desultory, but, being an extraordinarily perceptive boy, by the age of six he spoke French and German fluently. He was taught to read and write Russian by the serf painter Pavel Sokolov and a local clergyman, and became an avid reader, later citing the Gospel, which he read at the age of eight, as a major influence. While at the lyceum Saltykov started writing poetry and translated works from Lord Byron and Heinrich Heine. He was proclaimed an 'heir to Pushkin' – after the local tradition which demanded that each course should have one. His first poem, "The Lyre", a hymn to the great Russian poet, was published by Biblioteka Dlya Chteniya in 1841. Eight more of Saltykov's verses made their way into Sovremennik in 1844–45. At this time Saltykov became a follower of the Socialist ideas coming from France. "Brought up by Belinsky's articles, I naturally drifted towards the Westernizers' camp, but not to the major trend of it which was dominant in Russian literature at the time, promoting German philosophy, but to this tiny circle that felt instinctively drawn towards France - the country of Saint-Simon, Fourier... and, in particular, George Sand... Such sympathies only grew stronger after 1848," he later remembered. Saltykov befriended literary critic Valerian Maykov and economist and publicist Vladimir Milyutin, and became close to the Petrashevsky circle. "How easily we lived and what deep faith we had in the future, what single-mindedness and unity of hopes there was, giving us life!" he later remembered, calling Mikhail Petrashevsky "a dear, unforgettable friend and teacher." Literary career In 1847 Saltykov debuted with his first novella Contradictions (under the pseudonym M.Nepanov), the title referring to the piece's main motif: the contrast between one's noble ideals and the horrors of real life. It was followed by A Complicated Affair (1848), a social novella, reminiscent of Gogol, both in its plotlines and the natures of its characters, dealing with social injustice and the inability of an individual to cope with social issues. The novella was praised by Nikolai Dobrolyubov who wrote: "It is full of heartfelt sympathy for destitute men... awakening in one humane feelings and manly thoughts," and Nikolai Chernyshevsky, who referred to it as a book "that has created a stir and is of much interest to people of the new generation." It was the publication of Contradictions that caused Saltykov's banishment to Vyatka, - apparently the result of overreaction from the authorities in response to the French Revolution of 1848. On 26 April 1848, Tsar Nicholas I signed the order for the author's arrest and deportation. It helped that the local elite treated Saltykov with great warmth and sympathy; he was made a welcome guest in many respectable houses, including that of vice-governor Boltin whose daughter Elizaveta Apollonovna later became Saltykov's wife. In 1857 Sovremennik at last reacted: both Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky rather belatedly praised Saltykov, characteristically, imparting to his work what it's never had: "aiming at the undermining the Empire's foundations." Contrary to left radicals' attempt to draw Saltykov closer to their camp, "undermining the Empire's foundations" was not his aim at all and on his return to Saint Petersburg he was soon promoted to administrative posts of considerable importance. His belief was that "all honest men should help the government in defeating serfdom apologist still clinging to their rights." Huge literary success has never made him think of retiring from work in the government. Partly reasons for his return to the state service were practical. In 1856 Saltykov married Elizaveta Boltina, daughter of a Vyatka vice-governor and found, on the one hand, his mother's financial support curtailed, on the other, his own needs rose sharply. Up until 1858 Saltykov continued working in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Then after making a report on the condition of the Russian police, he was appointed deputy governor of Ryazan where later he received the nickname "the vice-Robespierre". Many of Saltykov's articles on agrarian reforms were also written in those three years, mostly in Moskovskye Vedomosty, where his major opponent was journalist Vladimir Rzhevsky. On the other front, Saltykov waged a war against the Dostoyevsky brothers’ Grazhdanin magazine. When Fyodor Dostoyevsky came out with the suggestion that with Dobrolyubov's death and Chernyshevsky's imprisonment the radical movement in Russia became lifeless and dogmatic, Saltykov labeled him and his fellow pochvenniks 'reactionaries'. Finally, the rift between him and Maxim Antonovich (supported by Grigory Eliseev) made Saltykov-Schedrin quit the journal. Otechestvennye Zapiski , 1872. On July 1, 1866, Sovremennik was closed. In the autumn Nekrasov approached the publisher Andrey Krayevsky and 'rented' Otechestvennye Zapiski. In September 1868 Saltykov joined the re-vamped team of the magazine as a head of the journalistic department. As in December 1874 Saltykov's health problems (triggered by severe cold he's caught at his mother's funeral) made him travel abroad for treatment, Nekrasov confessed in his April 1875 letter to Pavel Annenkov: "This journalism thing has always been tough for us and now it lies in tatters. Saltykov carried it all manly and bravely and we all tried our best to follow suit." The novel ended with the deadly "it" sweeping the whole thing away, "making the history stop" which was construed by many as a call for radical political change. The History of a Town caused much controversy. Alexey Suvorin accused the author of deliberately distorting Russian history and insulting the Russian people. "By showing how people live under the yoke of madness I was hoping to invoke in a reader not mirth but most bitter feelings... It is not the history of the state as a whole that I make fun of, but a certain state of things," Saltykov explained. He planned another piece called Forgotten Words (writing to Nikolai Mikhailovsky not long before his death: "There were, you know, words in Russian: honour, fatherland, humanity… They are worth of being reminded about") but never even started it. Mikhail Evgraphovich Saltykov-Schedrin died of stroke in Saint Petersburg and was interred in the Volkovo Cemetery, next to Turgenev, according to his last wish. == Legacy ==

Mikhail Bulgakov was among writers, influenced by Saltykov. Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin is regarded to be the most prominent satirist in the history of the Russian literature. According to critic and biographer Maria Goryachkina, he managed to compile "the satirical encyclopedia" of contemporary Russian life, targeting first serfdom with its degrading effect upon the society, then, after its abolition, - corruption, bureaucratic inefficiency, opportunistic tendencies in intelligentsia, greed and amorality of those at power, but also - apathy, meekness and social immobility of the common people of Russia. His satirical cycle Fables and the two major works, The History of a Town and The Golovlyov Family, are widely regarded as his masterpieces. read Haven in Mon Repos (1878–1879) and was unimpressed. "The last section, 'Warnings', is weak and the author in general seems to be not very strong on positivity," he wrote. among the Russian authors that Marx read, he particularly valued Pushkin, Gogol and Shchedrin. Some contemporaries (Nikolai Pisarev, Alexei Suvorin) dismissed Saltykov-Shchedrin as the one taken to 'laughing for laughter's sake'. Vladimir Korolenko disagreed; he regarded Shchedrin's laughter to be the essential part of Russian life. "Shchedrin, he's still laughing, people were saying, by way of reproach... Thankfully, yes, no matter how hard it was for him to do this, in the most morbid times of our recent history this laughter was heard… One had to have a great moral power to make others laugh, while suffering deeply (as he did) from all the grieves of those times," he argued. According to D.S.Mirsky, the greater part of Saltykov's work is a rather nondescript kind of satirical journalism, generally with little or no narrative structure, and intermediate in form between the classical "character" and the contemporary feuilleton. Greatly popular though it was in its own time, it has since lost much of its appeal simply because it satirizes social conditions that have long ceased to exist and much of it has become unintelligible without commentary. Saltykov's style of writing, according to D.S.Mirsky, was based on the bad journalistic style of the period, which originated largely with Osip Senkovsky, and which "today invariably produces an impression of painfully elaborate vulgarity." Many other critics (Goryachkina among them) disagreed, praising the author's lively, rich language and the way he mastered both stark realism (The Golovlyov Family, Old Times in Poshekhonye) and satirical grotesque merged with fantasy. Of the writer's stylistic peculiarities biographer Sergey Krivenko (of the Narodnik movement, the one which Saltykov has always been in opposition to) wrote: "It is difficult to assess his works using the established criteria. It's a mix of a variety of genres: poetry and documentary report, epics and satire, tragedy and comedy. In the process of reading it is impossible to decide what exactly it is, but the general impression is invariably strong, as of something very lively and harmonic. Ignoring the established formats, Saltykov was driven by two things: current stream of new ideas and those lofty ideals he's been aspiring to." Saltykov, according to Krivenko, occasionally repeated himself, but never denied this, explaining it by the need of always being engaged with 'hot' issues – "things which in the course of decades were in their own right repeating themselves with such damning monotony". "There are not many writers in Rus whose very name would give that much to one's mind and heart, and who'd leave such a vast literary heritage, rich and diverse both in essence and in form, written in a very special language which even in his lifetime became known as 'saltykovian'," wrote Krivenko in 1895. "Saltykov's gift was no lesser than that of Gogol, neither in originality nor in itspower," the biographer reckoned. Saltykov-Schedrin was a controversial figure and often found himself a target of sharp criticism, mainly for his alleged 'lack of patriotism' and negativism. He's never seen himself a promoter of the latter and often proclaimed his belief in the strength of a common man, seeing the latter as holder of principles of real democracy. In 1882, as he, feeling depressed by the critical response to his work, made rather a pessimistic assessment of his life in literature, Ivan Turgenev was quick to reassure him. "The writer who is most hated, is most loved, too. You'd have known none of this, had you remained M.E.Saltykov, a mere hereditary Russian aristocrat. But you are Saltykov-Schedrin, a writer who happened to draw a distinctive line in our literature: that's why you are either hated or loved, depending [on who reads you]. Such is the true 'outcome' of your life in literature, and you must be pleased with it." For all his insight and taste for detail, Saltykov was never keen on examining individual characters (even if he did create memorable ones). Admittedly, he was always more concerned with things general and typical, gauging social tendencies, collective urges and what he termed 'herd instincts in a modern man', often resorting to schemes and caricatures. In his later years Saltykov-Schedrin found himself to be a strong influence upon the radical youth of the time. In 1885–1886, Vladimir Lenin's brother Alexander and sister Anna were members of one of the numerous student's delegations that came home to visit the ailing Schedrin, latter referring to him as "the revolutionary youth's favourite writer". Saltykov-Shedrin was a personal favourite of Lenin himself, who often namechecked the writer's characters to prove his point – Iudushka, in particular, served well to label many of his adversaries: Russian old landlords and emerging capitalists, Tzarist government members and, notably, his own associate Trotzky. == Selected works ==

Novels • The History of a Town (История одного города, 1870) • Ubezhishche Monrepo (Убежище Монрепо, 1879, Mon Repos Haven), not translated. • The Golovlyov Family (Господа Головлёвы, 1880) • Sovremennaya idilliya (Современная идиллия, 1883, Modern Idyll), not translated. • Poshekhonskaya starina (Пошехонская старина, 1889, Old Years in Poshekhonye), not translated. Stories and sketches • Provincial Sketches (also: Tchinovnicks: Sketches Of Provincial Life, Губернские очерки, 1856) • The Pompadours (also: Pompadours and Pompadouresses and Messieurs et Mesdames Pompadours, Помпадуры и Помпадурши, 1863–1874) Other • ''Pazukhin's Death'' (Смерть Пазухина, 1857, play) • Fables (or Tales, Сказки для детей изрядного возраста, 1869–1886) • The Story of How a Muzhik Fed Two Generals (The How a Muzhik Fed Two Officials, Повесть о том, как один мужик двух генералов прокормил, 1869) English translations • The Golovlyov Family • The Gollovlev Family, Jarrold & Sons, 1910. • A Family of Noblemen (The Gentlemen Golovliov), Boni & Liveright, 1917. • The Golovlyov Family, Everyman's Library, J. M. Dent & Sons, 1934. • The Golovlovs, Signet Classics, The New American Library, 1961. • The Golovlyov Family, Penguin Classics, 1995. • The Golovlyov Family, The Overlook Press, 2013. • The History of a Town • The History of a Town, Willem A. Meeuws, Oxford, 1980. • The History of a Town, or, The Chronicle of Foolov, Ardis, 1982. • Fables • Fables by Shchedrin, Chatto and Windus, 1931. • Tales from M. Saltykov-Shchedrin, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1952. • '''''Pazukhin's Death''''' • The Death of Pazukhin: A Play in Four Acts, Brentano's, 1924. • ''Russian Comedy of the Nikolaian Era. Pazukhin's Death: A Comedy in Four Acts'', Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997. • Tchinovnicks: Sketches of Provincial Life (Selections from Gubernskie ocherki), 1861. • The Village Priest and Other Stories from the Russian of Militsina & Saltikov, T. Fisher Unwin, 1918. • The Pompadours: A Satire on the Art of Government, Ardis, 1982. • The Humour of Russia, London : W. Scott, 1895 • How the two Ivans quarrelled : and other Russian comic stories, Oneworld Classics, 2011. ==References==