Background

Mikhail Saltykov was born on 27 January 1826, in the village of Spas-Ugol, Tver Governorate. He was one of eight children (five brothers, three sisters) in the large family (with Tatar ancestry) of Yevgraf Vasilievich Saltykov, a member of the ancient Saltykov family, and Olga Mikhaylovna Zabelina, heir to a rich merchant family. At the time of Mikhail's birth, Yevgraf was fifty years old, and Olga 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.

Education

Mikhail's early education was desultory, but, being an extraordinarily perceptive boy, by the age of six he spoke French and German fluently. After attending the Noblemen's Institute in Moscow (1836 - 1838) and the Imperial Lyceum at Tsarskoe Selo (1838 - 1844), he entered the civil service, working in the Ministry of War.

Career

His first published work was poetry ("The Lyre, " 1841; eight more poems, 1844-1845), followed by stories: "Contradictions" (1847) and "A Tangled Affair" (1848). The latter story openly attacked social injustices; its publication led to Saltykov's arrest and transferral to Vyatka. However, he remained in the civil service there, and composed his Provincial Sketches, humorous "exposures" of landowners and officials. These were published after his return to St. Petersburg in 1856. From 1862 to 1864 Saltykov served as an editor of the important literary magazine the Contemporary and as a collaborator on its more radical supplement, The Whistle. He attacked not only the government but also other magazines. In 1868, with the poet N. A. Nekrassov, Saltykov took over the magazine Fatherland Notes. After Nekrassov's death in 1878 Saltykov served as the magazine's editor in chief until its suppression in 1884. Seriously ill from 1875 on, Saltykov died in St. Petersburg on April 28, 1889.

Achievements

• Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin is regarded to be the most prominent satirist in the history of the Russian literature. Saltykov-Shchedrin has been lavishly praised by Marxist critics as "the true revolutionary".

Works

More photos

• book

  • Premudryy piskar

    (V knigu voshli proizvedeniia: "Premudryi piskar", "Samoot...)

  • Sobranie sochinenij Biblioteka Rossijskoj Akademii Nauk

    (V razdele pervom nastojashhego toma chitateljam vpervye s...)

  • Tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin

    ( Tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin, featuring his best work: '...)

  • The Golovlyov Family (New York Review Books Classics)

    (Searingly hot in the summer, bitterly cold in the winter,...)

  • Pompadours: A Satire on the Art of Government (English and Russian Edition)

    (Book by Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin)

  • Skazki

    (Russian Book. Publisher: Argumenty nedeli. Pages: 368. Ye...)

  • Skazki.Saltykov-Shchedrin

    (Russian Book. Publisher: Detskaia literatura. Pages: 218....)

Views

Quotations: "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. "

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• Vladimir Korolenko 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. "

Connections

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 risen sharply.

Father:

Yevgraf Vasilievich Saltykov

Mother:

Olga Mikhaylovna Zabelina

Spouse:

Elizaveta Boltina

References

• Gospoda Golovlevy
• Saltykov-Shchedrin (Zhizn? zamechatel?nykh li?u?dei?. Serii?a? biografii?) (Russian Edition)