Sergey Arkadievich Andreyevsky was a leading defense attorney of Imperial Russia. He was also known as a writer, poet, and literary critic.
Background
Sergey Arkadievich Andreyevsky was born on December 29, 1847 in the Alexandrovka village, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire (now Alexandrovsk, Luhansk Oblast, Ukraine), in the noble Russian family. His father was Arkadij Stepanovich Andreevsky, a prosecutor of Tifliss Governorate (territory of Georgia nowadays) and a State Councillor. His brother, Pavel Arkadevich Andreevsky was a Russian journalist who also wrote feuilletons. He had a twin brother Michail.
Education
After graduating from a gymnasium with a gold medal, Sergey Arkadievic enrolled in the law faculty of Kharkov University. While still a student he became friends with future famous lawyer Anatoly Koni, the man who became his mentor and guide for years to come.
Career
After graduation Sergey Arkadievich worked as Koni's personal assistant (in 1869-1870), then with his help moved to Saint Petersburg to start a career in a court office. In 1878 he achieved notoriety as one of the two prosecutors who refused to take part in the trial of Vera Zasulich, seeing it as politically motivated. Zasulich was acquitted and the Russian right-wing press started a smear campaign against Andreyevsky and his colleague Zhukovsky; as a result both lost their jobs as prosecutors.
Sergey Arkadievich started a new career as a defense attourney and became known for his rhetorical skills. His The Speeches of the Defense (1891) became a text book for Russian lawyers.
Sergey Arkadievich became interested in poetry in his thirties, starting with translations from French which he published, along with his own verse, in Severny Vestnik. His first book came out in 1885. In the late 1880s he abandoned poetry and became a literary critic; his essays and literary portraits were few and far between but gained much acclaim. His treatise "The Karamazov Brothers" (1888), later came to be regarded as the first serious study of Dostoyevsky in Russia. Andreyevsky's keen interest in early 19th-century Russian poetry led to a re-emergence from oblivion of several forgotten poets, notably Yevgeny Baratynsky.
Sergey Arkadievich died in 1918 in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg), of pneumonia.