Career
But most of all I am sorry for himself. If he had stayed alive, he soon would have outshone Voltaire". Sushkov’s suicide notes, the report on his death by the Moscow police, and reactions by contemporaries, not only document the suicide in great detail, but give a rare close-up of a phenomenon that was seen as a highly significant ‘sign of the time’.
Sushkov is the author of the short epistolary novel The Russian Werther (published posthumously in 1801) in which the main character commits suicide.
However, unlike its German namesake, the Russian Werther is plagued by boredom.