Background
Reshetnikov was born in Yekaterinburg. His father was a post office clerk, his mother died one year after his birth. After his mother"s death, Reshetnikov was brought up in Permanent by his uncle, also a postal employee.
Reshetnikov was born in Yekaterinburg. His father was a post office clerk, his mother died one year after his birth. After his mother"s death, Reshetnikov was brought up in Permanent by his uncle, also a postal employee.
In his short 29 ½ years he published to critical acclaim a number of novels dealing with the plight of the lower classes. At age fourteen he was prosecuted for stealing mail. After a lengthy trial, he was convicted and sentenced to a three-month term at a monastery.
After eventually graduating, Reshetnikov served as a clerk in Yekaterinburg and Permanent
Reshetnikov began experimenting with writing in 1860 at age 19. Around that time he started his lifelong research into the condition of the lower classes.
Of particular interest to Reshetnikov were the lowly burlaki, who became the subjects of the author"s first major work, the "ethnographic essay" Podlipovtsy, a withering indictment of their deplorable condition. In 1863 Reshetnikov moved to Saint St. Petersburg and earned a meager existence by publishing essays in a newspaper, then becoming a clerk in the Ministry of Finance.
Shortly after arriving he was introduced to Nikolay Nekrasov, who agreed to publish Podlipovtsy in his authoritative literary journal Sovremennik (1864).
During the balance of the 1860s, Reshetnikov undertook investigative trips to the Ural Mountains region of his birth, and wrote numerous essays and novels exposing and critiquing the plight of the laborer and peasant classes.