Background
Artsybashev, Mikhail was born in 1878 in Kharkov, Ukraine.
Artsybashev, Mikhail was born in 1878 in Kharkov, Ukraine.
His first short story, Pasha Tumanov, was published in 1901. Like many other works of the realistic school, his writings show Russian life frankly and even brutally.
After the failure of the Revolution of 1905, Artsybashev's works became extremely pessimistic and cynical.
In 1907 he published his first substantial novel, Sanin, which gained him a national reputation. Although deep and vividly colored, it degenerates into a quite naked exhibit of a society in dissolution, a morbidly exaggerated picture of crime and sexual folly.
Among Artsybashev's important novels and plays are Rabotchi Shevyrev ("Worker Shevyrev"), Poslednei Tcherty ("At the Extreme Limit"), Revnost ("Jealousy"), and Voyna ("War").
First appeared in print at the age of 23. His sexually explicit novel Sanin made him a fashionable best selling writer before World War I. At the time considered very immoral. Criticized the revolutionary zeal of the Russian intelligentsia in his work U Poslednei Cherty.
Emigrated in 1917.
For having attempted to discredit revolutionary ardor by acknowledging revolutionary frustration in some of his writings, Artsybashev was expelled from Russia in 1923 by the Soviet government. His novels, in many instances, were confiscated as immoral.