Vasily Vasilievich Brusyanin was a Russian fiction writer and journalist. His early works were mainly biographical essays about people of art, but later he turned to social topics, describing the life of the peasantry, inferior military ranks, and petty officials.
Background
Vasily Vasilievich Brusyanin was born on September 1 (13), 1867 in the town of Bugulma, Samara province (modern Samara region, Russian Federation). He came from a bankrupt merchant family. The early years Vasily spent in Ufa with his grandfather.
Education
Vasily Vasilievich got his education at the Ufa district school. Later, he entered the Geodetic school but did not complete his studies.
Career
The first works of Brusyanin were published in 1887-1888 in the newspaper Ufa Provincial Newspaper and Volga region newspapers. In 1890 Vasily Vasilievich was entitled to shorter military service in the 160th Abkhaz regiment. After demobilization, he returned to Ufa, where he began to give private lessons and worked in the field of geodesy. In Ufa, Vasily met P. Dobrotvorsky and A. Fedorov, who spoke warmly about his literary works.
In 1891, Vasily Vasilievich moved to Saint Petersburg, where he met A. Porokhovschikov, who was editor and publisher of the newspaper Russian Life. In 1896 he published the story Doctor in the magazine Motherland. Since 1897, he worked closely with the magazines of legal Marxists New Word and Life, publishing there his stories and essays about the modern village. In 1899, Vasily Vasilievich published the book Poets and Peasants Surikov and Drozhzhin, consisting of his biographical essays on authors, as well as the selection of their poems. In the same year, Brusyanin left to work as a geodesist in the Volyn province (modern Ukraine).
In 1901, Vasily Vasilievich returned to Saint Petersburg. In 1904-1906 he edited the Russian Newspaper, and also published there his articles on the workers' and peasants' issue and on public education. In 1905 he became one of the founders of the Menshevik Moscow newspaper. In 1906 became the official editor of the Bolshevik newspaper Russian tocsin (it replaced the temporarily banned Russian Word). In the same year, Vasily Vasilievich published the journalistic book The Fate of the First Deputies, in which he spoke about the persecution of left-wing politicians.
Due to criminal prosecution in 1908, Vasily Vasilievich was forced to leave for Finland. Since 1910, he led the Journal Review column in the Tula Rumor newspaper. Also during his exile, Vasily was the biographer of L. Andreev. In 1913 he returned to Saint Petersburg. Since 1916, Vasily Vasilievich was the secretary of Andreev, and also worked for the editorial office of the Russian Will newspaper thanks to the patronage of Andreev. Since 1918, Vasily Vasilievich served as inspector of the Food Audit Commission in Petrograd (modern Saint Petersburg).
Politics
Vasily Vasilievich adhered to leftist political views. Nothing is known about his party affiliation, but he worked closely with Bolshevik and Menshevik newspapers and magazines, and also condemned the persecution of left-wing deputies.
Views
In his works, Vasily Vasilievich protested against the idealization of the peasantry and the rural community. He also believed that the existence of the bourgeois order contributed to the class inequality development, destroyed the old patriarchal-kinship ties, and sharpened social contrasts.
Vasily Vasilievich also condemned individual terror as a means of combating Caesarism.
He believed that the selfishness and spirituality of the creative intelligentsia were the reason for the loss of communication between them and the people.
Personality
Brusyanin's literary works were created in the spirit of critical realism. According to critics, his essays on the life of the working class and the reform of Russian villages embarking on the path of capitalist development are the most valuable.
Critics contemporary to the author were reserved in his works but noted the realism of the narrative. In the author’s later works, the influence of L. Andreev was felt: Brusyanin’s prose became more dramatic, he began to focus on the individual psychology of the heroes, correlating their problems with the problems of humanity. Right before the October revolution, Vasily's favorite literary hero changed: now it was intellectual refining himself through personal drama — this approach is somewhat reminiscent of Dostoevsky’s ideas, who believed that a soul may be purified through suffering.