Background
Korolenko, Vladimir was born on July 27, 1853 in Zhitomir. Son of a Ukrainian judge and a Polish gentlewoman.
Korolenko, Vladimir was born on July 27, 1853 in Zhitomir. Son of a Ukrainian judge and a Polish gentlewoman.
Educated at Rovno High School. Studied at the Petersburg Technical Institute, 1871, and the Petrovskaia Agricultural Academy in Moscow, 1874.
Expelled for organizing a student protest. Lived in Petersburg, and took up journalistic and revolutionary activity. Exiled to Northern Russia, the Urals and Iakutia, 1879-1881.
From 1885, lived in exile in
Nizhnii Novgorod. Became famous for his short stories about people he met in exile. His populist tendencies and high moral integrity made him known and influential among the intelligentsia.
His journey to the USA to the World Exhibition in 1893 gave him material for the description of the first mass emigration from Russia to America at the end of the 19th century. Defended the Udmurt peasants accused of ritual murder in Northern Russia (the Multan trial), 1895-1896. Resigned, with Chekhov, from the Russian Academy after Gorkii’s election to the Academy was annulled by the Tsar.
Investigated the circumstances of the Kishinev pogrom in 1903. Editor of the influential, populist, SR magazine, Russkoe Bogatstvo, 1904-1918 (with intervals). From 1902, lived mainly at Poltava in his native Ukraine.
Played a very active part in the defence of Beilis, who was accused of ritual murder, but was acquitted by the jury. Became known as an energetic defender of any victim of injustice. Wrote a monumental 3-vol. work, Istoriia Moego Sovremennika, describing his own life and development, 1905-1921.
After the October Revolution and during the Civil War, protested vigorously against acts of injustice and terror committed by all participants. Completely rejected communist claims of speaking in the name of the whole people, and was sharply rebuked by Lenin. His diary of the revolutionary years, giving a devastating and completely honest picture of the Ukraine in the grip of the Civil War under the different regimes including the communist one, has never been published in the Soviet Union.