Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeyevich (1799-1837), Russian poet and author, who founded the literature of his language with epic and lyric poems, plays, novels, and short stories.

Pushkin was born in Moscow. In 1817 he joined the ministry of foreign affairs in Saint Petersburg; there he became a member of an underground revolutionary group. In 1820 he was exiled to the Caucasus for his “Ode to Liberty”; nonetheless, Pushkin continued to hold official posts. That same year Pushkin published his long poem Ruslan and Ludmila, which earned him a reputation as one of Russia's most promising poetic talents. He soon followed with the poems, The Prisoner of the Caucasus (1822), The Fountain of Bakhchisarai (1822), and The Gypsies (1823-1824). He began his most famous work, Eugene Onegin, in 1823. The work has been described as the first of the great Russian novels (although in verse). He was dismissed from government service in 1824 and banished to his mother's estate. There he wrote (1824-1825) Boris Godunov. In 1826 Czar Nicholas I pardoned him. Pushkin's later work includes two long poems, Poltava (1828) and The Bronze Horseman (1833), and his novel The Captain's Daughter (1836).

Pushkin provided a literary heritage for Russians, whose native language had hitherto been considered unfit for literature. His lyric poetry and his simple, vivid prose were invaluable models for the writers who followed him.

Gogol, Nikolay Vasilyevich (1809-1852), Russian writer, whose plays, short stories, and novels rank among the great masterpieces of 19th-century Russian literature.

Gogol was born in Sorochintsy, Mirgorod, Poltava Province. In 1828 he went to Saint Petersburg, where he became known in literary circles. Enthusiastic praise greeted his volume of short stories Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka (1831). Another short story collection, Mirgorod (1835), contained “Taras Bulba,” which was expanded in 1842 into a full-length novel.

In 1836 Gogol's comedy of errors The Inspector General appeared. A rollicking satire on the cupidity and stupidity of bureaucratic officials, it is regarded as one of the most significant plays (see Drama and Dramatic Arts) in Russian literature.

From 1826 to 1848 Gogol lived mostly in Rome, where he worked on the novel that is considered his greatest creative effort and one of the finest novels in world literature, Dead Souls (1842), published in English under the alternative title Chichikov's Journey. Gogol is ranked with such literary giants as the novelists Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and the poet Aleksandr Pushkin.

Lermontov, Mikhail Yuryevich (1814-41), Russian poet and novelist, whose eloquent works combine lyric romanticism with a passionate espousal of liberty. He was born in Moscow and educated at Moscow State University and a military school in Saint Petersburg. He became an officer of the guards, but his real interest was poetry. In 1837 he first gained recognition when he addressed to the czar an impassioned elegy called “On the Death of a Poet” as a protest against the death of the Russian poet Aleksandr Pushkin. In the poem Lermontov charged that the czar was suppressing freedom and art. As a result, Lermontov was exiled to the Caucasus. After his return in 1838, he published a collection of poems and wrote his famous autobiographical novel, A Hero of Our Time (1840; trans. 1886). Among his other well-known works are the narrative poems The Demon (1829-41; trans. 1930) and The Circassian Boy (1840; trans. 1875). His writings were severely censored during his lifetime because of his passionate advocacy of freedom and his antireligious attitudes, but they did much to arouse interest in the folklore of the Russian people. In 1841 Lermontov was killed in a duel in the Caucasus.

Turgenev, Ivan Sergeyevich (1818-1883), Russian author, considered the foremost stylist in Russian literature. Turgenev was born in Orël in central Russia and educated at the universities of Saint Petersburg and Berlin. His first published work, the long poem Parasha (1843), was well received by literary critics, and the publication of several of his short stories established Turgenev as a significant Russian writer. He was involved in the controversy between two groups of intellectuals, the Westernizers and the Slavophiles. The Westernizers, with whom Turgenev sided, urged Russians to incorporate the best aspects of European culture into their lives, while the Slavophiles believed that native Russian customs should remain untainted by foreign influences. After 1871 Turgenev lived in Paris.

Turgenev wrote plays, stories, novels, and nonfiction sketches. His first book, A Sportsman's Sketches (1852), is a collection of stories of Russian peasant life. Of the many plays he wrote early in his career, the finest is probably A Month in the Country (1850), a gentle but penetrating study of aristocratic life. His longer novels include On the Eve (1860) and Smoke (1867). In his masterpiece, Fathers and Sons (1862), Turgenev names, defines, and analyzes the philosophy of nihilism.

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Mikhaylovich (1821-1881), Russian novelist, one of the greatest of all novelists, whose fiction has had profound influence on the modern intellectual climate. He was born in Moscow.

In his early works, Dostoyevsky explored the humiliations and consequent behavior of the underprivileged, but in 1849 his literary career was disastrously interrupted. He had joined a group of young intellectuals who read and debated French socialist theories forbidden to be openly discussed in czarist Russia. A police informer slipped into their secret meetings, and the entire group was arrested and taken to a place of execution, presumably to be shot. At the last minute they were reprieved, and the punishment was changed to penal exile. Dostoyevsky was sentenced to four years of hard labor in Siberia and to serve afterward as a common soldier. In The House of the Dead (1861-1862) Dostoyevsky described the sadistic beatings, the filthy conditions, and the total lack of privacy among the convicts. Released from prison in 1854, he was sent to a garrison town near Mongolia.

Later, in collaboration with his brother, Mikhayl, Dostoyevsky launched a monthly periodical called Time. When it was suppressed because of a supposedly subversive article, the brothers started The Epoch, another short-lived review, in 1864. The beginning of Dostoyevsky's philosophical novel Notes from the Underground (1864) was published in the first issue. In the monologue of the nameless narrator of Notes, Dostoyevsky presented, for the first time in the history of modern literature, the alienated antihero.

The following years, spent abroad to escape creditors after Dostoyevsky inherited his brother's debts, were marked by physical hardship and poverty but great productivity. He completed the novels Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868-1869), and The Possessed (1871-1872) and returned to Russia in 1873 a world-renowned writer. His last novel, The Brothers Karamazov (1879-1880), was completed not long before his death.

Dostoyevsky's later novels are endowed with symbolic worlds where heroes, pervaded by the tragic sense of life, search for truth and self-fulfillment. Dostoyevsky anticipated modern psychology by his exploration of hidden motives and intuitive understanding of the unconscious, manifested in his characters' irrational behavior, psychic suffering, dreams, and lapses into insanity. He also prepared the way for the subjective approach of much 20th-century literature and for existentialism and surrealism.

Tolstoy, Leo (1828-1910), Russian novelist, social and moral thinker, and one of the great writers of realistic fiction. Tolstoy, the son of a nobleman landowner, was born at Yasnaya Polyana, the family estate south of Moscow. He was orphaned at the age of 9 and was raised by relatives. At the age of 16, Tolstoy enrolled at Kazan’ University (now Kazan’ State University), but in 1847 he left without a degree.

In 1851 Tolstoy joined his brother, a soldier, in the Caucasus, and he eventually joined the army himself. His three autobiographical novels, Childhood (1852), Boyhood (1854), and Youth (1856), received instant acclaim, as did Sevastopol Stories (1855-1856), based on Tolstoy's participation in the Crimean War (1853-1856).

He went to Saint Petersburg, and in 1862 he married Sonya (Sofya) Andreyevna Bers. In the next 15 years he helped raise a large family, managed his estate, and wrote his two greatest novels, War and Peace (1865-1869) and Anna Karenina (1875-1877).

War and Peace is an epic of Russian society between 1805 and 1815, just before and after the Napoleonic invasion. It commemorates important military battles and portrays historical personalities, but its main theme is the chronicle of five aristocratic families. The work is a masterpiece of realism, whose general message is a zestful love of life in all its manifestations.

Anna Karenina has more artistic unity than War and Peace, but is also more pessimistic. Anna's adulterous passion for the young officer Vronsky is set against a background of Saint Petersburg society in the 1860s. Tolstoy shows deep compassion for his heroine, but ultimately she is condemned to suffering for breaking moral and social laws.

In Confession (1882), Tolstoy described his growing spiritual turmoil, criticized himself and his class for leading an empty existence, and started his long quest for moral and social certitudes. He found them in two principles of the Christian Gospels: love for all human beings and nonresistance to the forces of evil. He expanded upon his new radical faith in The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894) and other works.

Tolstoy's later works returned to imaginative fiction, inlcuding one of his best-known short stories, “The Death of Ivan Ilych.” At the age of 82, tormented by the disparity between his teachings and his personal wealth, Tolstoy left his home one night. He fell ill three days later and died at a remote railroad station.

Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich (1860-1904), Russian dramatist and short-story writer. He was born in Taganrog, Ukraine. The first collection of his humorous writings, Motley Stories, appeared in 1886, and his first play, Ivanov, was produced in Moscow the next year. Near the end of the century he met Constantin Stanislavski, director of the Moscow Art Theater, which in 1898 produced Chekhov's play The Sea Gull (1896). This association of playwright and director led to the production of several of Chekhov's one-act dramas and his other well-known plays, including Uncle Vanya (1899), The Three Sisters (1901), and The Cherry Orchard (1904).

Modern critics consider Chekhov one of the masters of the short story. He was largely responsible for the modern type of short story that emphasizes mood and symbolism rather than plot. His narratives are a thematic arrangement of impressions and ideas. His plays are studies of the spiritual failure of characters in an aristocratic society that is disintegrating. To portray these themes Chekhov developed a new dramatic technique, which he called “indirect action.” He concentrated on subtleties of characterization and interaction between characters rather than on plot and direct action. Some of his plays were originally rejected in Moscow, but his technique has become accepted by modern playwrights and audiences.

Gorkiy, Maksim (1868-1936), Soviet novelist, playwright, essayist, and founder of socialist realism. Gorkiy was born Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov in Nizhniy Novgorod. Self-educated and earning his own living from the age of nine, Gorkiy worked for many years at menial jobs and tramped over much of European Russia.

Gorkiy wrote stories and sketches frequently for publication in various newspapers. His collection Sketches and Stories (1898) was instantly successful, making him famous throughout Russia. He was the first Russian author to write knowledgeably and sympathetically about workers and such people as tramps and thieves, emphasizing their courageous fight against overwhelming odds. “Twenty-six Men and a Girl” (1899), a tale of sweatshop conditions in a bakery, is considered by many his finest short story.

Gorkiy supported the Russian Revolution of 1917 and was active in Soviet literary organizations. Compelled by illness to leave the country in 1922, Gorkiy spent six years in Sorrento, Italy. On his return to the Soviet Union he was received with official honors.

Gorkiy's best-known play is The Lower Depths (1902). The trilogy consisting of Childhood (1913), In the World (1915), and My Universities (1923) is considered a major artistic achievement. Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev (1920-1928) has been hailed as Gorkiy's masterpiece.

Bunin, Ivan Alekseyevich (1870-1953), Russian writer, the first Russian to be awarded the Nobel Prize in literature (1933). He was born in Voronezh and educated at the University of Moscow. He worked as a journalist and clerk to supplement a meager income. Bunin published his first volume of poetry in 1891. In 1903 he received the Pushkin Prize of the Russian Academy for his translations of American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and English poets Lord Byron and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, he made his home in Paris. Bunin's literary reputation rests mainly on his realistic tales, short stories, and novels, in which his principal theme is the bleakness of life in Russian provinces. He was considerably influenced by the works of Russian writers Anton Chekhov and Ivan Turgenev. His works include the short story “Gospodin iz San-Frantsisko” (1916; “The Gentleman from San Francisco,” 1922) and the novels Derevnya (1910; The Village, 1923) and Mitina lyubov (1925; Mitya's Love, 1926).

Blok, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich (1880-1921), Russian poet, the leader of Russian symbolism, a counterpart of the European literary movement (see Symbolist Movement) strongly influenced by the Eastern Orthodox faith. He was born in Saint Petersburg and educated at Petersburg University.

Blok's early cycle of mystical love poems Stikhi o prekrasnoy dame (Verses About the Lady Beautiful, 1904) equated divine wisdom with the feminine soul. Thereafter, as in Neznakomka (The Unknown Woman, 1906), his poetry took on a darker, pessimistic tone, but even his most melancholy works display his characteristic lilting musicality. In 1917 the Russian Revolution gave him new hope, and he turned against what he perceived as the sterile intellectuality of symbolism. Skify (1918; The Scythians, 1920), an ode alternately passionate and melancholy, expresses his faith in Russia's victory over the West. His last and most famous work, Dvenadtsat (1918; The Twelve, 1920), is a more ambiguous expression of this hope. In the last years of his life, however, he became disenchanted because of the Soviet requirement that authors express party views rather than individual feelings.

Akhmatova, Anna, pseudonym of Anna Andreyevna Gorenko (1888-1966), Russian lyric poet, considered one of the greatest poets in the history of Russian literature. With Osip Mandelstam she was a leader of the early 20th-century acmeist movement, which called for use of poetic language that would convey exact meanings with simplicity and clarity.

Akhmatova was born near Odesa, Ukraine, but spent most of her life in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Her first volumes of romantic lyrics, Vecher (Evening, 1912) and Chyotki (The Rosary, 1914), gained immediate popular and critical success. Later works, such as Anno domini MCMXXI (1922), introduced patriotic themes. Beginning in the early 1920s, publication of Akhmatova's work, with a few exceptions, was banned by the Soviet regime led by Joseph Stalin, who felt that her poetry did not sufficiently promote Communist policy (see Russian Literature: Socialist Realism). This ban was gradually lifted following Stalin's death in 1953. Rekviem (1963; Requiem, 1964) and Poema bez geroya (Poem Without a Hero, 1962), considered her masterpieces, chronicle not only her own sufferings but also those of all Russians during Stalin's reign.

Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich (1890-1960), Soviet poet and author, who was one of the foremost literary figures in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Pasternak was born in Moscow. His first collection of poems was The Twin in the Clouds (1914). It was followed by other collections, including Over the Barriers (1917), My Sister, Life (1922), and Second Birth (1932). Pasternak's only novel, Doctor Zhivago (completed in 1956), was rejected by Soviet publishers because of its critical approach to Soviet Communism, but it won international acclaim when it first appeared in the West in 1957. The novel presents a panoramic view of Russian society at the time of the 1917 Revolution. The protagonist, Dr. Zhivago, is an intellectual whose sincerity, religious convictions, and independence of spirit conflict with the theory and practice of the Soviet regime. Pasternak won and accepted the 1958 Nobel Prize in literature but was denounced by various Soviet Communist groups as a traitor. Announcing publicly his unwillingness to enter exile, he rejected the prize.

Bulgakov, Mikhail (1891-1940), Russian novelist and playwright, who gained international fame after the posthumous publication of his novel Master i Margarita (1966-1967; The Master and Margarita, 1967). Born in Kyyiv, Ukraine, Bulgakov was educated to be a physician but gave up medicine for writing. His early works are satirical stories, such as Dvavoliyada (1925; Diaboliad, 1972), and comedies, such as Zoyinka kvartira (1926; Zoe's Apartment, 1972). The long novel Belaya Gvardiya (1925; The White Guard, 1971) is set in Kyyiv during the Russian Revolution (1917) and was dramatized as Dni Turbinykh (1926; Days of the Turbins, 1934). Master i Margarita was written between 1929 and 1940 but was not published until 1966 to 1967.

Mayakovsky, Vladimir Vladimirovich (1893-1930), Russian poet and propagandist. His early political activity during the czarist period led to his imprisonment; he then began writing poetry. Mayakovsky became a leading spokesperson for the Russian Revolution. He employed techniques geared to mass appeal, including the use of vernacular, even vulgar, language and new poetic forms. Poems such as “Oda revolutsi” (Ode to Revolution, 1918) were as popular as his passionate and lyrical love poems, such as “Lyublyu” (I Love, 1922). During the 1920s Mayakovsky provided propaganda for the Soviet government in a variety of forms such as poems, posters, plays, screenplays, and satiric travel sketches. In his play The Bedbug (1929; trans. 1960), he satirized the philistinism of the times. Disappointed in love and disillusioned with life in the Soviet Union, Mayakovsky took his own life in 1930.

Yesenin, Sergey Aleksandrovich (1895-1925), Russian poet, whose poetry is distinguished by deep sincerity and an intense emotionalism. The son of a well-to-do peasant, Yesenin was born in Konstantinovo, Ryazan’ Oblast, Russia. He began to write verse at the age of 9 and graduated from a parochial school in his native village when he was 16. Yesenin obtained the rest of his education by his own efforts.

In 1912 Yesenin moved to Moscow, Russia, and soon came in contact with the underground Bolshevik organization (see Bolshevism). Two years later he relocated to Saint Petersburg, Russia, where he became acquainted with some of the Russian symbolist poets, including Nikolai Klyuev and Aleksandr Blok. Yesenin's first book of poetry was published in 1916. From 1919 to 1921 he led the literary group called the Imaginists, and in the early 1920s he made several trips to Western Europe and to the United States. For a short period he was married to American dancer Isadora Duncan. This marriage ended in divorce, and he later married a granddaughter of Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. In a fit of despair, Yesenin committed suicide in Saint Petersburg (then called Leningrad) in December 1925.

Some of Yesenin’s best-known works are the poetry collections Radunitsa (All Soul’s Day, 1916) and Moskva kabatskaya (Moscow of the Taverns, 1924), and the poem “Ispoved’ khuligana” (1921; “Confessions of a Hooligan,” 1973).

Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich (1899-1977), Russian-American novelist, poet, and critic, best known for his novel Lolita (1955). Nabokov was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Under the pseudonym of Vladimir Sirin, he began writing for the Russian émigré press in Berlin, Germany, where he lived from 1923 to 1937. In 1940 Nabokov moved to the United States and five years later became an American citizen. The publication of Lolita in Paris made him a major literary figure. The novel recounts the intense and obsessive involvement of a middle-aged man with a sexually precocious young girl.

Some of Nabokov's early works include Invitation to a Beheading (1938), King, Queen, Knave (1928), Mary (1926), and Glory (1933). Pale Fire (1962), his first published novel after Lolita, was also widely acclaimed. The novel Ada appeared in 1969. In 1973 he published two books: A Russian Beauty and Other Stories and Strong Opinions, a work of nonfiction. In 1959 Nabokov moved to Switzerland, where he led a reclusive life until his death.

Sholokhov, Mikhail Aleksandrovich (1905-84), Soviet novelist and Nobel laureate, born in Veshenskaya, Russia, a village on the lower Don River. His major writings realistically and dramatically depict the lives of the people of this region. They include the novels The Silent Don (4 vol., 1928-40), published in two volumes in English as And Quiet Flows the Don (1934) and The Don Flows Home to the Sea (1940); and Virgin Soil Upturned (2 vol., 1932-60), the first volume published (1935) in England as Virgin Soil Upturned and in the U.S. as Seeds of Tomorrow, and the second volume translated as Harvest on the Don (1960). Sholokhov is also the author of They Fought for Their Fatherland, a projected trilogy inspired by World War II; the first volume was published in 1959. He received the Stalin Prize in 1941, the Order of Lenin in 1955, and the Lenin Prize in 1960. He was awarded the 1965 Nobel Prize in literature.

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Isayevich (1918- ), Russian writer, known for his works denouncing censorship and describing his prison experiences while in exile in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). He was born in Kislovodsk. He served in the Soviet Army from 1941 to 1945, when he was sentenced to eight years in prison for anti-Stalinist remarks written to a friend. Exiled to central Russia, his prison experiences were the background for his first novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962). In 1969 Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Writers Union for denouncing the official censorship that had suppressed some of his writings. He received the 1970 Nobel Prize in literature.

Solzhenitsyn was deported to West Germany (now part of the united Federal Republic of Germany) and deprived of his Soviet citizenship in February 1974. Subsequently he settled in the United States. The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956 (1973-1975), The Gulag Archipelago 2, (1975), and The Gulag Archipelago 3 (1975) are massively documented exposés of the Soviet prison system, terrorism, and secret police. Soviet officials dropped charges of treason against him in 1991, and Solzhenitsyn returned to live in Russia in May 1994.

Yevtushenko, Yevgeny Aleksandrovich (1933- ), Russian poet, born in Zima. Although his first collection of poetry received official Soviet praise, Yevtushenko was soon criticized for his themes of intellectual freedom. Consequently, his epic poem, Zima Junction (1956), concerned with the moral confusion of a young man in the post-Stalinist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was officially condemned. A similar reaction was received upon the publication in 1961 of Babi Yar, an impassioned attack against both World War II (1939-1945) Nazi and contemporary Soviet anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, Yevtushenko gave readings of his poems before large audiences in the USSR, Western Europe, and the United States.

Brodsky, Joseph (1940-1996), Russian-born American poet, who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1987, the second-youngest person to be so honored. He was born in Leningrad (present-day Saint Petersburg). In 1972 Brodsky was exiled from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR); he eventually moved to the United States. A major collection of Brodsky’s poetry, Selected Poems, was published in English translation in 1973. A volume of his essays, Less Than One, received the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism for 1986. Brodsky’s poetry collection To Urania appeared in 1988. On Grief and Reason, a collection of essays, was published in 1995. In 1981 Brodsky was awarded a MacArthur Foundation grant. From 1991 to 1992 Brodsky served as United States poet laureate.