Korolenko
Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko(July 15 (27), 1853, Zhitomir - December 25, 1921, Poltava) - Russian writer of Ukrainian-Polish origin, journalist, publicist, public figure, who earned recognition for his human rights activities both during the tsarist regime and during the Civil War and Soviet authorities. For his critical views, Korolenko was subjected to repression by the tsarist government. A significant part of the writer’s literary works are inspired by impressions of his childhood spent in Ukraine and his exile in Siberia.
Honorary Academician of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in the category of fine literature (1900-1902).
Childhood and youth
Korolenko was born in Zhitomir in the family of a district judge. The writer's grandfather came from a Cossack family; his sister Ekaterina Korolenko is the grandmother of Academician Vernadsky. The writer’s father, stern and reserved, but at the same time incorruptible and fair, Galaktion Afanasyevich Korolenko (1810-1868), who, in 1858, had the rank of collegiate assessor and served as a Zhytomyr district judge, had a huge influence on the formation of his son’s worldview. Subsequently, the image of his father was captured by the writer in his famous story “ In bad company" The writer’s mother was Polish, and Korolenko knew Polish from childhood.
Korolenko began studying at the Zhitomir gymnasium, and after his father was transferred for service to Rivne, he continued his secondary education at the Rivne real school, graduating after his father’s death. In 1871 he entered the St. Petersburg Technological Institute, but due to financial difficulties he was forced to leave it and in 1874 go on a scholarship to the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy in Moscow.
Revolutionary activity and exile
From an early age, Korolenko joined the revolutionary populist movement. In 1876, for participating in populist student circles, he was expelled from the academy and exiled to Kronstadt under police supervision.
In Kronstadt, the young man had to earn his living by his own labor. He was engaged in tutoring, was a proofreader in a printing house, and tried a number of working professions.
At the end of his exile, Korolenko returned to St. Petersburg and in 1877 entered the Mining Institute. The beginning of Korolenko’s literary activity dates back to this period. In July 1879, the St. Petersburg magazine “Slovo” published the writer’s first short story, “Episodes from the Life of a ‘Seeker’.” Korolenko originally intended this story for the magazine “Otechestvennye Zapiski”, but the first attempt at writing was unsuccessful - the editor of the magazine M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin returned the manuscript to the young author with the words: “It would have been nothing... but green... very green.” But in the spring of 1879, on suspicion of revolutionary activity, Korolenko was again expelled from the institute and exiled to Glazov, Vyatka province.
Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko- Russian writer of Ukrainian-Polish origin, journalist, publicist, public figure, who earned recognition for his human rights activities both during the years of the tsarist regime and during the Civil War and Soviet power. For his critical views, Korolenko was subjected to repression by the tsarist government. A significant part of the writer’s literary works are inspired by impressions of his childhood spent in Ukraine and his exile in Siberia.
Honorary Academician of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in the category of fine literature (1900-1902).
Korolenko was born in the family of a district judge, began studying at a Polish boarding school, then at the Zhitomir gymnasium, and graduated from the Rivne real gymnasium.
In 1871 he graduated with a silver medal and entered the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology. But need forced Korolenko to leave his studies and move to the position of an “intelligent proletarian.” In 1874 he moved to Moscow and entered the Petrovsky Agricultural and Forestry (now Timiryazevsky) Academy. In 1876, he was expelled from the gymnasium for a year and sent into exile, which was then replaced by supervised “residence” in Kronstadt. Korolenko was denied reinstatement at the Petrovsky Academy, and in 1877 he became a student for the third time - at the St. Petersburg Mining Institute.
Korolenko considered himself a fiction writer “only half”; the other half of his work was journalism, closely related to his multifaceted social activities. By the mid-80s, Korolenko published dozens of correspondence and articles.In 1879, following a denunciation by an agent of the tsarist gendarmerie, Korolenko was arrested. Over the next six years, he was in prison, in prison, and in exile. In the same year, Korolenko’s story “Episodes from the Life of a Seeker” appeared in a St. Petersburg magazine. While in the Vyshnevolotsk political prison, he writes the story “Wonderful” (the manuscript was distributed in lists; without the author’s knowledge, the story was published in 1893 in London, in Russia - only in 1905 under the title “Business Trip”).
Since 1885, Korolenko was allowed to settle in Nizhny Novgorod. The next eleven years were a period of flourishing of his creativity and active social activities. Since 1885, the capital's magazines have regularly published stories and essays created or published in exile: “Makar's Dream”, “In Bad Society”, “The Forest is Noisy”, “Sokolinets”, etc. Collected together in 1886, they compiled the book “ Essays and stories." In the same year, Korolenko worked on the story “The Blind Musician,” which went through fifteen editions during the author’s lifetime.
The stories consisted of two groups related to the sources of themes and images: Ukrainian and Siberian. Another source of impressions reflected in a number of Korolenko’s works is the Volga and the Volga region. For him, the Volga is “the cradle of Russian romanticism,” its banks still remember the campaigns of Razin and Pugachev, “Volga” stories and travel essays are filled with thoughts about the fate of the Russian people: “Behind the Icon,” “At the Eclipse” (both 1887), “In Cloudy Day" (1890), "The River Is Playing" (1891), "The Artist Alymov" (1896), etc. In 1889, the second book of "Essays and Stories" was published.
In 1883, Korolenko went on a trip to America, the result of which was a story, and in fact a whole novel about the life of a Ukrainian emigrant in America, “Without a Language” (1895).
Korolenko considered himself a fiction writer “only half”; the other half of his work was journalism, closely related to his multifaceted social activities. By the mid-80s, Korolenko published dozens of correspondence and articles. From his publications in the newspaper “Russian Vedomosti” the book “In a Hungry Year” (1893) was compiled, in which a stunning picture of national disaster is associated with poverty and serfdom, in which the Russian village continued to remain.
For health reasons, Korolenko moved to Poltava (after the Russian Academy of Sciences elected him an honorary member in 1900). Here he completes the cycle of Siberian stories (“The Sovereign's Coachmen”, “Frost”, “Feudal Lords”, “The Last Ray”), writes the story “Not Terrible”.
In 1903, the third book of “Essays and Stories” was published. In 1905, work began on the multi-volume “History of My Contemporary,” which continued until Korolenko’s death.
After the defeat of the first Russian revolution of 1905, he opposed the “wild orgy” of capital punishment and punitive expeditions (essays “An Everyday Phenomenon” (1910), “Features of Military Justice” (1910), “In a Calm Village” (1911), against chauvinistic persecution and slander (“The Beilis Case” (1913).
Having gone abroad on the eve of the First World War for treatment, Korolenko was able to return to Russia only in 1915. After the February Revolution, he published the brochure “The Fall of Tsarist Power.”
Struggling with progressive heart disease, Korolenko continues to work on “The History of My Contemporary”, essays “Earth! Earth!”, organizes food collection for the children of Moscow and Petrograd, establishes colonies for orphans and street children, is elected honorary chairman of the League for the Rescue of Children, the All-Russian Committee for Famine Relief. The writer's death occurred from a relapse of brain inflammation.
One of the main themes of Korolenko’s artistic work is the path to the “real people.” Thoughts about the people, the search for an answer to the riddle of the Russian people, which determined so much in Korolenko’s human and literary fate, are closely related to the question that runs through many of his works. “What, in essence, was man created for?” - this is how the question is posed in the story “Paradox”. “Man is born for happiness, like a bird for flight,” answers the creature, distorted by fate, in this story. No matter how hostile life may be, “there are still lights ahead!” - Korolenko wrote in the prose poem “Ogonki” (1900). But Korolenko’s optimism is not thoughtless, not blind to reality. “Man is created for happiness, but happiness is not always created for him.” This is how Korolenko affirms his understanding of happiness.
Korolenko- a realist who has always been attracted to romanticism in life, reflecting on the fate of the romantic, the lofty in the harsh, not at all romantic reality. He has many heroes whose spiritual intensity and self-burning selflessness lift them above dull, sleepy reality and serve as a reminder of the “highest beauty of the human spirit.”
“...To discover the meaning of the individual on the basis of the knowledge of the masses,” this is how Korolenko formulated the task of literature back in 1887. This requirement, realized in the work of Korolenko himself, connects him with the literature of the subsequent era, which reflected the awakening and activity of the masses.
Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko (1853 - 1921) - an outstanding Russian writer. Born in 1853 in the city of Zhitomir in the family of an official. He studied at the Zhytomyr gymnasium, and later at the Rivne real gymnasium. A major role in the formation of Korolenko’s worldview was played by democratic literature of the 60s, the works of N. G. Chernyshevsky, N. A. Dobrolyubov, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, N. A. Nekrasov, T. G. Shevchenko; their views had a huge influence on all his work. In 1871, Korolenko entered the St. Petersburg Institute, but was unable to study due to lack of funds. He worked as a proofreader and geographical map drawer. In 1874 he entered the Petrovsky Agricultural and Forestry Academy in Moscow. As a student, he prepared for propaganda activities among peasants. In March 1876, Korolenko was expelled from the academy and then arrested because, on behalf of the majority of students, he protested against the administration, which performed purely police functions. Since 1879, Korolenko’s life began to undergo a long period of exile (to the Vyatka province, to Eastern Siberia, etc.). In August 1881, he was exiled to the Yakut region, after a demonstrative refusal to sign the oath to Alexander III. Korolenko was allowed to return to European Russia in the fall of 1884. Since 1885, he lived in Nizhny Novgorod, under police supervision.
Korolenko’s first story, “Episodes from the Life of a Seeker” (1879), to a certain extent reflected popular views. However, in the two subsequent stories, “Yashka” (1881) and “The Unreal City” (1881), the writer began to take a break from the people’s illusion, which was facilitated by direct acquaintance with the people during the period of exile. Already Korolenko’s early stories and essays are characterized by a realistic depiction of people’s life, attention to people who have not repented of a difficult fate, full of an indomitable desire to achieve truth and freedom. The tenacity and courage of the Russian revolutionary girl served as the theme of the story “Wonderful” (1880, published abroad in 1893, in Russia - 1905). The Yakut peasant, the hero of the story “Makar’s Dream” (1885), protests against social injustice. The ability of a Russian person to accomplish a feat and the strength of his soul is spoken of in the essay “The River Is Playing” (1892). Korolenko’s work reveals the deep inner beauty of people from the people who rise to fight for their liberation. At the center of the story “The Musician” (1886) is the spiritual drama of a blind man who “saw” the world through high art. This soulful work, the result of a blind musician with people from the people, helps overcome personal grief from which there seemed to be no way out. This idea of the story was pointed out by M.I. Kalinin in his speech on October 25, 1919 at a rally dedicated to the defense of Tula from Denikin’s gangs: “The greatest artist of the word Korolenko in his blind “Blind Musician” clearly showed how problematic and fragile this individual human happiness is ... A person ... can be happy if then, when with all the threads of his soul, when with all his body and all his heart he is united with his class, and only then his life will be full and whole.”
Korolenko’s works reflected Russian reality associated with the collapse of patriarchal forms of peasant life and the penetration of capital into the countryside. His speech with essays about the famous handicrafts of the village of Pavlova, near Nizhny Novgorod ("Pavlovsk Sketches", 1890) was significant. The populists considered this village an example of handicraft production, supposedly having escaped the influence of capitalism about free exploitation. Resolutely rejecting these false statements, Korolenko painted a true picture of the ruin of artisans, their complete dependence on capitalist buyers. “There is no just a man,” Korolenko wrote in his essays “In a Hungry Year,” “there are poor people and rich people, owners and workers.” Korolenko expressed his disagreement with the fiction of late populism, which, in his words, viewed reality “through the prism of lies.” A significant place in Korolenko’s work is occupied by the story “Without a Language” (1895), which depicts the misadventures of a Ukrainian peasant who ended up in America. The hero of the story is faced with slavery, unemployment, and the criminal power of money. Driven into a frenzy, he exclaims: “Let the thunder break this damned city and some mayor you have chosen. Let the thunder break this copper freedom of theirs, there on the island...”.
In the years preceding the revolution of 1905, Korolenko continued the cycle of his stories: “The Sovereign's Coachmen” (1901), “Frost” (1901), “Marusina Zaimka” (1903), “Feudal Lords” (1901). Here, the humanist writer depicts the difficult life of people of forced labor, exposes the remnants of feudal-serfdom, and touches on the theme of the inhumanity of the bourgeois system. Despite the uncertainty of his political ideals, Korolenko believed in the victory of the people. The story “Unterrible” (1903) dates back to the same time, which, in terms of the power of exposing the bourgeois intelligentsia and the skill of its execution, can be classified as one of Korolenko’s best works.
In 1900, Korolenko was elected an honorary academician. In 1902, he, like A.P. Chekhov, refused this title in protest against the fact that M. Gorky was not approved by the tsarist government as an honorary academician.
Korolenko’s journalistic talent was particularly evident in his essays “In the Hungry Year” (1892 - 1893), “Sultan’s Sacrifice” (1895 - 1896), “Sorochinskaya Tragedy” (1907), “Everyday Phenomenon” (1910) . In an essay dedicated to the so-called. In the Sultan's case, the democratic writer came out in defense of the Votyak (Udmurt) peasants who were accused by the tsarist police of ritual murder. Korolenko proved that this process was started by the Black Hundreds in order to incite national hatred. Maxim Gorky wrote about this: “The “Sultan’s sacrifice” of the Votyaks, a process no less shameful than the “Beilis case,” would have taken on an even darker character if V. G. Korolenko had not intervened in this process and forced the press to convert attention to the idiotic obscurantism of the autocratic government." During the years of reaction, Korolenko published a pamphlet, “An Everyday Phenomenon,” in which he accused the tsarist government of an “orgy of executions” and police abuse of workers and peasants after the revolution of 1905–1907. From the 2nd half of the 90s, he took part in the publication of the liberal people's magazine "Russian Wealth" (his role was mainly limited to editing the fiction department). From Korolenko’s letters one can judge his serious differences with the editorial board of the magazine, which shared populist, liberal-bourgeois views. At the same time, the writer could not understand the shared significance of the revolutionary struggle of the working class, and this sharply distinguished his position from the position of the proletarian writer Maxim Gorky.
The last period of Korolenko’s work includes his largest work “The History of My Contemporary”, in which it is easy to consider the artistic embodiment of the author’s biography, its most important stages Korolenko at the same time introduces the reader to the development of the social movement of the 60s - 70s, with outstanding historical events that time. The last chapters of the epic, covering the activities of the people's intelligentsia, were written after the great October socialist revolution. Without understanding its true meaning, the writer, however, saw that the revolution was victorious because the broadest masses of the people participated in it. In “The History of My Contemporary” he was able to show how naive the populists were in their hopes for the heroism of the “chosen ones” in the absence of support from the working masses.
Korolenko spoke with literary critical articles and memoir essays. The most significant of them: “In Memory of Belinsky” (1898), “About Gleb Ivanovich Uspensky” (1902), “A. P. Chekhov” (1904), “L. N. Tolstoy” (1908), a large work about N.V. Gogol “The Tragedy of the Great Humorist” (1909).
Korolenko’s realistic work with all its content opposed the decadent bourgeois literature of the pre-revolutionary era. It reflected the popular protest against the bourgeois serfdom of Tsarist Russia, against national inequality and oppression. In 1907, V.I. Lenin called Korolenko a “progressive writer.” The democratic nature of his work was noted in 1913 by Lenin's Pravda. Pointing out that Korolenko “stands apart from the labor movement,” Pravda at the same time wrote: “We honor in him both a sensitive, future artist, and a writer-citizen, a writer-democrat.” Highly appreciating the social and artistic significance of Korolenko’s work, setting him up as a writer as an example to young writers, M. Gorky wrote: “This big, beautiful writer told me personally a lot about the Russian people that no one could say before him.”
Korolenko is an excellent master of stories, essays, novels. Using extensive life material, developing complex action even in a small work, he always remains in naturally developing compositions. Striving for a more accurate reproduction of life, Korolenko willingly introduced elements of journalism into his stories and stories. This feature is often indicated by subtitles from his stories: “Sketches from a travel album”, “From a reporter’s notes”, “From a traveler’s notebook”, etc. Korolenko is an outstanding artist of words, his art was highly appreciated by L. N. Tolstoy, A. . P. Chekhov, M. Gorky. Korolenko had a significant influence on writers who came from the people's environment. “In my early years, I was greatly influenced by Korolenko,” wrote A.S. Sirofimovich. Korolenko’s realistic method played a positive role in the development of Ukrainian, Belarusian, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Yakut prose. Korolenko's works have been translated into many languages of the peoples of the Soviet Union. In connection with the 25th anniversary of his death in 1946, the Council of Ministers of the USSR decided to perpetuate the memory of the outstanding Russian writer with a number of events. Korolenko's work, remarkable for its versatile richness of content, nobility of ideas, and perfection of artistic form, occupies a prominent place in the history of Russian classical literature.
The more than forty-year creative career of Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko (1853-1921) is equally distributed between the 19th and 20th centuries. His first story (“Episodes from the Life of a Seeker”) was written in 1879, and almost a week before his death he was still working on his main work, “The History of My Contemporary.”
Accordingly, much connects the writer with Russian classical literature of the 19th century, but the twentieth century, with its persistent search for ways to reorganize life in all its spheres and an equally persistent desire to give new life to art, to breathe new content into it, had a significant influence on Korolenko’s work.
An extraordinary biography of the writer. His father is a Ukrainian who was in the Russian civil service and performed his duties as a judge with truly “Don Quixotic” honesty, which his son inherited. The mother is Polish, a religious person, who performed her quiet feat of love, “combined with sadness and care,” as selflessly as the heroine of the story “The Blind Musician.”
Korolenko spent his childhood in Zhitomir and Rivne, small towns in southwestern Russia, where national problems were especially acute. Having paid tribute in childhood to a romantic fascination with the heroic past of Ukraine and Poland, young Korolenko turns to “advanced Russian thought,” and this leads to the fact that his homeland becomes “not Poland, not Ukraine, not Volyn, not Great Russia, but the great region of Russian thought.” and Russian literature, an area dominated by the Pushkins, Lermontovs, Belinskys, Dobrolyubovs, Gogols, Turgenevs, Nekrasovs, Saltykovs.”
And in the future, life will repeatedly put Korolenko in a position where he needs to make a choice, and outwardly the situation will be such that apparently no choice will be required. For example, after the assassination of Alexander II by the Narodnaya Volya, the government demanded that all those convicted in political cases sign an oath of “allegiance to the new sovereign.”
For most of the convicts, this was an empty formality, and the question of whether to sign or not was not even raised. But Korolenko, after long and difficult deliberations, refused the oath, paid for it with exile to Yakutia, but never subsequently doubted the correctness of his action.
In the same way, when “by the highest command” in 1902 the election of M. Gorky to honorary academician was canceled, Korolenko, together with Chekhov, refused this honorary title. Explaining the reasons for his refusal, Korolenko wrote: “...my conscience, as a writer, cannot come to terms with the tacit recognition that I belong to a view that is opposite to my real conviction” (10, 346).
When Korolenko’s first essays and stories appeared, criticism primarily noted the romantic orientation of his works, combined with very specific everyday and even ethnographic descriptions. The theme of the “free spirit” to which his hero always strives, no matter how small he may seem to himself and those around him and no matter how harsh and inhuman the circumstances of his life may be, quickly revealed the originality of the young writer’s work.
Responding to the demands of his time, Korolenko, in critical articles, diary entries, and letters, often reflects on what demands the modern era puts forward for literature, what the art of modern times should be, what it can take from the past and what hinders its further movement.
Korolenko’s statements are widely known that realism and romanticism represent, as literary movements, the absolutization of two opposing methods of depicting man and society in their interrelation. Korolenko believed that realism, the main requirement of which is “fidelity to reality,” likens literature to a mirror that reflects “what is,” “the given state of society.”
And since literature entirely depends on the given state of society (as a scientific justification for such dependence, Korolenko, in particular, refers to the theory of I. Taine), then to give a true reflection of reality means to reveal the causality of the phenomena of life reflected by literature.
This is exactly how realism is understood, Korolenko wrote in 1887, follows the same path as “pure science,” but for all their closeness, the goals of science and art are still different: “And while the goal of scientific work is to give an accurate knowledge of an object in its relationship to others, the goal of a work of art includes the first and adds a new one to it: it seeks to establish a direct connection of this object with the deep recesses of your soul through your imagination, through reflected sympathetic feelings, etc.”
Korolenko considered reducing the task of art to establishing “causes and inevitable consequences” a delusion that stems from confusing one of the most important principles of art with its purpose. Realism for him “is only a condition of artistry, a condition corresponding to modern taste, but<...>it cannot serve as an end in itself and does not exhaust all artistry.”
Repeatedly emphasizing that human activity cannot go “outside the limits of causality” and, therefore, “our ideals will reflect our character, our past,” Korolenko at the same time argued that although this reflection is an important condition of art, its goal is all and - “in movement, in certain ideals.”
Later, in a letter to V. Goltsev (1894), Korolenko contrasted two points of view on artistic creativity: Chernyshevsky,6 who wrote that artists are “only weak copyists” of nature, and therefore “the phenomenon is always higher than the image,” and that one must strive “for the real truth , as to the limit,” and Maupassant, who emphasized that the artist “creates his own illusion of the world, something that does not exist in reality, but what he creates in place of what exists.”
Korolenko calls for combining these provisions into one, since there cannot be an illusion of the world “without a relationship to the real world,” and in the dreams, ideals, illusions of the heroes of works of art or their creator, “a new attitude of the human spirit to the world around us is always manifested” .
Korolenko defined the ideal as the “highest idea of truth” living in the artist’s soul, and as a dream, “which is the best criterion of reality,” and as a “general concept of the world,” according to which the artist groups the phenomena of the surrounding life, and simply as "possible reality"
Hence, the goal of a true work of art, according to Korolenko, is that the perceiver can either imagine the criterion with which the artist approaches the reflection of reality, or in this reflection itself can find what corresponds to the “highest idea of truth” developed an artist. The last requirement forces the writer (and this is very important for understanding Korolenko’s work) to depict “more than one thing that is dominant in a given modernity.”
Korolenko does not accept naturalism, in the works of whose representatives reality is belittled and deprived of its heroic principle, and man is completely determined by life conditions and is not able to rise above them. Paying tribute to naturalists for their attempt to master the achievements of the natural sciences and for their attention to new phenomena of life, Korolenko believed that the lot of naturalistic literature was becoming the average, ordinary person.
At the same time, romanticism, which focuses attention on an extraordinary, heroic person who stands outside of society, is not capable, according to Korolenko, of explaining how such a person came into being, and in principle does not set such a goal.
Therefore, a new direction in literature should become a synthesis of realism and romanticism, in which the extremes of these directions will disappear. In accordance with this, the attitude towards the hero will change. “To discover the meaning of the individual on the basis of the meaning of the mass is the task of the new art that will replace realism,” writes Korolenko.8 A similar synthesis did not happen in the literature of the late 19th century, but the realist Korolenko never forgets the romantic-heroic beginning in his work in life.
For Russian social thought of the late XIX - early XX centuries. was characterized by a keen interest in sociological problems. At this time, in addition to the articles of N. Mikhailovsky, the sociological works of P. Lavrov, V. Bervi-Flerovsky, S. Yuzhakov, M. Kovalevsky were very popular. Works on philosophy and sociology by I. Taine, G. Spencer, O. Comte, G. Tarde, P. Lacombe, E. Durkheim are read and discussed with great interest.
In the 90s a passion for Marxist sociology arises. This feature in the development of Russian social thought was well expressed in his memoirs by D. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky: ““Sociology,” not only for me in that era, was a special word, a word with charm and power, one of those from which young people are inflamed souls - and its magical power was not inferior to the power of such prophetic words as Freedom, Progress, Ideal, etc. Sociology is the crown of the scientific edifice. It will reveal the laws of social life and progress and thereby give humanity the opportunity to overcome all the negative aspects, all the disasters and illnesses of civilizations.”
In the 80s For the majority of free-thinking Russian intelligentsia, the inconsistency of the practical forms and methods of struggle for social justice put forward by the populists became obvious. But there was another side to the Narodnik theory—an ethical one.
And if the process of understanding a number of populist dogmas quite quickly ended in their rejection, then the ethics of the populists nourished Russian society for a long time. The idea of duty and conscience, the desire to sacrifice oneself for the sake of the common people, the feeling of righteous anger for an unjust social system - all this was preserved in the minds of the Russian intelligentsia as values that a person thirsting for goodness and justice cannot and does not have the right to sacrifice.
The ethical richness of the populist theory, the heroic sacrifice and high spirit of the populist intelligentsia could not be unconditionally rejected by radically minded representatives of the turn of the century, since a new ethics, equal in importance to the populist, had not yet been essentially created at that time. That is why for many representatives of Korolenko’s generation, a complete rejection of the moral norms and criteria of populism would mean a rejection of democratic ideas, of the search for ways to transform society.
Korolenko associates the emergence of a new outlook on life, based both on the discoveries of sociology and the natural sciences, and on the combination of a sober study of reality with the construction of “social utopias” in which the “reality of tomorrow” is predicted, precisely with the defeat of the populist methods of struggle.
When numerous representatives of the populist movement went “to the people” and presented them with a “table of unfair social arithmetic,” the peasants not only did not take the path of revolutionary struggle, but, on the contrary, most often gave their sincere well-wishers into the hands of those who cared about preserving the existing order . “And we were amazed by the complexity, contradictions, and surprises that were encountered,” writes Korolenko about this tragic unsuccessful “meeting” of a truth-seeking intellectual and a simple peasant.
For some of the intelligentsia, the result of the meeting with the “little brother” was disappointment in the people; for another, including Korolenko, it is an awareness of the extreme complexity of those problems that were so narrowly and schematically interpreted by the previous generation, and the desire to find new ways of understanding man.
Korolenko considered N.K. Mikhailovsky to be the main representative of the new subjective sociological trend in Russian social thought, whose articles he “was carried away<...>and propagated them among comrades” while still studying at the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy.
The answer to the question of how Mikhailovsky’s teaching affected Korolenko’s creative principles helps to understand the uniqueness of both the writer’s aesthetic views and his social position.
Formulating the basic concepts of his sociology, Mikhailovsky wrote in 1875 that “the subjective method is a method of satisfying a cognitive need when the observer puts himself mentally in the position of the observed” and thereby “comes closer to the truth to the extent that he is able to experience someone else’s life.” Mikhailovsky’s moral ideal acquires a very definite concrete historical content when he puts forward the demand to “experience the life” of the peasant, take the point of view of the people and subordinate the general categories of “civilizations to the idea of the people.”
The meaning of the above views of Mikhailovsky is well explained by the essays of G. Uspensky, touching on the problem of mutual misunderstanding between the peasant and the “intellectual-lover of the people.”
Trying to understand the reasons for this misunderstanding, Uspensky makes an important discovery: the actions, views, and moral standards of the peasant, which seemed incomprehensible, illogical, and rationally inexplicable to the author-narrator, in fact represent a coherent system of world relations, the individual components of which are so fitted that it is impossible to to take out this or that “brick”, no matter how much the author, who is outside this system and evaluates it from the position of an enlightened intellectual, may wish to do so.
Thus, if the narrator in the essays “The Power of the Land” and “The Peasant and Peasant Labor” indicated that some moral standards of the peasant are good and others are bad, then in this case it would only be possible to find out which of these standards he himself considers true, but it would be impossible to understand why the peasant in his life is guided by precisely these ethical principles.
Having taken the point of view of a peasant, Uspensky realized that within the framework of the currently existing peasant culture, these norms are determined by the entire system of ideas of a given social stratum and measuring them by the norms of another culture is as absurd as trying to measure the area of a room with a thermometer.
The demand of G. Uspensky and Mikhailovsky to “take the point of view of the peasant,” thus, was not reduced to a natural and necessary image for the writer of the world through the consciousness and perception of the hero. Behind this requirement was the rejection of an elementary evaluative position, in which the reader had a good idea of the author’s worldview and the criteria for his assessment, while the object of the author’s research itself largely remained “closed.”
The simplest assessment of certain aspects of the culture of the social stratum under study, with all its external justice, did not allow us to understand the interconnectedness, interdependence of the “bad” and “good” sides, which, being isolated from the living organism of culture, often acquired a completely different meaning, a different significance. Korolenko accepts this position, finding that the artist must take into account other people’s points of view when depicting his characters. Let us explain this using the example of one of the writer’s early works - the story “Wonderful”, written in 1880 in a transit prison, but published in the Russian press only in 1905.
By the will of fate, gendarme Gavrilov meets with the courageous, strong-willed revolutionary girl Morozova. Their attitude towards each other is predetermined by the system of ideas that has developed in their social environment and the justice and morality of which they do not question.
Before meeting the exiles, Gavrilov served “zealously” in the squadron, dreamed of promotion and firmly knew that “his superiors would not punish in vain.” Therefore, for him, a revolutionary girl is a criminal, a “little snake,” “a noble’s offspring.” Morozova, on the contrary, “zealously” violated the basic laws of the state, the “bosses” of which punished and rewarded according to rules that were very far from justice, and therefore Gavrilov for her is first of all an “enemy”, since he is dressed in a gendarme overcoat and is in the service of states.
Morozov is not capable of “surviving someone else’s life,” taking Gavrilov’s point of view and seeing the good heart of the peasant behind the gendarmerie uniform she hates. And that’s why her words at the end of the story addressed to him are so cruel: “Forgive me! here's another! I will never forgive you, and don’t think ever! I’ll die soon... just know that I haven’t forgiven you!”
In the consciousness of Gavrilov, who found himself among exiled revolutionaries, changes are still barely noticeable, but already irreversible. He loses interest in the service and even the news that he will not be awarded the rank of non-commissioned officer, which he once so aspired to, now accepts with complete indifference.
And if earlier Gavrilov always knew how to relate to life and people, had ready-made and, in his opinion, the only correct answers to everything, now he already doubts many things and asks the question that torments him: “And I’ll all forget this angry young lady I couldn’t, and even now it’s the same thing: it sometimes stands before my eyes. What would that mean? Who would explain it to me!
Already in this early work, Korolenko finds his own way of refracting reality, thanks to which he opens up in psychology, social behavior, and the worldview of his heroes such areas that had not yet been sufficiently mastered by Russian classical literature of the 19th century.
History of Russian literature: in 4 volumes / Edited by N.I. Prutskov and others - L., 1980-1983.
Born on July 15, 1853 in Zhitomir in the family of a court official of the Ukrainian noble family (his image is depicted in the story “In Bad Society” and “Stories of My Contemporary”) and his mother, a Polish woman, a Catholic from the gentry class. He studied at Zhytomyr and Rivne gymnasiums, whose students were Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, and Jews. The multinational environment and diverse cultural traditions left a special stamp on his work and artistic style. The future writer subsequently repeatedly protested against national oppression and religious intolerance.
His worldview was formed under the influence of the works of I. S. Turgenev, N. A. Nekrasov, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, D. I. Pisarev, N. A. Dobrolyubov. After the death of his father in 1870, the Korolenko family was left without a livelihood (Korolenko had two more brothers and a sister). Having settled in St. Petersburg, the future writer, together with his brothers, began coloring atlases and proofreading work. At the end of 1870, Korolenko’s first literary experiments appeared in print, but at that time the author was not noticed by the reading public. His debut story “Episodes from the life of a seeker” “The Word”, 1879, written at a time when the writer was captivated by the ideas of “truth-seeking”, testified to the high moral upsurge that gripped Russian youth and called for living in the name of the public good. This mood largely determined the further personal and creative fate of the writer.
In 1871 he entered the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, but did not graduate. In 1874 he successfully passed the entrance exams to the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy in Moscow, but he did not study here for long, and in 1876 he was expelled for participating in a collective protest directed at the administration of the academy.
In connection with this, he was exiled to Vyatka (on the way to the place of exile, the story “Wonderful” was written, published a quarter of a century later, in 1905), then to Kronstadt - his exile lasted a year. Korolenko considered the time spent in Vyatka to be the best. G.I. Uspensky, depicting “the living life of living people,” becomes his new literary reference point. Having received permission to live freely in 1877, Korolenko entered the Mining Institute in St. Petersburg, which he also dropped out of because he was carried away by the ideas of the populists and, dreaming of getting closer to the people, began to learn shoemaking.
In 1878, he tried himself as a journalist, publishing material in the newspaper Novosti. In 1879 he was arrested on suspicion of connections with revolutionaries and illegal organizations. After he refused to swear allegiance to Emperor Alexander III, in 1881 he was exiled to Yakutia, where he served a three-year exile. The harsh but beautiful nature of Eastern Siberia, the difficult living conditions of the settlers, the peculiar psychology of the Siberians, whose life was full of the most incredible adventures, were reflected in Korolenko’s Siberian essays: “Makar’s Dream” (1885), “Notes of a Siberian Tourist”, “ Sokolinets" (1885), "In the department under investigation."
“Makar’s Dream” is the writer’s second major publication. In the image of the main character, who seemed to have long ago lost his human appearance, the author nevertheless saw a person. The source of Makar’s deviations from the truth is that no one taught him to distinguish good from evil. The essay, written in poetic language and with a skillfully put together plot, brought the writer real success. Following “Makar’s Dream,” the story “In Bad Society” (1885) was published, the plot of which was based on Rovno memories. The motif of “outcasts” appeared in the writer’s work. The story is better known in an abridged version for children's reading as "Children of the Dungeon."
In 1885, Korolenko settled in Nizhny Novgorod, remaining under police supervision. However, he was allowed to engage in journalism and literary work. Upper Volga life with all its hardships and small joys organically entered the writer’s books. The following stories were written here: “On an Eclipse” (1887), “Behind the Icon” (1887), “Birds of Heaven” (1889), “The River Is Playing” (1892), “On the Volga” ( 1889) as well as “Pavlovsk Sketches” (1890) and the essays that made up the book “In the Hungry Year” (1893).
“The River Is Playing” is one of the best stories not only of this period, but, perhaps, of Korolenko’s entire work. The writer created the image of the seemingly careless, but in fact charming, captivating with his sincerity carrier Tyulin, who put the soul of an artist into his simple craft.
Ten years spent in Nizhny Novgorod turned out to be very fruitful for the writer. He was engaged in literary work and was active in public life: he helped organize relief efforts for the hungry, and found personal happiness (he married Avdotya Semyonovna Ivanovskaya, and their eldest daughter was born in October). Here he received reader recognition; met A.P. Chekhov, L.N. Tolstoy, N.G. Chernyshevsky and others. In 1887, the story “The Blind Musician” was published independently, which became, in modern terms, a bestseller. “The Blind Musician” is a story about man’s eternal desire for the unknown. Its main character experiences an irresistible craving for light, which he has never seen. In the work, the realism of the depiction of reality is harmoniously combined with the idealism of the worldview. The main theme that worries the writer is the triumph of the spiritual principle in man over the material aspects of life. The story was translated into European languages and interested P. Verlaine, who saw in it an example of new art.
In 1893, Korolenko crossed the ocean to visit the World Art and Industrial Exhibition in Chicago. The writer absolutely did not like America. This trip strengthened him in his rejection of the bourgeois world. In 1902, the writer published the story “Without Language,” written in the wake of American impressions.
Korolenko’s interest in “the psychology of universal human longing for the unattainable” (“Letters to A.G. Gornfeld”) can also be traced in the story “At Night” (1888). A child who feels the “mystery” of birth and death, according to the author, is wiser than a medical student. Rationalists saw in this story the author's bias towards metaphysics.
Among the best journalistic works of the writer is the article “On the Complexity of Life” - a reminder of the continuity of generations of the Russian intelligentsia, whose task is to protect the personal freedom of man.
In 1896-1918. Korolenko was a member of the editorial board of the magazine “Russian Wealth” in St. Petersburg (since 1904 - editor-publisher). The writer believed that civil society in Russia is underdeveloped, the legal consciousness of the people is extremely weak, and there is almost no justice (he himself has repeatedly acted as a human rights activist at trials).
In 1900, he moved from St. Petersburg to Poltava due to nervous exhaustion, where his life did not become more measured and calm: frequent trips to the capital on magazine business, difficulties with censorship. Here he completed a cycle of Siberian stories (“The Sovereign's Coachmen,” “Frost,” “Feudal Lords,” “The Last Ray”) and wrote the story “Not Scary.”
In 1902, together with Chekhov, he refused the title of honorary academician (he was among the first elected) as a sign of protest against the cancellation of the election of M. Gorky to the Academy of Sciences.
In his journalism he directly expressed his civic, humanistic position and indignation at the Jewish pogroms (“House No. 13”, 1905). In 1905, when the censorship weakened somewhat, he began work on the artistic chronicle of his generation, writing it with long breaks until the end of his days. The entire “History of My Contemporary”, based on the literary tradition of Herzen’s “Past and Thoughts”, appeared in 1922-29. - it clearly expresses the multifaceted talent of the writer, his attraction to lyrical, essay and journalistic genres.
He perceived the February Revolution of 1917 as an opportunity for the democratic renewal of Russia. On March 6, 1917, he spoke at a rally in Poltava regarding the overthrow of the autocracy. He reacted coolly to the October Revolution, and during the Civil War he sharply opposed the bloody suppression of peasant uprisings and condemned revolutionary terror (six letters to A.V. Lunacharsky, 1922).
In 1921, being seriously ill, he refused to leave Russia and go abroad for treatment. In 1922, in a series of essays under the emotional title “Earths! Earth! outlined his own ideas about the foundations on which Russia could be revived. In the eyes of his contemporaries, he remained a “moral genius,” a man of high moral principles, a righteous man of Russian literature.
Korolenko was interested in the Orenburg region by the Pugachev uprising. Korolenko was in the Orenburg region, in Buguruslan, for the first time in 1891 on his way to Ufa. In July 1900, Korolenko visited the village. Ilek. Korolenko’s interest was due to the fact that Ilek was the first to recognize Pugachev as a “tsar”; here he was greeted with bread and salt. On August 25-26, 1900, he made another trip to the Orenburg region to the Talovaya River, since, according to the writer, there was a “room”, an inn, “where Pugachev started his business.” “Korolenko described his trip in the essays “At the Cossacks” (1901). In the essay devoted to the description of Ilek, there are pages where Korolenko achieves special artistic power. This is a wonderful scene of a kind of song competition between old and young Cossacks in the Plevna tavern. Researchers compared this scene, in terms of the strength of artistic penetration, with I. S. Turgenev’s “Singers.” This scene and all the essays “At the Cossacks” were highly appreciated by L.N. Tolstoy and A.P. Chekhov.
