There are few writers in the history of Russian literature who would be hated so persistently and strongly as Saltykov-Shchedrin. Contemporaries called him a “storyteller” and his works “strange fantasies” that had nothing to do with reality. Meanwhile, today the work of the famous satirist and caricaturist remains fresh and relevant. The biography of Saltykov-Shchedrin tells how difficult the writer’s path to literary Olympus was. summary which we will look at in this article.

Youth

Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov is a Russian writer, a nobleman who was born in 1826 in the small village of Spas-Ugol (Tver province). His first teacher was the simple serf Pavel, and then he was taught by a priest and a student at the theological academy. At the age of ten, the boy was sent to Moscow, to a noble institute, and two years later - to This is where his creative biography begins.

Saltykov-Shchedrin at the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum

Here, under the influence of the creativity of young poets, Mikhail Evgrafovich begins to write poetry. His certificate at the end of the lyceum will record, along with such school offenses as smoking and rudeness, writing works of disapproving content. Meanwhile, a number of his poems were already published in the Sovremennik magazine. However, Mikhail himself does not see the talent of a poet in himself, but he became seriously interested in literature. His writing biography began from this period. Saltykov-Shchedrin becomes famous.

Popularity

Upon graduation from the Lyceum future writer enlisted in the military office. He's interested in French literature and he himself begins to write bibliographic notes, which are published in Otechestvennye zapiski. 4 years after graduating from the Lyceum, in 1848, he wrote the story “A Confused Affair.” In this work, the author’s attitude towards and aversion to routine is clearly visible. These discussions about the fate of Russia might have gone unnoticed if they had not coincided with the French Revolution. In the same year, the writer was exiled to Vyatka, where his provincial biography would last for 7 long years.

Saltykov-Shchedrin in Vyatka

Not much is known for certain about the writer’s service in Vyatka. He served as a clerical official in various government institutions. Meanwhile, provincial life during this period opened up the opportunity for Saltykov to better learn all the dark sides of the existence of ordinary people. During his stay in Vyatka, Mikhail Evgrafovich wrote “Provincial Sketches”, and also compiled “ Brief history Russia." Here he finds a wife, and in 1855 he is allowed to leave Vyatka.

Literary activity in the last years of his life

In 1856, Saltykov was sent to the Tver province, and in 1860 he was appointed to the post of vice-governor of Tver. It continues literary biography. Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote a lot at this time and published in famous magazines. And in 1863, after his resignation, he moved to St. Petersburg and became one of the editors of Sovremennik. IN last years writes stories and fairy tales in life, trying to convey to his reader the spirit of freedom and independence through humor and satire. In 1889, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, whose biography is closely intertwined with the fate of the people, dies after a serious illness.

Born on January 15 (27 n.s.) 1826 in the village of Spas-Ugol, Tver province, into an old noble family. Real name Saltykov, pseudonym N. Shchedrin. His childhood years were spent on his father's family estate in "... the years... at the height of serfdom", in one of the remote corners of "Poshekhonye". Observations of this life will subsequently be reflected in the writer’s books.

Saltykov's father, Evgraf Vasilyevich, a pillar nobleman, served as a collegiate adviser. He came from an old noble family. Mother, Olga Mikhailovna, nee Zabelina, Muscovite, merchant daughter. Mikhail was the sixth of her nine children.

For the first 10 years of his life, Saltykov lives on his father’s family estate, where he receives his primary education at home. The future writer's first teachers were his elder sister and the serf painter Pavel.

At the age of 10, Satlykov was admitted as a boarder to the Moscow Noble Institute, where he spent two years. In 1838, as one of the most excellent students, he was transferred as a government student to the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. At the Lyceum he began to write poetry, but later realized that he did not have a poetic gift and left poetry. In 1844 he completed a course at the Lyceum in the second category (with the rank of X class) and entered service in the office of the War Ministry. He received his first full-time position, assistant secretary, only two years later.

Literature even then occupied him much more than service: he not only read a lot, being particularly interested in George Sand and the French socialists (a brilliant picture of this hobby was drawn by him thirty years later in the fourth chapter of the collection “Abroad”), but also wrote - at first small bibliographic notes (in “Notes of the Fatherland” 1847), then the stories “Contradictions” (ibid., November 1847) and “A Confused Affair” (March 1848).

For freethinking in 1848, in the biography of Saltykov-Shchedrin, he was exiled to Vyatka. There he served as a clerical official, and there, during investigations and business trips, he collected information for his works.

In 1855, Saltykov-Shchedrin was finally allowed to leave Vyatka; in February 1856 he was assigned to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and then appointed an official special assignments with the minister. Returning from exile, Saltykov-Shchedrin resumes literary activity. Written based on materials collected during his stay in Vyatka, “Provincial Sketches” quickly gained popularity among readers, Shchedrin’s name became famous. In March 1858, Saltykov-Shchedrin was appointed vice-governor of Ryazan, and in April 1860 he was transferred to the same position in Tver. At this time, the writer works a lot, collaborating with various magazines, but mainly with Sovremennik.

In 1862, the writer retired, moved to St. Petersburg and, at the invitation of Nekrasov, joined the editorial staff of the Sovremennik magazine, which at that time was experiencing enormous difficulties (Dobrolyubov died, Chernyshevsky was imprisoned Peter and Paul Fortress). Saltykov took on a huge amount of writing and editing work. But the main attention was paid to the monthly review "Nasha" public life", which became a monument to Russian journalism of the 1860s.

It is very likely that the constraints that Sovremennik encountered at every step from the censorship, due to the lack of hope for a quick change for the better, prompted Saltykov to re-enter the service, but in a different department, less related to the topic of the day. In November 1864, he was appointed manager of the Penza treasury chamber, two years later he was transferred to the same position in Tula, and in October 1867 - to Ryazan. These years were the time of his least literary activity: for three years (1865, 1866, 1867) only one of his articles appeared in print.

After a complaint from the Ryazan governor, Saltykov was dismissed in 1868 with the rank of full state councilor. He moved to St. Petersburg and accepted N. Nekrasov’s invitation to become co-editor of the journal Otechestvennye zapiski, where he worked from 1868 to 1884. Saltykov now switched entirely to literary activity. In 1869 he wrote “The History of a City” - the pinnacle of his satirical art.

In 1875, while in France, he met with Flaubert and Turgenev. Most of Mikhail's works of that time were filled deepest meaning and unsurpassed satire, the culmination of which reached its climax in the grotesque called “Modern Idyll”, as well as “The Golovlevs”.

In the 1880s, Saltykov's satire reaches its climax in its anger and grotesquery: "Modern Idylls" (1877-1883); "Messrs. Golovlevs" (1880); "Poshekhonsky stories" (1883-1884).

In 1884 the government banned the publication of Otechestvennye zapiski. Saltykov-Shchedrin had a hard time with the closure of the magazine. He was forced to publish in liberal organs that were alien to his direction - in the magazine "Bulletin of Europe" and the newspaper "Russian Vedomosti". Despite the ferocious reaction and serious illness, Saltykov-Shchedrin has created in recent years such masterpieces as “Fairy Tales” (1882-86), which concisely reflect almost all the main themes of his work; filled with deep philosophical historicism, “Little Things in Life” (1886-87) and, finally, a broad epic canvas of serf Russia - “Poshekhon Antiquity” (1887-1889).

May 10 (April 28), 1889 - Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin dies. According to his own will, he was buried at the Volkov cemetery in St. Petersburg next to I.S. Turgenev.

One can talk endlessly about the biography of Saltykov-Shchedrin, given his status as the founder of Russian satirical literature with fairy tale elements. Therefore, in quick facts about the most important events in the writer’s life, the attitude of the degenerate noble class to the state of affairs in the serf state is clearly visible.

Childhood

1. The parents of the future satirist were Evgraf Vasilyevich Saltykov and Olga Mikhailovna Zabelina. Dad served as a collegiate adviser and had no weight either in society or in the family, due to his origins from a poor noble family. Everything was run by the mother, a strict woman with primitive ideas about raising children and enormous greed for her own wealth.
2. She was married off as a very young girl, which is why she brought the principles of landowner life into her own family and adhered to them with strict strictness.
3. The writer was born as the sixth child of 9 living brothers and sisters on January 15, 1826 in the village of Spas-Ugol, Kalyazin district, Tver province. Until the age of 10, he was considered the most beloved child in the family, which was reflected in the somewhat strange attitude of his greedy and domineering mother towards him - the remains festive lunch were the first to be issued to Mikhail.
4. The education of the master's children was carried out by teachers and tutors from their own serfs, as well as the writer's elder sister Nadezhda, together with her colleague at the Catherine Institute, Avdotya Vasilevskaya. A little later, a priest from a neighboring village and a theological seminary student joined in educating the teenagers.
5. For his excellent knowledge of basic subjects, Mikhail Saltykov was admitted to the Moscow Noble Institute in 1836 straight into the third grade. Based on the results of his studies, he was enrolled in the capital's lyceum in 1838 on state support, as a successful student.

It is noteworthy that the writer’s craving for creativity developed within the walls of the lyceum under the influence of Pushkin’s creativity and his sudden death. Initially, Mikhail Saltykov tried to study poetry, which he quickly got tired of due to the need to “squeeze good thoughts into the framework of rhymed lines.”

Career and exile

After graduation, for freethinking and craving for Protestant sentiments, Mikhail Evgrafovich received a low rank in the table of ranks, which prevented him from taking the high position in the public service. At the same time, he continued to improve his writing, for which he was exiled to the provinces.

His further activities are inextricably linked with his residence in various provinces of the Russian Empire and his activities as an official in authoritative positions:

1. In April 1948, Saltykova was sent to Vyatka by his immediate superior, Count Chernyshov, who was frightened by the writer’s thoughts expressed in the story “A Confused Affair.” By this time Europe was scared French Revolution and the German uprisings, which led to stricter censorship and the exile of all educated people sympathetic to the problems of the lower strata of the population.
2. In 1951, the disgraced satirist was able to avoid bloodshed between tenants and peasants in the surrounding villages.
3. Before the end of his exile in 1955, the writer did a lot of translations of French educators, and also compiled “The History of the Russian State” to teach this subject to the daughters of his friend, the vice-governor of Vyatka and nearby villages. He had a warm welcome in the Boltin family and constantly spent free time With younger daughters mayor, which later played an important role in the biography of Saltykov-Shchedrin - the St. Petersburg state councilor fell in love with his wife, Elena Appolonievna Boltina, when she was barely 12 years old.
4. In 1856, having become an actual state councilor from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, he married his chosen one, who was barely 14 years old. Only the writer’s elder brother came to the wedding - Mikhail Evgrafovich’s mother did not like her daughter-in-law because of her youth and the lack of a rich dowry.
5. From 1858 to 1862 he served as the chief police chief in the Tver and Ryazan provinces. During this time, he was able to organize several areas to manage order in the areas adjacent to these cities and showed himself as a progressive fighter for justice in relation to disenfranchised sections of the population - officials of the lower categories, serfs and farmers.

In essays by contemporaries talking about the most important facts from the life of the first satirist, the time of service in government positions was not in vain for Saltykov-Shchedrin. Observations of the life and foundations of provincial settlements and cities served as a rich basis for the future works of the classic.

Success in literary work

Mikhail Evgrafovich did not give up hope of creating a name for himself as a progressive writer of our time, and therefore, throughout the entire period of public service, he worked hard on his own written observations and reflections. The fruitfulness of his efforts was determined by his undoubted popularity individual works, which saw the light at different stages of his work:

1. 1856 - the beginning of a series of publications under the general title “Provincial Notes” in the magazine “Russian Bulletin”.
2. From June 1868, after the second and final resignation, Saltykov became the de facto editor of the journal Otechestvennye zapiski together with Nekrasov. By this time, a collection of his essays and stories, compiled from many years of publications in Moskovskiye Vedomosti and Sovremennik, had been published.
3. In the period from 1868 to 1884, the publication published most of the famous works of Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, which allowed him and his loved ones to live with dignity and travel around Europe.

The writer died in 1989, leaving behind not only a young widow, but also a son and daughter. Despite a huge number of sources who claimed that Saltykov-Shchedrin did not love his family, there are many reasons to say the opposite - the writer’s suicide notes to his son have been preserved. In them, the dying person, with great tenderness and love, asks the heir to take care of his sister and mother after his death.

On January 15, 1826, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin was born in a small village in the Tver province. The biography of this man is thoroughly permeated with philanthropy and contempt for the reactionary state apparatus of his time. However, first things first.

Saltykov-Shchedrin Mikhail Evgrafovich: biography of his early years

Future famous writer was born into the family of a wealthy nobleman. By the way, Saltykov is his real name. Shchedrin is a creative pseudonym. The boy spent the first years of his life on his father's family estate. This period saw the most difficult years serfdom. When in most states the scientific and technological revolution had already occurred or was taking place, and capitalist relations were developing, Russian empire became more and more mired in its own medieval way of life. And in order to somehow keep up with the development of the great powers, the state machine worked more and more actively, extensively squeezing all the juices out of the peasant class. Actually, all further biography Saltykov-Shchedrin eloquently testifies to the fact that he is in sufficiently had the opportunity to observe the situation of peasants in their youth.

This greatly impressed the young man and left an imprint on all his further work. Mikhail received his primary education in his home, and when he was ten years old, he entered the Moscow Institute of Nobility. Here he studied for only two years, showing extraordinary abilities. And already in 1838 he was transferred to receive a state scholarship for his studies. Six years later he ends it educational institution and enters the ministerial military office for service.

Biography of Saltykov-Shchedrin: the beginning creative activity

Here the young man is seriously interested in the literature of his time, voraciously reading French educators and socialists. During this period, his first own stories were written: “Contradictions”, “An Entangled Affair”, “Notes of the Fatherland”. However, the nature of these works, full of freethinking and satire on the tsarist autocracy, even then turned state power against the young official.

Biography of Saltykov-Shchedrin: creative recognition and acceptance by state authorities

In 1848, Mikhail Evgrafovich went into exile in Vyatka. There he enters the service as a clerical official. This period ended in 1855, when the writer was finally allowed to leave this city. Returning from exile, he is appointed as an official for special assignments under the State Minister of Internal Affairs. In 1860 he became the Tver vice-governor. At the same time, the writer resumes his creative activity. Already in 1862, he retired from public office and focused on literature. At the invitation of Sergei Nekrasov, Saltykov-Shchedrin comes to St. Petersburg and gets a job in the editorial office of Sovremennik. Here, and later in the journal Otechestvennye zapiski, where he ended up under the patronage of the same Nekrasov, they are held

the most fruitful years of his creative activity. Many stories, satirical articles and, of course, the famous grotesque novels: “The History of a City”, “A Modern Idyll” and others - were written in the second half of 1860-1870.

Biography of Saltykov-Shchedrin: the last years of his life

In the 1880s, the writer’s satirical works increasingly enjoyed fame among the intelligentsia, but at the same time they were increasingly persecuted by the tsarist regime. Thus, the closure of the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski, where he was published, forced Mikhail Evgrafovich to look for publishing houses abroad. This ban on printing in his native country greatly undermined the health of an already middle-aged man. And although he also wrote the famous “Fairy Tales” and “Poshekhon Antiquity,” over the course of several years he grew very old, his strength was rapidly leaving him. On May 10, 1889, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin died. The writer, in accordance with his request in his will, was buried in St. Petersburg, next to the grave of I.S. Turgenev.