Gleb Uspensky biography. Uspensky, Gleb Ivanovich

The outstanding Russian writer Gleb Ivanovich Uspensky was born on October 13 (25), 1843 in Tula. His father I.Ya. Uspensky served as secretary in the Tula Chamber of State Property, the manager of which was his father-in-law G.F. Sokolov. In my grandfather's house on the street. Zhukovsky spent most of his childhood as a future writer, which gave him his first life observations about the morals, customs and life of provincial officials, and served as G.I. Uspensky in the future for literary creativity.

Until the fourth grade, G. Uspensky studied at the Tula gymnasium, but after his father was transferred to the service, he graduated from the gymnasium in Chernigov, and later studied at St. Petersburg and Moscow universities.

During his student years, G.I.’s literary activity began. Uspensky. One of his essays, “Mikhalych,” was published in 1862 in L. N. Tolstoy’s magazine “Yasnaya Polyana.”

After the death of his father, G.I. Uspensky transports the canopy from Chernigov to Tula, and, living in St. Petersburg, often comes to his hometown.

In 1866, chapters from the remarkable work of the democratic writer “Morals of Rasteryaeva Street” began to be published on the pages of Nekrasov’s Sovremennik, which reflected the Tula reality of the late 50s - early 60s. last century.

Poor financial situation forced G.I. Uspensky worked as a teacher in Epifani, Tula province, but he could not come to terms with the routine government education and did not make friends with the local intelligentsia, who preferred to gossip, play cards and drink vodka.

G.I. Uspensky often visited Krapivna, where the writer’s sister E.I. taught. Uspenskaya. Observations and study of the life of teachers formed the basis of the essay “Through the Sleeves (from Provincial Notes),” which tells about the sad fate of teacher Pevtsov.

In subsequent years, G. Uspensky, in his works, mainly depicted the life of the Russian village in the post-reform era, and constantly collaborated in the journal Otechestvennye zapiski.

G.I. Uspensky died on March 24 (April 6), 1902 and was buried at the Volkov cemetery in St. Petersburg.

A vivid description of G.I. Uspensky was given it by his fellow countryman V.V. Veresaev: “There are unprincipled writers who fake current requirements - these are capable of deceiving only naive readers. There are writers of great passion and great sincerity; they write... “with the blood of their veins and their nerves: Gleb Uspensky, Garshin, Korolenko.”

V.M. RUDNEV.

LITERATURE:

USPENSKY G.I. Selected works. - M.: Artist. lit., 1990. - 462 pp.: ill. - (B-classics. Russian lit.).

USPENSKY G.I. Works: In 2 volumes - M.: Khudozh. lit, 1988.

USPENSKY G.I. Morals of Rasteryaeva Street: [Tales and Stories] / Comp. preface, postscript and note. ON THE. Milonova. - Tula: Priok. book publishing house, 1987. - 461 p. - (Father's land).

DAVYDOV Y. Evenings in Kolmovo: The Tale of Gleb Uspensky // Davydov Y. Evenings in Kolmovo. And before your eyes... - M., 1989. - P. 9-186.

USPENSKY Gleb Ivanovich // Russian writers: Biobibliogr. words - M., 1990. - T. 2: M-Ya. - pp. 333-337. - Bibliography: p. 337.

USPENSKY Gleb Ivanovich // Figures of Russian culture of the 19th century: Pages of biography: Rec. decree. lit. - M., 1990. - P. 68-69.

145th anniversary of the birth (1843) G.I. Uspensky // Tula region: Memorable dates for 1988. Decree. lit. - Tula, 1987. - pp. 43-44. - Bibliography With. 44 (10 titles).

140 years since the birth (1843) of the writer G.I. Uspensky // Tula region: Memorable dates for 1983. Decree. lit. - Tula, 1983. - pp. 26-27. - Bibliography 12 titles

Gleb Ivanovich Uspensky was born in Tula in 1840; his father was the secretary of the Tula Treasury Chamber. Young Gleb studied at the Tula gymnasium, from which he transferred to Chernigov. In 1861 he entered Moscow University.

The writer retained very sad memories of his youthful life, as of a time when he languished with a vain thirst to saturate his mind and soul with fruitful content. The life around him was shallow and empty, and the young man had nowhere to look for support, help and strength to renew his life. The monotonous and petty existence of the inhabitants of the pre-reform province, which Saltykov-Shchedrin was indignant at, depressed the young man, who felt a vague urge for something different.

Gleb Ivanovich Uspensky

In his short autobiography, he talks about the vague desires of his youth, painful due to their obscurity and sterility. “The whole situation of my personal life until the age of 20,” says the writer, doomed me to a complete eclipse of the mind, complete destruction, the deepest savagery of the concept, underdevelopment, and generally separated me from the life of the white world at an immeasurable distance. I remember that I cried incessantly, but I did not know why this was happening. I don’t remember that before I was twenty, my heart was ever in the right place.” The last two phrases indicate that feature of heightened anxious inner life, which Uspensky always distinguished and the imprint of which is visible in his works.

From Moscow University, Uspensky moved to St. Petersburg University, but did not graduate from the latter either. His literary activity began in 1866 with a series of essays under the general title “ Morals of Rasteryaeva Street", published in Sovremennik. After the closure of this magazine, the essays were transferred to the magazine "Luch", but this publication suffered the same fate, and in the end, in a greatly trimmed and revised form, "Morals of Rasteryaev Street" appeared in the "Women's Bulletin".

Everyday real essays, which depicted the rough way of petty bourgeois life, had to be reworked in accordance with the direction of the magazine. “Judge,” says Uspensky, “what Rasteryaeva Street must have endured with its drunken shoemakers and craftsmen, appearing in a magazine dedicated to women’s development, women’s issues. For all my deep desire for drunkards to behave more decently in the company of ladies, they all smelled incredibly of vodka and crushed me. But what was to be done? I washed them and dressed them up, and they only became worse, and there was less truth in them.”

Due to difficult social conditions, the lack of magazines, most of them closed, Uspensky’s literary activity took place in a rather gloomy environment.

In 1871, Uspensky went abroad, visited Paris, Slavic lands, and London. A turning point in Uspensky’s literary activity is dated to this time. In his semi-fictional, semi-journalistic works, he moves from depicting types of the urban poor to his main theme: the peasant, the village.

Returning to his homeland, he published a number of works devoted exclusively to his new topic. “Dirty work”, “Small guys”, “People and customs of the modern village”, “ Power of the earth"and other essays give an unvarnished, objectively reproduced life of a peasant and types of the Russian village.

Uspensky's literary activity was interrupted by a serious mental illness.

He died in 1902.

He is considered a democratic writer of the late 70s of the 19th century, who came to the Samara province to study the life of the simple peasantry. This happened not without the influence of the well-known “going to the people” that gripped the Russian intelligentsia during these years. “The real truth of life drew me to the source, that is, to the peasant,” wrote Gleb Ivanovich Uspensky. “I needed to know the source of all this ingenious mechanics of folk life, about which I could not find any simple word anywhere” 1 (Fig. 1).

He was born on October 13 (new style 25), 1843 in Tula, in the family of a provincial official. First he studied at the Tula gymnasium, and from 1856 - in Chernigov, where his parents moved. After graduating from high school, Uspensky entered the law faculty of St. Petersburg University, from where he was expelled due to financial difficulties. He tried to continue his education, and in 1862 he entered the law faculty of Moscow University, but a year later he also dropped out, again due to lack of money.

Gleb Ivanovich Uspensky began his literary activity in the summer of 1862 in the pedagogical journal L.N. Tolstoy's "Yasnaya Polyana", where he wrote under the pseudonym "G. Bryzgin." Then, in 1864-1865, Uspensky collaborated with the publication “Northern Lights,” where he wrote texts for lithographs of paintings. And in 1868, Uspensky began constant collaboration with the journal Otechestvennye zapiski, which at that time came under the editorship of N.A. Nekrasov and M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. It was in this magazine that Uspensky mainly published his works until its closure in 1884.

His beliefs and views were formed in the rebellious 60s of the 19th century, when a movement of intellectuals and commoners arose in Russia. They paid a lot of attention to the urban poor and the urban bottom. Succumbing to these sentiments, Uspensky devoted his first works to reflecting this problem. His debut essays “Morals of Rasteryaeva Street” (1866) and “Ruin” (1869) were devoted to the life of the poorest strata of society.

In 1871 he went abroad, visiting Germany and France. He visited Europe again in the first half of 1875, and during this time he lived in Paris and London. Here Uspensky became close to representatives of Narodnaya Volya, who literally infected him with the idea that the intelligentsia should “go to the people” in order to educate them and instill in them a high culture. In the summer of the same 1875, having returned to Russia, Uspensky decided to actively implement this idea. He decided to take a closer look at the Russian peasantry, to which until that time he had paid little attention. To do this, he first came to the village of Syabrenitsy, Novgorod province. However, his life here did not work out; in the spring of 1878, Uspensky went to the Samara province.

He settled near Samara, in the village of Skolkovo (now Kinelsky district, Samara region). Here he got a job as a clerk in a savings and loan partnership, and his wife Vera Vasilievna 2 became a school teacher.

In the 70s, society and the press were heavily involved in savings and loan partnerships. Zemstvos saw in them almost an all-healing remedy for popular poverty. It is possible that at first Uspensky to some extent shared this belief, but after working in this area for more than a year, in a special article “Passion-Bearers of Small Credit” he sharply declared that all this was “nonsense”, that these partnerships provide “the opportunity to use loans only to kulaks and ruin the ordinary peasant.”

The savings and loan partnership in the village of Skolkovo was located in the same building as the school. This is where the Uspenskys rented an apartment. The teacher A. Stepanova lived with the Uspenskys, who later wrote memoirs about this period of the writer’s life 3 .

Life was difficult for Uspensky, there was not enough money, and in letters to publishers the writer always had to ask for reinforcements. At that time, the Uspenskys already had three children, and one daughter was born in Skolkovo. The furnishings were the most modest, even poor: in one room there were drawers instead of furniture, larger ones as a table, the rest were chairs. The writer himself lived in the partnership office, a large room in which there was a white table with papers and several benches, on one of which he slept. “Gleb Ivanovich always wore out his suits until the last opportunity, and then, taking his little son with him, he went to Samara to be outfitted. There he changed clothes with the child, but left the old ones, because they were completely unsuitable, in the shop.”

Neighboring peasants often visited the office, who soon felt their man in Uspensky, and therefore often went to him for help, never encountering refusal. The local sergeant-major, a huge red-haired man, was also a frequent visitor; in one of his stories, Uspensky used him as a murderer-horse thief. Even a kulak from the village of Bogdanovka came to Uspensky with the goal of giving the writer material for “processing” one of his enemies or offenders, and soon he himself found himself “processed” in one of the essays: “it seems like a portrait turned out,” he said , vowing to take revenge on Uspensky.

In the office of the partnership, Gleb Ivanovich was helped by seminarian Alexandrov. The writer brought him out in the essay “Black Work” in the image of Andrei Vasilyevich.

The circle of Uspensky’s closest people consisted of local teachers and, during the holidays, seminarians. Gleb Ivanovich took a close part in the affairs of the school, helped with advice, and was interested in the progress of training. Soon one of the teachers was fired “for unreliability” and a relative of the local police officer was sent in his place. Here's what Uspensky said about it:

The “unreliable” teacher assigned the older students essays based more on peasant life, on what the children see and in which they themselves take part. The new teacher was ordered to keep the students as far as possible from their everyday life, since this would lead to a lot of unnecessary talk about the “political situation of the peasantry and even the clergy,” and to ask them something of a “foreign nature.”

“... Once a “new” [teacher] met me on the street and said: “Excuse me, please, Gleb Ivanovich, since I have heard that you are in some way a famous writer, then allow me to kindly ask you to help me in one thing, maybe say it's an emergency. Soon, you see, an inspector of public schools and an indispensable member will come here for an exam in our school, but it is considered exemplary, and the full course is completed in four winters... They will ask me to show them the essays of graduating students, but what will I show them? Last week I read them two passages from the anthology: “Sunset in the Sahara” and “Hurricane on the Ocean” and asked who wanted to tell me what thing. So what would you think? They took my head off, Gleb Ivanovich, these robbers, they definitely took it off... One writes: “The dawn burned so much, so everything became red, and it meant a foreshadowing of heavy rain.” Do you understand, Gleb Ivanovich, this is heavy rain in the Sahara, in the Sahara?! And another depicts a hurricane on the ocean like this: “On the sea on the ocean, for no apparent reason, a terrible storm arose, waves of more than one and a half arshins, the wind drove from one shore to the other, take our ferry and capsize, no matter how hard we dragged it up, but he picked us up under him and immediately flopped to the bottom, and then hissed a lot, because he’s like a cast iron boat, he walks on steam, only on water...

Listen, Matvey Gavrilovich, why don’t you send the boys again to describe their life? - advised Uspensky.

I would be glad, Gleb Ivanovich... according to the regulations, nothing is allowed to touch the life of the population.

Well, make them, not people, describe cattle like that... Let them write what they see, well, for example, our domestic animals. I am confident in advance of success...

“I am most deeply grateful to you, Gleb Ivanovich,” the teacher rejoiced.

About a week has passed.

I meet a smart guy as prescribed, and from a distance he throws up his hands: “Dear Mr. Uspensky, Gleb Ivanovich, what have you done to me? Let me humbly ask you to come to me for a minute..."

“...Now I dumped a whole pile of essays on the table, and began to read excerpts from them; “Here’s one essay for you as an example: “Domestic animal, four-legged, horse.” Now, if you please listen: “We had one four-legged horse, but the guy didn’t pay the tax, the foreman took it to the police officer, and the samovar with all the coals was picked up, and my uncle’s retinue was new, so we have no animal, neither domestic nor four-legged.” There’s nothing left to describe, everything has already been described...” What a bastard, he went straight into socialism. But please read this essay for yourself.”

I carefully took the quarter of paper written with visible love and good handwriting. “This is the first student, Gleb Ivanovich, we had all our hopes for him during the exam.”

I looked first at the title: it interested me very much.

“The devil is a domestic animal, four-legged, but not always, but when he sleeps. When he walks, he walks on two legs. It lives on our stove, feeding on coals and ash. We often see him with his grandmother when we are lying on the bed. He has large fangs and fiery eyes, and his horns are like those of a goat. Grandmother is not afraid of him, and as soon as he climbs onto the stove, she herself reads a prayer, and I must also read: “May God rise again, and his enemies be scattered...” He will immediately begin to be wasteful. He will pretend to be so meek and sick, and in the end he will completely turn into our black cat, Masha... When asked what is the use of that animal, I answer directly: “Although he is a domestic animal, he is absolutely not suitable for farming, because incapable of plowing." “Look, Gleb Ivanovich, at your very, as it is called... method of writing,” the teacher attacked, dumbfounded by the results and unsettled. From simple life, they wanted it, from everyday life. So before, let’s say, the student could not describe either the Sahara or the ocean, because he didn’t see... And now, rejoice, Gleb Ivanovich, the devil described it perfectly, because he saw it, saw it thanks to your method... What Now, let me ask you, will I show it to the inspector and the indispensable member? One problem... An essay about the devil “Definitely unsuitable for farming.” Otherwise, maybe they would have engaged in devilry... You, Mr. Author, have brought me under the strictest undeserved reprimand, otherwise, maybe I’ll lose my job... Well, how can you describe to an uneducated village person what he actually sees? They have only ignorance... Sugar is far away, but the devil is just a stone's throw away, on the stove..."

This photographic story by Uspensky speaks not only about the teaching methods inculcated at school, but also characterizes the era when the peasant “of the domestic four-legged animals was left with only one devil, completely incapable of farming.”

Visitors often disturbed Uspensky, and he had to write in fits and starts. As Stepanova recalls, while working he drank “the strongest iced tea or beer.”

Sometimes Gleb Ivanovich read his short stories aloud. He read expressively, skillfully emphasizing comic passages. Those present laughed, but he himself remained unperturbed.

During his stay in Skolkovo, Uspensky traveled to Samara several times, where he lived for a week or more, and once went to St. Petersburg to “refresh himself.” In Samara, he stayed with a local old-timer, judicial investigator Yakov Lvovich Teitel, 4 this “cheerful righteous man,” as Gorky called him.

One of Uspensky’s trips to Samara almost ended in arrest. Having once arrived in the city with his assistant, seminarian Alexandrov, Uspensky stopped at one of the cheap hotels. Familiar seminarians came to Alexandrov. Gleb Ivanovich also took part in the general conversation, telling several comic episodes from the life of the clergy. The seminarians laughed loudly and a lot. Uspensky’s stories were heard in the next room by a kulak from the village of Bogdanovka, who had been spying on the writer for a long time. And this time he deliberately came to Samara after Uspensky. Kulak immediately ran after the gendarmes, they came and heard through the thin plank partition a few free words from Uspensky addressed to the clergy. A case arose about Uspensky spreading “criminal ideas among seminarians.” During interrogation by the head of the gendarme department, Smolkov, Gleb Ivanovich said that he took the stories about the clergy from the Diary of Prince Meshchersky. Uspensky was released.

Uspensky's position was not easy. The presence of a revolutionary-minded writer in the midst of the peasant population, his connections with them, his published stories - all this has long made the local authorities wary and take measures to quickly get rid of the dangerous person. Denunciations and surveillance intensified, complaints began to pour in against Gleb Ivanovich’s wife as a teacher.

Uspensky decided to leave. This, apparently, was facilitated by disappointment in the service, in the entire system of small credit, which he called “national nonsense.”

“We’ll all leave Skolkovo right away,” Uspensky said in one of his letters. - Will. We suffered quite a lot, and the boredom is diabolical” 5.

When leaving, Uspensky was very worried about his servant Osip, and worked hard to arrange for him as best as possible.

In the fall of 1879, the Uspenskys left Samara and settled in St. Petersburg. According to contemporaries, Uspensky was nevertheless satisfied with his stay in the Middle Volga region, which gave him a lot of interesting material for literary work.

In the summer of 1887, while traveling along the Volga, G.I. Uspensky again visited Samara, but, due to lack of time, did not stop by Skolkovo.

The end of the 70s and the beginning of the 80s was the time of full flowering of Uspensky’s remarkable talent. He moved on to a deep depiction of the peasantry and created his own literary genre, his own style. During these years, Uspensky wrote his best works - “From a Village Diary” (1877-1879), “The Peasant and Peasant Labor” (1880) and “The Power of the Land” (1882), which are of a pronounced revolutionary-democratic nature.

Already in his first works, Gleb Uspensky acted as an exponent of the thoughts, moods and hopes of the enslaved masses of the peasantry. Brought up on the ideas of revolutionary democracy of the 60s, Gleb Uspensky understood that Russia needed transformation. But who is capable of rising up to fight against tsarism, against the remnants of serfdom and emerging capitalism? Uspensky searched intensely for such heroes, but could not find them.

In search of positive heroes, Gleb Uspensky in the late 70s turned closely to the peasantry. The essays “From a Village Diary” were the first approach to developing the peasant theme. They vividly depict the disintegration of the foundations of the old village and provide a deeply realistic depiction of peasant life.

“From a Village Diary” is Uspensky’s first major work based on material from peasant life. The appearance of these essays, written in Skolkovo and published in Otechestvennye zapiski, was a major event in the literary and social life of that time. A lot was written and debated about the work, and from that moment on, Uspensky himself became the subject of an intense literary struggle between various groups of the then intelligentsia.

The problem of the village, the peasant question, continued to be in the center of public attention in the late 70s. Although the “going to the people,” which ended in the defeat of the populists, changed the idea of ​​the Russian peasant, of the village, nevertheless, populist doctrines and rose-romantic utopias continued to live among broad layers of the Russian intelligentsia; the landed peasant community was depicted “as the embryo and basis of socialism”, as a bulwark against the approaching capitalism.

In his essays “From a Village Diary,” Uspensky deeply realistically showed peasant life in all its breadth and complexity with its glaring contradictions, truthfully and sincerely spoke about what he saw, and what overturned his own “fantasies” and “read-out” ideas about the village . A truthful and honest democratic artist, Gleb Uspensky could not help but see that the actual course of life refutes populist utopias.

The essays “From a Village Diary” consist of nine chapters: the first three are devoted to the Novgorod village, the rest to Samara, “the steppe strip of the Samara region,” “blessed places,” but “with the same troubles” as in the Novgorod village. Uspensky conscientiously studied Skolkovo and the surrounding area, collecting diverse material, which included not only personal impressions, observations, recordings of meetings, conversations, events, sketches of numerous people, but also documents and information from the history of the settlement of the described places. Plekhanov had this aspect of Uspensky’s essays in mind when he noted that “the works of our populist fiction writers must be studied as carefully as statistical studies on the Russian national economy are studied” 5 .

Depicting a Samara village in the late 70s of the 19th century, Uspensky draws a line of rural people: watchmen, clerks, volost elders, scribes, local intellectuals, merchants, kulaks, and various social groups of peasants. In Chapter VII, Uspensky describes the surrounding three villages (Gvardeytsy, Skolkovo and Zaglyadino) and brings out their true inhabitants. In the village, the writer saw that “the mutual discord of the members of the village society has reached almost dangerous proportions” 6, that there are “two, quite clearly defined village groups: “wealthy and weak”, that “the mass of the people constantly distinguishes from itself such a mass of predators, kulaks, world-eaters who elevate the plunder of their peasant brother to the level of industry, a commercial enterprise - like, for example, the wool trade" 7 that there is an "almost complete absence of moral connection between members of the village community" 8. “Fictitiously united,” says Uspensky about the peasants, “into society by mutual guarantee in the performance of numerous public duties... they, not as community members and government workers, but simply as people - are left each to himself, each is responsible for himself, each for himself suffer yourself, cope - if you can, if you can’t - get lost!” 9 .

The village is torn apart by contradictions, there is a class struggle going on, chestnuts and world-eating kulaks are enslaving the working peasants, the power of the landowner has been replaced by the power of money, under which the “erosion of the middle peasant,” “de-peasantization” has gone much faster (Fig. 2-8).

“Koshtans and world-eaters,” writes Uspensky, “rule over the modern village. Koshtan is a person who lives on the worldly “kosht”: the world “kosht” him, feeds him... The world eater eats the world by trying to morally intimidate and crush him. It is not enough for him to work for him for a debt, it is not enough for him to confuse a person because of need and to make money through labor: he also wants to hold in his hands the conscience of a village man” 11.

In living images and vivid scenes, Uspensky showed the life and customs of the village of that time - ignorance, superstition, savagery, lynching, poverty, hunger, drunkenness. “The man had trousers in tatters and holes, revealing a naked body, his feet were barefoot. The girl who was in his arms was so thin and yellow that she seemed sick to me; the white hair on her head was disheveled, grew in uneven strands and bore traces of very noticeable dirt” 12.

Uspensky writes with sincere sympathy for the working village, with excruciating pain for its miserable life, when he notes peasant problems and peasant deprivation. “There are so many children in the village who grow up illiterate, who cannot count, read or write letters... in a word, they know absolutely nothing. How many beggars, wretched people, cripples, orphans, homeless people, accidentally unfortunate people and left to their fate are there in the village? 13 And this is all the more offensive because there is “a peasant’s mind, talent, thought, in general all the power of his natural talent... but all this, as if for evil, is driven and acts in such a vicious circle, practiced on such phenomena of village life that have either absolutely no significance for the pressing real interests of the village, or have a very distant significance. Nevertheless, in these cases, the peasant mind works, works hard and a lot, observes all sorts of little things, knows and sees a person through and through, does not spare its back, hands, strength, strives not to offend or dishonor a person” 14.

The ninth chapter of the essays is interesting. Analyzing the folk handwritten medical book, the writer correctly saw in it “an immense mass of unsatisfied sorrows and worries that oppress the people’s life,” and subtly and wittily showed the social significance of this document, which goes beyond medicine.

The truth about the village, about the peasant, about his life, shown by Uspensky in his works, was a great event for readers of the 70s. Although the writer made many incorrect conclusions and did not understand the full significance of the economic processes of village life “discovered” by him, his bold, truthful, authoritative word about the people’s life, which he studied in the Samara village, had significant consequences. IN AND. Lenin in his work “What are “friends of the people” and how do they fight against the Social Democrats?” gives the following description of the writer: “Gleb Uspensky stood alone with his skepticism, responding with an ironic smile to the general illusion. With his excellent knowledge of the peasantry and with his enormous artistic talent, penetrating to the very essence of phenomena, he could not help but see that individualism had become the basis of economic relations not only between the usurer and the debtor, but between peasants in general” 15. Based on the essays “From a Village Diary” by V.I. Lenin refers in his work “The Development of Capitalism in Russia”.

Subsequently, the underground Leninist Iskra, in its obituary about the writer, defined the meaning of Uspensky as follows: “G.I. Uspensky immeasurably influenced the course of our revolutionary movement more than any other legal writer of the 70s and 80s... His village essays of the 70s, coinciding with the personal impressions of the revolutionaries who went among the people, contributed to the collapse of the original anarchist rebellious populism... Social Democrats have always will love and read G. Uspensky as one

one of those deeply sincere observers and thinkers who, due to their great truthfulness, help to clarify more and more the only path that goes through the social revolution of the proletariat ... "

G.I. Uspensky believed in the mighty strength of his people and in their bright future. “Whatever you say,” he wrote, “life goes on!” continuously goes and goes!.. I would like to arrange it in such a way that life goes... forward. So that Tuesday would be better than Monday, so that today there would be less evil than there was yesterday, so that tomorrow people would be smarter, kinder to each other than today... This is how it should be, in my opinion.”

Unfortunately, in the fall of 1889, Uspensky began to have a nervous breakdown, which then turned into madness (progressive paralysis). In the fall of 1892, Uspensky was placed in the Kolmovskaya hospital for the mentally ill in Novgorod, where he spent the last years of his life.

In Kolmovo, Uspensky was visited by the populist N.S. Tyutchev, which is described in literary form in one of the episodes of Yu. Davydov’s story “Evenings in Kolmovo”.

Gleb Ivanovich Uspensky died of cardiac paralysis on March 24 (April 6, new style) 1902 in the Kolmovo hospital, and was buried in St. Petersburg at the Volkov cemetery (Fig. 9, 10).

1 G.I. Uspensky, Soch., 1908, vol. I, p. 11.

2 Sister of the famous revolutionary Vera Zasulich.

3 “Samara newspaper”, 1902, No. 83.

4 Ya.L. Teitel appears in Gorky’s memoirs and in Garin-Mikhailovsky’s book “In the Turmoil of Provincial Life.” Many writers visited his apartment.

5 G.I. Uspensky in life. Based on memories, correspondence and documents. Ed. "Academy", 1935, p. 573.

6 G. Plekhanov, Soch., 1924, vol. X, pp. 15-16.

7 G. Uspensky, Soch., 1908, vol. IV, p. 124.

8 Ibid., p. 163.

9 Ibid., p. 114.

10 G. Uspensky, Soch., 1908, vol. IV, p. 112.

11 Ibid., p. 216.

12 Ibid., pp. 106-107.

13 Ibid., p. 110.

14 G. Uspensky, Soch., 1908, vol. IV, p. 195.

15 V.I. Lenin, Works, ed. 4th, vol. I, p. 238.

In preparing this publication, materials from the book were used: K.A. Selivanov. Russian writers in Samara and Samara province. Kuibyshev book publishing house, 1953.

“The tongue chattered liberal phrases, and hands reached out to rob” (Gleb Ivanovich Uspensky)

Gleb Ivanovich Uspensky is a wonderful Russian writer of the late 19th century. Gleb Uspensky was born in October 1843, in the glorious Russian city of Tula. Uspensky's family had many children; his father worked as secretary of the Treasury Chamber of State Property and came from the clergy. Mother Nadezhda was the daughter of the manager of the Chamber where her husband worked. Gleb Uspensky spent his childhood years in his parents' house. Often the boy was sent to Kaluga to visit his maternal grandfather. Relatives often told the boy various stories from their lives. Often wanderers and pilgrims found themselves in the Uspensky house; they told Gleb Uspensky fairy tales, folk beliefs, and omens. Gleb Ivanovich grew up.

It's time to study. Uspensky was enrolled in the Tula gymnasium. Three years will pass and Uspensky will go to study at the Chernigov gymnasium. Here, the future writer will almost forget about his studies, but will plunge headlong into literature and re-read all the Russian classics. Gymnasium Gleb Uspensky took an active part in the publication of the gymnasium magazine “Young Shoots”. In 1861, Gleb Uspensky moved to the capital of the Russian Empire, St. Petersburg. The young man will enter the law faculty of the city university. Three months later, student unrest began in the capital. All first-year students were expelled. Gleb was not lucky either. Then, Uspensky had to move to Moscow to enter Moscow University. Gleb Ivanovich had no money, he was malnourished. But soon, he will be able to get a job as a proofreader at the Moskovskiye Vedomosti printing house.

In 1862, the first story by Gleb Uspensky, “Mikhalych,” was published in Leo Tolstoy’s magazine Yasnaya Polyana. Two years later, Uspensky’s father dies, and all worries about providing for his younger brothers and sisters fall on him. Uspensky managed to receive benefits for raising children. It has become easier. Having moved to Chernigov, the writer began to publish his stories one after another. “Morals of Rasteryaeva Street” - essays by Uspensky, about the life of the lower strata of society, a picture of poverty and need. Folk life without embellishment was a wonder for the reader, this became one of the reasons for the popularity of Gleb Uspensky’s work. In addition to popular love, Uspensky earned flattering reviews from literary critics of various stripes. Goncharov, in general, called Uspensky the heir of Gogol.

Despite great successes, Gleb Ivanovich did not have enough money to provide for his family. In St. Petersburg, Uspensky passed the exam to become a Russian language teacher. Now he was teaching in his native Tula province. In 1868, Uspensky began collaborating with the journal Otechestvennye zapiski. In the same magazine, Uspensky published his new cycle of stories - “Ruin”. The stories told about the degeneration of bureaucratic families, social injustice and peasant revolts. In 1870, Gleb Ivanovich Uspensky married teacher Alexandra Baraeva. In addition, with the help of Nekrasov, Gleb manages to travel abroad, to look at France, Germany and Belgium. The result of his trip to Europe was new works by Uspensky. Despite great literary successes and daily work, the need did not leave the writer.

Worries about money, paying off debts, chronic fatigue and a predisposition to mental disorders caused Uspensky to become mentally ill. In 1892, Gleb Uspensky was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in St. Petersburg. Gleb Uspensky died of heart paralysis in 1902.

Uspensky, Gleb Ivanovich

See Art. N.K. Mikhailovsky under Pavlenkovsky ed. works by U. and in Mikhailovsky’s “Works” (vol. VI); Skabichevsky, "Populist Belletrists" and "History of New Russian Literature"; Protopopov, in “Russian Thought” (1890, No. 8 to 9); Or. Miller, "G. I. Uspensky. Experience in an explanatory presentation of his works" (St. Petersburg, 1889); A. N. Pypin, “History of Russian ethnography” (vol. II, chapter XII).

P. Morozov.

(Brockhaus)

Uspensky, Gleb Ivanovich

(1843-1902] - an outstanding Russian writer. Born in the family of a provincial official. He studied at the gymnasium, first in Tula, then in Chernigov. Remembering his childhood and youth, U. always painted this time with gloomy colors. “The whole situation of my personal life until the age of 20,” he wrote, “doomed me to a complete eclipse of the mind, complete destruction, the deepest savagery of concepts, underdevelopment, and generally separated me from the life of the world at an immeasurable distance.” After graduating from the gymnasium in 1861, U. left for St. Petersburg and entered the Faculty of History and Philology of the University. It was a time of student unrest, and there were almost no classes at the University. However, U., carried away by the revolutionary ideas that widely embraced student youth at that time, thought little about university studies; he was drawn to some very vague, but broad social work.In 1862, U. moved to Moscow, but even here nothing came of his studies at the university.

U. began his literary career in the summer of 1862 as a teacher. L. N. Tolstoy's magazine "Yasnaya Polyana" (pseudonym - G. Bryzgin). Then he worked in the small Moscow magazine "Spectator". In 1863, Uspensky again left for St. Petersburg and here he began to publish in thick magazines: in the “Library for Reading” (essay “The Ragman”), in “Russian Word” (essay “At Night”, etc.). At the invitation of Nekrasov, in 1865 he became an employee of Sovremennik (“Village Meeting”, “Morals of Rasteryaeva Street”). But, despite his immediately apparent great literary talent, he did not have a solid job in any major magazine. At this time, he spent his talent on writing small essays in various small magazines ("Spectator", "Northern Lights", "Iskra", "Alarm Clock", "Women's Messenger", "New Russian Bazaar", Nevsky collection of "Gramotey", "Week", "Fashion Store"). In 1864-1865 he collaborated a lot even in the publication “Northern Lights”, where he wrote texts for lithographs of paintings. Need forced U. to write a lot and hastily at this time. According to him, during this time he wrote about 60 small essays, begun and unfinished, sketched out somehow due to extreme need, for 3-5 rubles.

The government's closure of Sovremennik and Russian Word in 1866 put U., like many other writers, in an even more difficult position.

Having received, after long ordeals, the opportunity to publish in the Women's Magazine, W. was in great difficulty with the heroes of his begun works, with his drunkards, shoemakers and other characters. He was forced to rename the heroes of “Morals of Rasteryaeva Street”, which he began publishing in Sovremennik, and to shred and spoil his works.

This hard life of literary bohemia ended in 1868, when U. began constant collaboration in the journal Otechestvennye zapiski, which at that time came under the editorship of Nekrasov and Shchedrin. W. published his works almost exclusively in this magazine until it closed in 1884.

In 1871 (or 1872) W. went abroad, visited Germany, and Ch. arr. in France (in Paris). This time he did not live abroad for long. In January 1875 he went abroad for the second time, staying there until the end of the summer of 1875 (Paris, London). While living abroad, U. became close to many Russian emigrant revolutionaries (German Lopatin, Clements, Ivanchin-Pisarev, P. L. Lavrov, etc.).

Upon returning from abroad, U. entered service in the administration of the Syzran-Vyazemskaya railway. etc., but was completely unable to bear the atmosphere of this institution and the society of intellectuals who, under the cover of hypocritical people-loving phrases, had become in the service of capital, a society of “God-monks,” as he put it. At the end of 1875, U. went as a correspondent to Serbia, which at that time entered into a war with Turkey. The populists saw in this war the manifestation of a spontaneous popular movement on the part of the Serbs, and U. wanted to discern this movement on the spot. But even here W. quickly understood the essence of the matter. “There is no Slavic case, but only a chest,” he wrote.

Returning to Russia, U., in search of living popular forces that could become the creators of a new life, decided to take a closer look at the Russian peasantry, to which until that time he had paid little attention. For this purpose, he settled in a village in the Novgorod province. ; the result of these observations by W. was a series of brilliant essays “From a Village Diary.” From here, in 1878, U. moved to Samara province to study the life and mood of the steppe peasant there. Here, in the village of Skolkovo - for greater convenience of observation - he entered the service as a clerk for a savings and loan partnership, which at that time many populists were fond of. The result of these observations was a long essay, “The Passion-Bearers of Small Credit.” “National nonsense,” - this is how U. briefly defined the essence of the work of these partnerships.

In the fall of 1879, U. settled in St. Petersburg, leaving from there quite often to Novgorod province, where he built himself a small house near the Chudovo station. These trips to the village gave U. the opportunity to stock up on rich observational material for a number of brilliant essays on topics of village life (series: “People and Morals”, “Little Children”, “In the Native Field”, “Without Certain Occupations”, “The Power of the Land” , “Willy-nilly”, etc.). From time to time he made trips to Russia (to the Caucasus, Siberia), which also provided a lot of material for the observant eye of U. In the spring of 1884, “Domestic Notes” were closed, and U. began to publish his essays in chapters. arr. in the magazines "Russian Thought" and "Northern Herald", as well as in the newspaper "Russian Vedomosti". In the autumn of 1889, U. began to experience a nervous disorder, which, becoming more and more intensified, turned into madness (progressive paralysis). In the fall of 1892, W. was placed in a hospital for the mentally ill, where he spent the last years of his life. U. died of cardiac paralysis in 1902. He was buried in St. Petersburg at the Volkov cemetery.

Most old critics and literary critics viewed U. as a populist, although in his depiction of the life of the peasantry, thanks to his keen observation, he retreated from the dogma of populism and from the idealization of the peasantry. This opinion was shared by G.V. Plekhanov. This opinion cannot be considered correct. The starting point in understanding the creativity of U. should be taken from the point of view of V. I. Lenin, who noted the independence of U. in relation to the populists. Lenin’s assessment of Uspensky can be established on the basis of the numerous use of Uspensky’s images and his sympathetic quotation from the work of the early Russian Marxist Gurvich: “Gleb Uspensky stood alone with his skepticism, responding with an ironic smile to the general illusion [of the populists - Ya. M.]. With his excellent knowledge of the peasantry and with his enormous artistic talent, penetrating to the very essence of phenomena, he could not help but see that individualism had become the basis of economic relations not only between the usurer and the debtor, but between peasants in general" (quoted by Lenin in the book "What are “friends of the people”?”, Works, vol. 1,158).

Uspensky's youth fell in the 60s; At this time, his main aspirations took shape. Ideas of the 60s had a strong influence on him. Uspensky rated Chernyshevsky unusually highly. “There was one person in St. Petersburg,” he wrote, “and, moreover, such a person that there was only one in all of Russia. To my misfortune, I managed to witness how this person suddenly faded into obscurity.” The government's defeat of the revolutionary movement of the 60s, the closure of Sovremennik and Russian Word - two leading journals of this movement - were painfully perceived by U. “I was ready to commit suicide,” he wrote, recalling this time.

It is difficult to present U.’s positive worldview system. Remembering the 60s. and the circle of young talented writers to which he belonged at that time, U. wrote in his autobiography: “No one had even the slightest definite views on society, on the people, on the goals of the Russian intelligentsia.” There was a vague but strong desire to create a social system in which all exploitation, all oppression, all “squeezing” would be excluded. The lack of a solid scientific education and ignorance of foreign languages ​​(Uspensky knew only French) and, consequently, the inability to become acquainted with the movement of Western European thought, given the then poverty of Russian literature, further contributed to this uncertainty of a positive worldview.

Developed in the 60s. U. perceived the movement of revolutionary democracy as the beginning of a broad social movement, as the beginning of a radical change in all life, in all social relations, as the beginning of a “global flood,” as he put it.

W. had an unusually strong, observant, critical mind. Naturally, the question arose before him: what social forces could become the support of the new movement? The movement of the 60s, although it was based on the upcoming peasant revolution that was still maturing at that time, initially paid a lot of attention to the urban poor, the oppressed and exploited layers of the urban population; This is where U.’s attention was drawn at first. His first works were devoted to the depiction of these layers, and in particular the series of essays “Morals of Rasteryaeva Street” and “Ruin”. The results of U.'s observations turned out to be the saddest.

In “Morals of Rasteryaeva Street” and in “Ruin” U. describes the life and way of life of the city through which the railway under construction should pass, in which there is a factory (this city is obviously Tula). And here he sees the same sad pictures of dying and ruin. W. also gave a number of essays devoted to the life, everyday life and moods of the capital's poor, but here the writer did not find anything gratifying. Everywhere he saw incredible spiritual squalor, a brutal struggle over a piece of bread, petty squabbles and quarrels, and the worst thing from his point of view was that he did not find any attempts at protest or struggle in these oppressed people. ""Rasteryaeva Street" obediently bears its burden - need." “Quiet than water, lower than the grass” - this is the title of U. in one of his series of essays. “Prolonged suffering disappeared fruitlessly,” he writes, “without leaving a single drop of hostility towards its causes.” “Is it really possible,” I thought, “even such suffering leaves nothing but silence, sinks into the ground without a trace, only frightens people and bends their heads even lower?” And about the orphan Martha (the story “On the Black Staircase”) he says that “she was free only in tears and sobs.”

U. explains this lack of protest, on the one hand, by the fact that need weighed too heavily on these unfortunate people, and on the other hand, by the feeling of their powerlessness, which gives rise to a feeling of fear. “The Russian person is timid, like a hunted hare, and is generally afraid, for no apparent reason, without any real danger.”

But in the rich and extensive gallery of depressed and crushed people depicted by U., whom life has made “quieter than water, lower than the grass,” there is one exception. This is one of the heroes of the essays “Ruin” - the worker Mikhail Ivanovich.

Mikhail Ivanovich endured a lot in his life. He "tossed and turned in the factory at night in fire and flame." The result of the “squeeze,” according to Mikhail Ivanovich’s explanation, was “the stupefaction and impoverishment of the common man, which could be seen in our workers, in our peasants.” Mikhail Ivanovich himself escaped this stupor, for fate pitted him against the revolutionary-minded seminarian Maxim Petrovich. Maxim Petrovich and his comrades taught Mikhail Ivanovich to read and write. From them he learned the essence of all “robber mechanics”. “I’ve seen so many robbers,” says Mikhail Ivanovich. “I began to understand why this is our brother in holes, bast shoes, for example.” The thoughts sown by Maxim Petrovich do not leave Mikhail Ivanovich’s head. He begins to show disobedience everywhere and tries to prevent the surrounding robbery. While working at the factory, he once threw a stone at him for some kind of “squeezing” of a factory tenant, and although there was no direct evidence against Mikhail Ivanovich, he still spent six months in prison on suspicion and was expelled from the factory “for rioting.” . This further strengthened Mikhail Ivanovich in his indignant protest, but all of Mikhail Ivanovich’s protests did not meet with any sympathy in the provincial town. He remains alone and powerless. He only sees that the new way of life, which is personified for him in the image of the railroad, the “cast iron”, is undermining the roots of the old pressure. Here, as in a number of subsequent essays (“The Book of Checks” and “Evil News”, etc.), the appearance of cast iron means for U. the beginning of the establishment of new, capitalist relations. But Mikhail Ivanovich does not see elements around him on which his protest could be based. Mikhail Ivanovich’s thought turns to Maxim Petrovich, who has left for St. Petersburg. Chugunka, the development of capitalism should help him find Maxim Petrovich, help the worker connect with the revolutionary. He is looking forward to the day when the first cast iron train starts running. He rides it to St. Petersburg, but there, despite all his efforts, he cannot find Maxim Petrovich, who has disappeared somewhere without a trace. Instead, he finds there only weak-willed, flabby, dying people “quieter than water, lower than the grass.”

In the person of the rebel worker Mikhail Ivanovich, we see a man who “is not afraid of anything”; he is ready for protest, eager for it, but he is alone and does not know the ways of struggle. He wants to strengthen his strength by joining forces with the revolutionary Maxim Petrovich, but this bond fails. And if the worker Mikhail Ivanovich turns out to be weak, cut off from the revolutionaries, then the revolutionary-minded urban intellectuals, who have no support among the broad masses of the people, are also weak. According to U., this is “a numerically insignificant group with a collective student Ivanov at the head.”

Having visited abroad - in Germany, France, Belgium, England - U. saw there a completely different picture of social relations. He saw there, first of all, the absence of “universal fear”: “In France,” he wrote, “the people are their own master.” He further saw there - especially in England - a vivid picture of class stratification, social contrasts and the simplicity and clarity of the class struggle, which the people-loving intellectuals tried to obscure. In the faces of the executed fighters of the Paris Commune, he saw people who, with an unfurled banner, were boldly fighting for the ultimate ideals of communism, while in Russia, with rare exceptions, he observed among the intelligentsia only “communards with the ability to be content with the philosophy of a penny of silver.”

In Western Europe, the emergence of the proletariat and the development of its class struggle were a consequence of the development of capitalism. It was natural that with regard to Russia, Uspensky drew attention first of all to the results to which the beginning development of capitalism is leading in our country. Even in “Ruin” he noted that this development deals a blow to the old, pre-revolutionary methods of “squeezing.”

In 1875, U. published an interesting essay “Evil News” in Otechestvennye zapiski. In it, he describes the changes that the beginning of the development of capitalism in the form of steamships and railways brings to the remote province. Under their influence, the collapse of the old patriarchal life begins, and in addition, thought came to the peacefully sleeping outback, the need to think came.

But Russia at that time was experiencing a period of primitive accumulation, that is, a stage at which the influence of the development of capitalism as a force generating the proletariat was still weakly affected. But at this stage, the destructive power of capital appeared very sharply, ruining the masses of the peasantry and artisans and cruelly exploiting them. Probably, under the influence of these last impressions, W. did not finish his series “Evil News”. In 1876, he began the series “New Times, New Concerns” in “Notes of the Fatherland”; in one of the essays in this series - “The Book of Checks” - he gave a picture of the predatory and predatory action of capital on the village into which it penetrates. So, the hope that the development of capitalism would create support for the “global flood” was pushed far into the future. At first W. paid very little attention to the peasantry. The revealed lack of support among the urban strata of the population, on the one hand, and the development of the populist movement with its “going to the people”, on the other, directed U.’s attention towards the countryside. But his observations turn out to be very far from the bright hopes of the populists regarding the strength of the old “foundations” of village life - the land community, artel, “peace”, etc. - and the possibility of developing these institutions towards socialism. U. clearly saw that capital had already penetrated deeply into the economic life of the village and was quickly disintegrating old patriarchal relations there, and in their place establishing new relations characterized by the power of money.

“Whoever is not gray, who has not been consumed by need, who has been forced by chance or something else to think about his situation, who has just a little understood the tragicomic aspects of peasant life, cannot help but see his deliverance solely in a thick wad of money, only in a pack, and won’t think twice about getting it.” “The harmony of agricultural ideals is mercilessly destroyed by civilization.” “The kulak mind and kulak knowledge are always so strong and thorough that, if not to convince, then to silence a small group of village people trying to reason. And behind this group stands a solid mass of people who obediently, neatly, like a machine, bear a heavy burden on their shoulders both old and new orders." “There is no social life, no community here (in the village), and there is nothing to practice it on.” If things continue to go the same way, then “in ten years - a lot, a lot - to Ivan Ermolaich [a middle peasant. - H. M.] and his kind will not be able to live in the world." These were the conclusions to which U.'s first observations in the village led. U. emphasized that the whole life of a peasant of that time was entirely determined by the power of nature. Nature "roots in the consciousness of the peasant the idea of the need for unconditional obedience,” obedience to God, the tsar, the priest, the policeman. And from here the consequence followed that for the revolutionary intellectual fighting against these authorities, there is no soil, no support in the countryside. “To preserve the Russian agricultural type, Russian agricultural orders and harmony , based on the conditions of agricultural labor, all national and private social relations must be resisted in every possible way against the influences that destroy this harmony; To do this, it is necessary to destroy everything that bears a sign that is more or less alien to the agricultural order: kerosene lamps, calico factories, railways, telegraphs, taverns, cab drivers and innkeepers, even books, tobacco, cigars, cigarettes, jackets, etc. etc.... But if such a demand were actually presented, then there would hardly be at least one person at the present time who would define it otherwise than as extreme frivolity.”

“And therefore,” concludes U., “the task is truly insoluble: civilization is advancing, and you, an observer of Russian life, not only cannot stop this procession, but also, as Ivan Ermolaich himself assures you and proves, you should not, you have neither the right nor the reason to interfere... So, you cannot stop the processions, but you should not interfere.”

U. is one of the very few representatives of revolutionary democracy who, thanks to his strong mind and deep insight, managed to preserve the revolutionary ideas of the 60s. and in the conditions of the 70s. However, the influence of populism still had a rather strong impact on Ukraine in the 80s. due to the fact that he had to live and work surrounded by populism, and in particular due to the strong influence of N.K. Mikhailovsky on him. When publishing collected works of his works, Uspensky sometimes did not include in them works that sharply contradicted populism (for example, “Evil News”). He reworked his other essays for collected works in a populist manner and made notes in them. Thus, in his essays of the late 70-80s. a rather strong duality is noticeable: on the one hand, especially where he falls into journalism, the idealization of the peasantry is visible, and on the other hand, where he acts as an artist and observer, we see the most sober, harsh truth about the village and the peasantry . This bitter truth often aroused great discontent among the sentimental populists. So eg. V. Figner wrote in her memoirs: “He paints only the negative sides of a peasant, and it’s sickening to look at this pitiful human herd, overwhelmed by material interests... Is there really no light in village life and in the peasant’s soul?.. Why paint a peasant like that? colors that no one will want to get into the village and everyone will try to stay away from it?” In response to these reproaches, U. replied with an ironic smile that they required him to be a “chocolate man.” We see the same dissatisfaction with the lack of idealization of the village and the harsh truth about it in Plekhanov’s article “What is the dispute about?”, written by him back when he was a populist.

The talent of a subtle artist-observer protected U. from any consistent submission to populism. In his essays one does not see such characteristic features of populism as the desire for a “merger” of the intellectual with the peasantry (“it’s creepy and scary to live in this human ocean,” he wrote, referring to the peasant masses), or the idealization of the community, “peace” , artels, etc. “foundations”, the conviction that there is no proletariat in Russia and that it faces a special path of development towards socialism, different from Western Europe. Here is what U. wrote about this last idea: “The exhausted society came up with the idea of ​​​​stopping the flywheel of the European order, which was dragging us down the hated path of all kinds of untruth, us who do not want it, who want “in honor”, ​​“in conscience” and all that. ... And so various obstacles began to be thrust into the spokes of this wheel, which, however, turned out to be very unreliable: the wheel continued to swing, throwing out those, mostly paper, obstacles with which they wanted to stop it: the Slavic race, the Slavic idea, Orthodoxy, the absence of the proletariat and etc. - all this, proven on a huge number of sheets of paper, was broken and disheveled by the wheel that never stopped waving, which seemed to say to the Russian man: all this is nonsense; you have and will have a proletariat in large numbers... Pharisee "! A deceiver! He robs himself and complains about some Europe, a deceiver! A liar, a coward, a lazy person!"

So, U. saw no independent path of development for Russia towards socialism, bypassing capitalism. He considered the development of capitalism and its inevitable death undoubted: “Of course, the coupon will be destroyed, but not very soon. On the contrary, there will still be unprecedentedly brilliant pages in his biography,” W. wrote in the late 80s. The development of capitalism in Russia, as it became a fact, interested U. more and more, and in the late 80s. he seriously intended to write a series of essays "On the Coming of Coupon", which he wanted to call "The Power of Capital" or "The Misdeeds of Mr. Coupon."

In 1887, the 25th anniversary of U.’s literary activity was celebrated. Among the mass of letters greeting him, he received a letter from the Urals written by a group of workers who greeted him as their favorite writer. U. was delighted with this letter, which showed him that those single workers whom he depicted in “Ruin” in the person of Mikhail Ivanovich were growing into a major social force, which would be able to organize the fight against the predation of Mr. Coupon and the “squeezing " over the "common man". U. noted the growth of this new social force in his response to the “Society of Lovers of Russian Literature,” which elected him as an honorary member, joyfully pointing to these masses of a new, future reader, a new, fresh “lover of literature.”

Significant independence from the reactionary-utopian ideas of populism provided U.’s literary creativity with a number of advantages compared to populist fiction: U. is alien to its naturalism, ethnographism, and formlessness. The typical depiction of life, the great strength of critical realism, and the brightness of the scenes are distinguished by U.’s essays. U.’s early works (“Morals of Rasteryaeva Street,” for example) are also characterized by elements of everyday life. The heroes here are household masks (Kalachev and others). But already in “Ruin” U. gives an idea of ​​the development of character (Cheremukhin). True, numerous images of this time are very reminiscent of each other (Cherepkov, Cheremukhin, P. Khlebnikov, Pevtsov, etc.). Since the transition to rural themes (1877), the circle of Uspensky’s images has expanded significantly (various types of baras and peasants of various status and conditions), and the author is interested not so much in the fate of each of them individually, but in the public interests they represent. Hence the breadth and versatility of the social characteristics of these images (Ivan Afanasyevich, Ivan Ermolaich and many others). In later adaptations of old works and new things (70-80s), U. also avoids lexical naturalism, replacing provincialisms and dialectisms with commonly used words. Like all our revolutionary educators, we observe in Uspensky a craving not only for artistic, but also for journalistic propaganda of his ideas. The journalistic elements of his essays are significant. And in the very structure of his works of art, this feature is sharply reflected, first of all, in plot construction: the action is usually led by the author himself, not at all hiding behind the actions of the heroes, openly proving his ideas with them. Uspensky mainly wrote in the genre of essays. U.’s inquisitive, intense thought, which sought first of all to discover new aspects of Russian life, did not have time to generalize its phenomena in the complex forms of stories and novels.

Bibliography: I. Works, 8 vols., ed. F. Pavlenkova, St. Petersburg, 1883-1886; the same, 3 vols., with intro. article by N. Mikhailovsky, published, the same, St. Petersburg, 1889-1891 (reprinted several times during the author’s lifetime without changes); Complete works, 12 vols., ed. B.K. Fuchs, Kiev, 1903-1904 (the most complete edition, carried out with the participation of the son of the writer A.G. Uspensky; volume XII contains 22 stories that were not previously included in the collected works of U., and a bibliographer. index to works by U.); the same with the biographer. essay, comp. N. Rubakin, 6 vols., ed. A.F. Marx, St. Petersburg, 1908 (repetition of the previous edition); the same, 6 vols.. ed. Lit.-ed. Department of the People's Commissariat education, P., 1918 (reprint of the previous edition); Selected works. Ed. I. P. Kubikov a, Giza, M., 1926; Works and letters in one volume, ed. B. G. Uspensky and others, Giza, M. - L., 1929; Selected stories, State. ed. artist literature, Leningrad, 1934; Selected works, Ed., commentary and biographical. essay by A. S. Glinka-Volzhsky, Goslitizdat, M., 1935; Uncollected Works, Ed., preface. and note. R. P. Materina, vol. I, Goslitizdat, M., 1936 (30 works by U. dating back to the 60-70s were published).

II. For V. I. Lenin’s statements about U., see the “Reference Book” for the II and III editions of V. I. Lenin’s works, M., 1935; Nikitin P. [Tkachev P. N.], Literary sketches. Unthought thoughts. (Works by G. Uspensky), "Business", 1872, 1; Him, Empirical Fiction Writers and Metaphysical Fiction Writers, “The Case,” 1875, III, V, VII; His, The Man in the Salons of Modern Fiction, "The Case", 1879, III, VI - IX; All three articles have been reprinted. in “Selected Works” by P. N. Tkachev, ed. B. P. Kozmina, vol. 2, 3 and 4, M., 1932-1934; Plekhanov G.V., Our populist fiction writers. Art. 1. G. I. Uspensky, “Social Democrat”. Literary-political Sat., book. 1, Geneva, 1888 (and in Sochin., vol. X, M. - L., 1924); Protopopov M., Literary-critical characteristics, St. Petersburg, 1896; Gornfeld A., Aesthetics Ch. Uspensky, in Sat. "At a glorious post", St. Petersburg, 1901; Korolenko V., About Gleb Ivanovich Uspensky, “Russian wealth”, 1902, V; Lunacharsky A.V., Journal notes, "Education", 1904, IV; Borovsky V.V., “Superfluous people”, “Pravda”, 1905, VII (and in “Sochin.”, vol. II, M., 1931); Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky D.N., Collection. cit., vol. VIII, History of the Russian intelligentsia, part II, St. Petersburg, 1911; Aptekman O. V., Gleb Ivanovich Uspensky, M., 1922; Ivanchin-Pisarev A., From the life of Ch. Iv. Uspensky (According to memoirs), "Red Nov", 1925, VII - VIII; Voitolovsky L., The Tragedy of Gleb Uspensky, “Zvezda”, 1927, No. 9; Cheshikhin-Vetrinsky V., G. I. Uspensky. Biographer, essay. Ed. and introductory article by P. N. Sakulin, ed. "Federation", M., 1929 (there is also a bibliography); Letkova E., About Gleb Ivanovich, Memoirs, "Links", collection. 5, M., 1935; Glagolev N., Artistic essay by Gleb Uspensky, "Art Literature", 1935, No. 9; Glinka-Volzhsky A.S., Gleb Uspensky in life. Based on memories, correspondence and documents. Entry Art. N. Meshcheryakova, ed. "Academia", M. - L., 1935.

Great Soviet Encyclopedia - (1843 1902), Russian. writer. In the 70s and 80s. created a unique social philosophy. and morals. concept of nature and agriculture. labor, illustrated in the essays “The Peasant and Peasant Labor” (1880) will compare. analysis of the poetry of A.V. Koltsov and... ... Lermontov Encyclopedia