Nikolai Vasilyevich Uspensky (; 31 May 1837 – 2 November 1889) was a Russian writer, and a cousin of fellow writer Gleb Uspensky. Uspensky wrote extensively about the realities of peasant life in rural Russia around the time of the Emancipation Act of 1861 by Tsar Alexander II, achieving critical and commercial success. After experiencing increasing alienation and career decline, Uspensky committed suicide on 2 November 1889.
Biography Nikolai Vasilyevich Uspensky was born on 31 May (Old Style 18 May), 1837, in Stupino, a small village in Tula Governorate, Russian Empire, to a local clergyman. He had seven siblings, brothers Ivan, Alexander and Mikhail, and sisters Anna, Maria, Elizaveta and Seraphima. Despite his relatively privileged position as the son of a priest, Uspensky grew up surrounded by poverty and alcoholism-driven violence, and frequently socialized with peasant children and often labored with them. "While me and brother Ivan were aspiring to the masters' children's lifestyle, Nikolai was different: he ploughed, sawn, mowed and was often making nightwatch trips into the fields," his brother Mikhail later remembered.Korney Chukovsky. The Life and Works of Nikolay Uspensky. The Complete Works of K.I. Chukovsky in 6 volumes. Khudozhestvennaya Literatura. 1976. Vol. VI. pp. 138–140
In 1848, Uspensky joined the theological seminary in Tula where he was flogged on a daily basis.Chukovsky, pp. 141–150 According to Korney Chukovsky,
The only person who took interest in Uspensky's life was his uncle, Ivan Uspensky, a wealthy Tula-based state official. Ivan had a son, future writer Gleb, who was forbidden to communicate with "dirty bursaks" (as pupils of seminary [bursa] were known), and who every morning was taken to school in a carriage. This in itself provided enough reason for Nikolai to hate his cousin Gleb. "We are brothers with him, in law, of course. Two Lazaruses, he—the rich one, me the poor. He a son to a local government secretary, me a country boy, son of a poor priest. He rolled like cheese in butter in his youth, I gnawed my crust. He left school with all kinds of diplomas, I remained an undergraduate forever," Nikolai Uspensky later was quoted to say.Martyanov, P.K. The Deeds and the People of the Century. Saint Petersburg, 1893, р. 233.
Uspensky was not a good student. He spent most of his time in local traktirs, playing pool and getting drunk, and was described as a "haggard loafer going on a downward spiral," but it was in those days that he started writing. In 1856, prior to graduation, Uspensky left the seminary and moved to Saint Petersburg to enroll in the Medical Surgical Academy. In less than a year, though, he was expelled after a bizarre incident in which he vandalized a medical cabinet, apparently without any reason. He joined the St. Petersburg University historical and philological faculty, but soon left it too.
Writing career In 1857, Syn Otechestva published his first two stories, "Old Woman" and "The Christening", both ignored by critics. His third one, "The Good Existence", was published in 1858 by Sovremennik, and made an impression; soon the author signed a contract, making a commitment to publish his work in this magazine exclusively. Besides, the editor Nikolai Nekrasov asked the Saint Petersburg University rector Pletnyov to support Uspensky financially. Nekrasov saw in Uspensky the possible pivotal figure for the magazine whose major contributors, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Grigorovich, felt no affiliation with its new, more radical policy and were beginning to look elsewhere. Also in Sovremennik came out the short stories "Piglet", "Scenes from a Village Holiday", "Grushka" and "The Dragon" (1858), "The Holy Day's Eve", "A Village Apothecary", "Bachelor" and "The Road Scenes" (1859), "The Country Newspaper", "The Evening", "Food Train" and autobiographical "Brusilov" (1860).Handbook of Russian Literature, Victor Terras, Yale University Press 1990.
Uspensky’s stories, describing the poverty and the misery of the peasants, the lives of Russian clergymen, and raznochintsy intellectuals, attracted the attention of many prominent radicals. In 1860 Nikolai Dobrolyubov recommended several of his stories for the school reader compiled by Alexey Galakhov. Chernyshevsky had many private talks with him, and the conservative Russian press, when criticizing Sovremennik, often mentioned the two in one breath, regarding Uspensky "a loudmouth for Chernyshevsky's ideas."
In Europe
In January 1861, Uspensky went abroad to travel through Italy and Switzerland, and spent some time in France, financed by Nekrasov who was waiting from him a big novel. But, according to the biographer Korney Chukovsky, "…he bought himself dandy clothes, a wide-brimmed hat and started sauntering the Paris boulevards like a rich tourist, as if foreseeing this to be his last bright glimpse of life." On several occasions in Paris Uspensky met Turgenev, who was in the process of working upon his Fathers and Sons novel, and was in need of a first-hand material. Having only read of 'nihilists' in the Russian press he saw the chance to meet the real one as a godsend. In a letter to Pavel Annenkov, Turgenev wrote: "A misanthrope by the name of Uspensky, Nikolay has been here recently and dined at my place. He saw it as his duty for some reason to slag Pushkin and was assuring me that what the latter was only doing in his poems, was exclaiming incessantly: "Rise, rise to fight for our saintly Rus!" Something tells me he'll soon go mad." Thinking apparently that such 'misanthropic' view on Pushkin was typical for the 'new men', Turgenev used the quoted phrase in his novel, giving it to his character Bazarov.Чуковский, стр. 151–156
In Rome, Uspensky met Vasily Botkin, an expert in antique culture, who tried to share his love for it with his companion. But Uspensky believed that Rome looked "ugly". "None of the art masterpieces could shield off from me emaciated faces and hopes in boots of poor people," he later wrote. In 15 years time he published his travellers' sketches, very naive, superficial and patchy, but full of sympathy for suffering lower class.
1861 reform Uspensky's attitude towards the Emancipation reform of 1861 was hostile, close to that of Chernyshevsky, as both men saw attempts to improve the life of a Russian peasant class by gradual reform as unacceptable. "I saw this [reform] coming long ago and felt no interest in the Manifest whatsoever, never even read the Charter,” he wrote to Sluchevsky. His best known stories of the time, the anti-liberal "Country Apothecary" and "Village Theatre", targeted people posing as 'enlighteners' as vile and dangerous schemers.
A few years later, on Andrey Krayevsky's recommendation, the then-minister of education Alexander Golovnin commissioned Uspensky to inspect schools in Moscow, Tula and Oryol governorates, and advice upon possible measures of improving the quality of teaching there. Uspensky in his report maintained that educational reform made no sense in rural areas devastated by Alexander II's reforms, as what the Russian peasant needed first was having enough to eat. He also opposed the Narodnik movement, which held the obschina (rural community) as their ideal, seeing it as just another mechanism for making rich peasants richer and push the poor men further into poverty. "The contemporary Russian peasantry is hopeless, it won't ever resurrect, the sick one is going to die," wrote Uspensky in one of his articles, "Notes of a Country Landlord".
There was a basic difference between Uspensky's nihilism and the ideology of new Sovremennik. While the latter rejected liberal reforms seeing them as a hindrance for the forthcoming social upheaval they were hoping for, the former had no specific reason for his hatred for all things coming from the government. Chukovsky wrote "…He's never even made an attempt to try and understand the political doctrine behind the magazine that's been fostering him as the driving force in a peasant revolution... So when Chernyshevsky used his early prose to support his own theory about Russian peasants being ready to riot, Uspensky felt apparently so indifferent to the latter as to leave Sovremennik for the enemy camp right after its publication".
Scandals and decline in popularity In late summer of 1861, Uspensky returned from his Paris vacation and, after a short stay at Stupino, his remote home village in Tula Governorate, went to Saint Petersburg where his debut short story collection Stories by N.V.Uspensky had been just published to a great success.Chukovsky, pp. 179–185 "This unexpected success turned his head around", wrote Yakov Polonsky later. "Thank God, I am not devoid of talent. Don't know about the future, but now for my antagonists I'll stand like a bone in throat, won't let them get a step ahead of me," Uspensky told the journalist Martyanov. Uspensky's 'antagonists' were a group of emerging raznotchinsky writers—Alexander Levitov, Nikolai Pomyalovsky, Vasily Sleptsov—whom he was now regarding as dangerous competitors and, according to Martyanov, referred to as 'mite', 'scum' and 'dirt'.
Having spent eight months in Europe on Nekrasov's money (2,500 roubles according to Chukovsky), suddenly accused the later of underpaying him and an ugly scandal broke out. In January 1862, Uspensky asked Chernyshevsky to summon a court of arbitration to resolve the financial issue, the latter refused, and said that should such a hearing ever take place, he will be on Nekrasov's side. In early1862, Uspensky severed all ties with the magazine and retired to Stupino, very ill and depressed. This self-imposed exile lasted for a short time as Otechestvennye Zapiski, Lev Tolstoy, and Ivan Turgenev began encouraging Uspensky to return to writing. Turgenev, who at the time himself was openly accusing Nekrasov of financial wrongdoings, accepted Uspensky's version of events wholeheartedly. In 1862, Tolstoy invited Uspensky to teach Russian grammar to his Yasnaya Polyana school. Some years later Tolstoy told one of his guests, Zakharyin: "I rate Nikolai Uspensky much higher than the second one, Gleb, who's well behind in terms of both realism and artistry." After a quarrel with Tolstoy, Nikolai Uspensky moved to Spasskoye, Turgenev's estate where the latter granted him a plot of land. Again, this stay was short, as one relative stated: "Being carried away at the time with ideas of agricultural innovations, Nikolai Vasilyevich began cultivating his soil in peculiar manner, fertilizing it with salt and steamed animal's bones... None of this worked of course and he, knowing nothing about agriculture, has left Spasskoye disgruntled."Chukovsky, pp. 186–189 For several years Uspensky travelled through Russia, teaching in numerous schools and gymnasiums in Tula governorate, Orenburg, Saint Petersburg, and back at Yasnaya Polyana again, never staying at one place for long.The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970–1979). 2010, The Gale Group, Inc. Finally, driven by financial difficulties, he returned to Spasskoye to sell the land he had been given. Horrified, Turgenev asked his manager to interfere, "Should this man be so dishonest as to sell this plot to a third party?" he wondered in a letter.The Letters by I. Is. Turgenev in 13 Volumes. Vol.VII. 1964. p. 205. Negotiations proved futile and only after Turgenev agreed to buy back his own land that Uspensky agreed to leave the estate, still accusing the host of "having taken back his own gift." Turgenev wrote to Polonsky: "Nikolai Uspensky is a finished man, we might as well forget about him."