Martin Antonenko
A Fixture
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2008
- Messages
- 9,001
Arrested For An Obituary In The Newspaper!
On April 28, 1852, the famous Russian writer Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818 – 1883) is arrested! By the way, his portrait was painted by Ilja Repin, my favorite painter...:
The reason for the arrest: Turgenev had published an obituary for his fellow writer Nikolai Nikolayevich Gogol, who died on March 4, 1852, in the newspaper "Moskowskije Novostij".
Gogol...
... was suffering from shizophrenia. He fell under the influence of a priest who condemned his works as corrupt and blasphemous. As a result, Gogol, in a fit of insanity, burned the manuscript of the second part of his famous novel "Mertwije Dushi" ("The Dead Souls").
After a strict religious fast, which amounted to a planned suicide, Nikolai Gogol died in Moscow.
Both Gogol and Turgenev had long been a thorn in the side of the state secret police because their books too often vividly portrayed the brutal realities and suffering of the poor, especially the serfs.
Also, in his famous novel "Taras Bulba", Gogol had...
... told a little too frankly and vividly about the free and ur-democratic life of the Cossacks. The authorities didn't like that at all...
Turgenev had also often attracted negative attention from the repressive authorities:
When he inherited his parents' estate in 1850, he immediately released all 500 serfs and employed them from then on as tributary workers - the state authorities didn't like that either...!
Turgenev's most recent work, the short stories "Zapistinij Okhotinika" ("Notices of a Hunter") could only appear through a gross oversight by the censorship authorities and quickly became very popular.
After this mishap, the tsarist authorities devised a plan to take action against Turgenev at the earliest opportunity. His obituary of Gogol now offers the welcome reason.
But the man is just too famous to be deported to Siberia or locked away.
The verdict: Turgenev was banished to his Spasskoye estate near Oryol (Orel) for a year. And there permanently monitored by "Ochrana" agents.
The manor house still exists...:
Sounds like a light punishment, but it wasn't like that: For an intellectual and writer, the deepest province, Spasskoye, was just as far away from Saint Petersburg as the moon...
On April 28, 1852, the famous Russian writer Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818 – 1883) is arrested! By the way, his portrait was painted by Ilja Repin, my favorite painter...:
The reason for the arrest: Turgenev had published an obituary for his fellow writer Nikolai Nikolayevich Gogol, who died on March 4, 1852, in the newspaper "Moskowskije Novostij".
Gogol...
... was suffering from shizophrenia. He fell under the influence of a priest who condemned his works as corrupt and blasphemous. As a result, Gogol, in a fit of insanity, burned the manuscript of the second part of his famous novel "Mertwije Dushi" ("The Dead Souls").
After a strict religious fast, which amounted to a planned suicide, Nikolai Gogol died in Moscow.
Both Gogol and Turgenev had long been a thorn in the side of the state secret police because their books too often vividly portrayed the brutal realities and suffering of the poor, especially the serfs.
Also, in his famous novel "Taras Bulba", Gogol had...
... told a little too frankly and vividly about the free and ur-democratic life of the Cossacks. The authorities didn't like that at all...
Turgenev had also often attracted negative attention from the repressive authorities:
When he inherited his parents' estate in 1850, he immediately released all 500 serfs and employed them from then on as tributary workers - the state authorities didn't like that either...!
Turgenev's most recent work, the short stories "Zapistinij Okhotinika" ("Notices of a Hunter") could only appear through a gross oversight by the censorship authorities and quickly became very popular.
After this mishap, the tsarist authorities devised a plan to take action against Turgenev at the earliest opportunity. His obituary of Gogol now offers the welcome reason.
But the man is just too famous to be deported to Siberia or locked away.
The verdict: Turgenev was banished to his Spasskoye estate near Oryol (Orel) for a year. And there permanently monitored by "Ochrana" agents.
The manor house still exists...:
Sounds like a light punishment, but it wasn't like that: For an intellectual and writer, the deepest province, Spasskoye, was just as far away from Saint Petersburg as the moon...
