Nikolai Elpidiforovich Karonin-Petropavlovsky (5 [17] October 1853, the village of Voznesenskaya, Buzuluk uyezd, Samara Governorate — 12 [24] May 1892, Saratov) was a Russian populist ("narodnik") prose writer who published under the pseudonym S. Karonin, as well as N. E. Sibiryak. He spent about two years in Nizhny Novgorod (1887–1888), working with the local press; it was here that he was visited by the Maxim Gorky, who left memoirs of him.[2][5]

Biography and revolutionary activity

He was born into the family of a priest; from childhood he lived in a rural setting, where he took to fishing and peasant labor, which later shaped the central themes of his prose.[3] In 1866 he finished the Buzuluk theological college and entered the Samara seminary, but in 1871 he was deprived of his state stipend for insolence toward the authorities and applied to leave. In the autumn of 1872 he passed the examination for the 6th grade of the Samara gymnasium.[4]

Drawn to the ideas of revolutionary populism, in the summer of 1874 he took part in the "going to the people" movement, conducting propaganda among the peasants of Buzuluk uyezd. On 5 August 1874 he was arrested and placed in the Saratov prison, then transferred via a stage in Moscow, and from 26 January 1875 held in the Peter and Paul Fortress. After his release in 1878 he continued his revolutionary activity; on 26 February 1879 he was arrested again in St. Petersburg in a case involving a secret printing press and once more imprisoned in the fortress.[1][4] On medical grounds he was released at the end of 1880 owing to a mental disorder that had developed during solitary confinement. In 1881 he was exiled for five years under open police surveillance to Siberia — first to Kurgan, then to Ishim (the second exile was prompted by the arrest of his wife, who practiced midwifery and was accused of spreading "seditious ideas").[4]

Literary career

His first publications appeared even during his imprisonments: the story "Bezglasny" ("The Voiceless One", written in the Peter and Paul Fortress) came out in "Otechestvennye Zapiski" in 1879; the same journal published the cycles "Tales of the Parashkintsy" (1879–1881) and "Tales About Trifles" (1881–1883). In these works he created a collective image of the post-reform village — the "Parashkintsy", people who, instead of the promised land and freedom, received only "little swamps".[4] Karonin later worked with "Russkaya Mysl", "Severny Vestnik", and newspapers of the Volga region.[1]

After returning from Siberia in 1886 he lived in Kazan, where he published under the pseudonym N. E. Sibiryak in the "Kazansky Birzhevoy Listok" and the "Volzhsky Vestnik". In 1887 he visited the Urals; his impressions formed the basis of a series of essays.[5] In his final years he moved away from the peasant theme toward the fates of the intelligentsia: the novellas "My World", "No Place", and "Teacher of Life".[5] In 1889 he moved to Saratov to work as a feuilletonist for the newspaper "Saratovsky Dnevnik"; he died there of tuberculosis on 12 May 1892. His funeral at the Voskresenskoye Cemetery drew a large crowd and turned into a Demonstration.[5]

The Nizhny Novgorod period

Karonin-Petropavlovsky first found himself in Nizhny Novgorod Province in 1886 — and it was there that he lost the manuscript of the novella "My World" (later found and returned to him).[2] On the advice of Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko) he decided to move to the city: from 28 October 1887 he lived there and worked with the local newspapers.[2]

In Nizhny Novgorod the writer lived in extreme poverty. The young Alexei Peshkov (the future Maxim Gorky) used to visit him and later described these meetings in his "Literary Portraits": "He often spoke of people who find life hard, but I never heard him complain of his own half-starved existence; it seemed to me he did not even notice how he lived, so wholly absorbed was he in the search for truth and justice."[5] Conversations with Karonin had a considerable influence on the young Gorky's attitude toward the Tolstoyan communes.[2]

The Nizhny Novgorod period is marked by his observations of the life of the urban lower classes. Visits to the famous Millioshka — the Bugrov night-lodging house — resulted in the story "On the Border of Man", published in "Russkaya Mysl" (1889, No. 1). It was also here that he wrote the novella "The Borsk Colony".[2]

Sources

  1. нгодб.рф — KNOW YOUR OWN! S. KARONIN — Nizhny Novgorod State Regional Children's Library named after T. A. Mavrina (GBUK NO NGODB)
  2. saratovregion.ucoz.ru — GREAT SARATOV ENCYCLOPEDIA: Figures of culture: Karonin-Petropavlovsky N. E.
  3. ru.wikisource.org — Russian Biographical Dictionary/Wikisource ed./Petropavlovsky, Nikolai Elpidiforovich — Wikisource (archive)
  4. az.lib.ru — Lib.ru/Classics: Karonin-Petropavlovsky Nikolai Elpidiforovich. Karonin S.: bio-bibliographical note (archive)
  5. livelib.ru — S. Karonin — biography, books, reviews, quotes