Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev.
1818-1883
A PROFOUND INFLUENCE
ON RUSSIAN SOCIETY.
Turgenev was born into the wealthy landed gentry class in Russia and received a fairly standard upbringing. He attended both Moscow and St. Petersburg University and received a master's degree in philosophy.
At first he doubted his ability to become a successful writer until the success of one of his first books, A Sportsman's Sketches, which received great acclaim. A Sportsman's Sketches was a series of stories depicting the harsh lives of the serfs in Russia. Turgenev paints a very realistic picture of country life and the bad effect that serfdom has on both serf and master. Serfs were commonly seen as less than human, but Turgenev depicts not only the serfs as human beings, but also as superior in humanity to their masters.
A Work of Great Influence.
The effect upon Russia of this strong protest against serfdom could be comparable to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin in the U.S. It is even thought to have made such an impression on the Czar Alexander II that it influenced him to free the serfs and gain for himself the name of the Czar Liberator.
Before the freeing of the serfs by the Czar, Turgenev had freed his own serfs. Turgenev wrote several other stories including A Month in the Country and Khor and Kalinich, which accurately described Russian country and peasant life.
The Superfluous Man.
In some of Turgenev's later works, he began to concentrate more on the morbid psychological study of mankind that was typical of other writers of his time. Writers of his time liked to focus their efforts writing about what was coined the "superfluous man." These men were essentially positive characters who were considered to be unjustly treated by contemporary society. They are extremely intellectual men, who struggle between their separateness from the rest of the world, which is caused by their superior intelligence, and their desire to be apart of the world that they consider to be superficial and petty but also necessary.
This type of character analysis was probably popular because it paralleled the sentiments of the Russian people during the late 1800s. Russian people felt stuck between their need to westernize in order to compete with the western world, and their desire to retain their distinct, unique Russian culture that was championed by the Slavophiles.
In Turgenev's The Diary of a Superfluous Man, he describes a superfluous man's struggle to essentially live with himself by examining his own identity. What makes Turgenev's story different from novels by such writers as Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky is that rather than directly describing the thoughts of the character, his characters express internal emotions through the use of words and external actions. The reader must then deduce the inner feelings of the character from outward signs, just like in real life.
Some of Turgenev's other popular novels were Rudin (1856), which uses the superfluous man type of character to express not only frustrated feelings, but also to pay homage to older generations while still showing their inefficiency. A Nest of Gentlefolk (1859) glorified the old Orthodox ideals of the old gentry. On the Eve (1860) tells the story of a heroic young girl of a new generation.
Turgenev's works balanced truth, poetry, and beauty in a style that managed to please both rightists and leftists in Russia.
Fathers and Sons.
In the maturity of his career Turgenev had produced many great works, but none with the Russian male hero that the Russian people longed to read about. In response to this desire, Turgenev wrote Fathers and Sons. The hero in this novel is a university student of humble origin, who is scornful of the past and intolerant of slow-moving contemporary liberalism. The character is eager to leap into a better future. However, Turgenev also describes the eventual futility of revolution.
Many Russian radicals were angered by Turgenev's views on revolution. This anger probably further stimulated the radicals into action, and may have pushed the society toward the Russian Revolution under the teachings of Lenin.
Meanwhile, Turgenev decided to leave Russia and work and travel throughout Europe. He only returned to Russia for brief trips.
Estrangement from Society.
One of his later novels, Smoke (1867), demonstrated a bitterness against all classes of Russian society. Virgin Soil (1877) described the Russian revolutionary movement of the 1870s. Most of the views presented in these two works only succeeded in showing Turgenev's further estrangement from Russian society.
Even though Turgenev became less popular in Russia toward the end of his life, he continued to be popular in Europe. He was the first Russian author to reveal the Russian spirit to the outside world, i.e. Western Europe, and to win a European reputation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
1. Lord, Robert. Russian Literature. Taplinger Publishing Co.: New York, 1980
2. Mirsky, D.S. A History of Russian Literature. Alfred A. Knopf Inc.: New York, 1958
3. Moser, Charles A. Ivan Turgenev. Columbia University Press: New York, 1972
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