The Presidential Library’s portal features a new collection about Nikolay Nekrasov

December 10, 2021 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of the recognized classic of Russian literature Nikolay Nekrasov. Marking this significant date in the history of Russian culture the Presidential Library has provided a new collection Nikolay Nekrasov (1821-1878), which included texts of his works, documents about life and career, studies of creativity, magazines, the editor-in-chief of which was the poet himself and other materials.

Nikolay Nekrasov came from an old noble family, once very rich, but later ruined. The future poet was born in a small town in the Podolsk province, where at that time the regiment in which his father served was quartered. Nikolay's childhood passed in the family estate of Greshnevo near Yaroslavl among a large family - he had thirteen brothers and sisters. Nekrasov had sad memories of his childhood - his father was a cruel man both as a landowner and as the head of the family. Nekrasov's mother courageously but meekly endured her husband's tough temper, not complaining about fate. “Her kindness and compassion extended to all those around her, with her gentle, gentle attitude, she greatly facilitated the fate of serfs”, - writes Lyubov Khavkina in her book Nikolay Alekseevich Nekrasov: His Life and Works (1903). Only when Nekrasov's father went hunting did the serfs feel safe. However, in the evening, upon the return of the landowner and his friends, the wine flowed like a river, the drunken guests made noise and rowdy, and a lot of mockery and rude jokes fell to the lot of the serfs. As an adult, Nekrasov more than once recalled the dirty scenes arranged by his father, which left an indelible mark on his memory. Literary writer Nikolay Dyunkin is the author of the book N. A. Nekrasov (1909), writes: "At one time, Nekrasov's father served as a police officer and took his son with him on the road; before the pure, childlike gaze of the boy, there are trials, fist suggestion, poverty of the serf peasantry. An impressionable child, and besides, feeling so strongly at home the oppression of his father, is already here imbued with sympathy for the people".

Nekrasov began writing poetry at the age of seven and became interested in literature. At the age of 17, against the will of his father, who wanted a military career for his son, he decides to enter the Faculty of Philology at St. Petersburg University. The consequence of such disobedience was Nekrasov's deprivation of any material support. In order to somehow survive, he was interrupted by penny lessons or some random writing job. The poet himself wrote about this difficult time: “For exactly three years I felt myself constantly, every day, hungry. I had to eat not only badly, not only from hand to mouth, but not every day".

Lawyer and writer Anatoly Koni described the three-year period of his friend's life in the following way: “He had to be very poor, sometimes starving for a long time and experiencing that poverty, homelessness and uncertainty about the future, which were reflected in the content of many of his poems. He obviously knew from personal experience how hard it is to live in the Petersburg corners, which he described in one of the collections he published. I had to exist day after day by compiling books for small publishers-hucksters and hurried writing on ordered topics, about what will have to and how will have to".

Gradually, the poet's life, full of hardships and seemingly hopeless begging, began to change. Having at his disposal the conditions and time for the development of literary talent, he gradually began to publish in more or less well-known magazines, made the necessary acquaintances for the writer, the key of which was a meeting with the critic Vissarion Belinsky. When Nekrasov read him his poem On the Road, Belinsky with tears in his eyes exclaimed: "Do you know that you are a poet and a true poet?"

However, subsequently, Nekrasov's creativity and talent were not always evaluated positively. Both during his lifetime and after death, passionate controversies were waged around his literary works. The "people's" poet Nekrasov put the peasant in the center of attention, but not the silent and murmuring for life, but the conscious, asking the fundamental questions of the social life of society. Thus, the poem "Who Lives Well in Russia" reflects the period of the revolutionary movement in the 60s-70s of the 19th century and Nekrasov's own faith in the people's revolution.

Numerous reactionary liberal critics accused Nekrasov of the unnatural convictions of the poet - a nobleman by birth, calling his poetry a fake of nationality. Nekrasov's revolutionary views were so strong that he was tormented all his life because he could not go underground to fight tsarism, as Nikolai Chernyshevsky, for example, did. The creator of the legal tribune of Russian democratic thought, as Alexander Egolin calls him, the author of the book Nekrasov in Russian Criticism (1944), Nekrasov scourged himself for not going "into the camp of the perishing" and that he went to the revolutionary goal "without sacrificing himself".

Bound by the censorship framework, Nekrasov was often forced to rework his works, only hinting in them at the revolutionary struggle, inserting "loyal verses". For example, regarding the publication of the poem The Decembrist, Nekrasov complained in a letter to the publisher of Otechestvennye zapiski Kraevsky: "I think that in such a spoiled form, in which you had it, the censorship could not find fault with it".

“Few of the outstanding writers, during his lifetime and after death, excited so many contradictory assessments as Nikolay Nekrasov”, - said his friend Anatoly Koni. On the one hand, there is a “saddener of the people's grief”, on the other, a tendentious poet".

In 1878, at the age of 56, after a serious illness, Nikolay Nekrasov died. At the funeral, Fyodor Dostoevsky, in his farewell speech, speaking about the history of Russian poetry, put the name of Nekrasov after Pushkin and Lermontov. His speech was interrupted by exclamations of those present: "Higher, higher!"