Turgenev, Ivan Sergeyevich 1818-83
Russian novelist

He was born in the province of Oryel, and after graduating from St Petersburg University went to Berlin to study philosophy, where he mingled with the radical thinkers of the day and became firm friends with Aleksandr Herzen. He returned to Russia in 1841 to enter the Civil Service, but in 1843 abandoned this to take up literature. His tyrannical mother strongly disapproved and his infatuation for the singer Pauline Viardot-Garc�a also displeased her. She stopped his allowance and until her death in 1850, when he came into his inheritance, he had to support himself by his writings. In 1850 he wrote his finest and best-known play, A Month in the Country (published 1869, staged 1872). Zapiski okhotnika (1852, Eng trans A Sportsman's Sketches), sympathetic studies of the peasant life, made his reputation, but were perceived by the government as an attack on serfdom. A notice praising Nikolai Gogol on his death in 1852 resulted in a two years' banishment to his country estates. After his exile he spent much time in Europe, writing several faithful descriptions of Russian liberalism. In his greatest novel, Ottsy i dety (1862, Eng trans Fathers and Sons, 1867), he portrayed the new generation, with its faith in science and lack of respect for tradition and authority. But the hero, Bazarov, pleased neither the revolutionaries who thought the portrait a libel nor the reactionaries who thought it a glorification of iconoclasm. Turgenev's popularity slumped in Russia but rose abroad, particularly in Great Britain, where the book was recognized as a major contribution to literature. Successive novels were Dym (1867, Eng trans Smoke, 1868) and Nov' (1877, Eng trans Virgin Soil, 1877). He also returned to the short story, producing powerful pieces like Stepnoy Korol' Lir (1870, Eng trans A Lear of the Steppes, 1874) and tales of the supernatural to which his increasing melancholy drew him.

Bibliography: L Schapiro, Turgenev, his life and times (1978)