Sergey Aksakov - Later Life

Later Life

In 1843 Aksakov settled in the village of Abramtsevo, where he entertained writers including Gogol, Turgenev, and Tolstoy and which was also frequented by his Slavophile sons, Konstantin and Ivan. In the late 1850s he published his most enduring works, The Family Chronicle (Semeinaya khronika, 1856; also translated as A Russian Gentleman) and Childhood Years of Bagrov Grandson (Detskie gody Bagrova-vnuka, 1858, translated as Years of Childhood). These reminiscences of a childhood spent in a Russian patriarchal family "brought Aksakov recognition as a literary artist of the first rank." Aksakov's semi-autobiographical narratives are unmatched for their scrupulous and detailed description of the everyday life of the Russian nobility.

Among Aksakov's other works are The History of My Acquaintance with Gogol (Istoriya moego znakomstva s Gogolem, 1855); Memoirs (Vospominaniya, 1856, translated as A Russian Schoolboy), and Collecting Butterflies (Sobiranie babochek, 1858). His fairy tale The Scarlet Flower was adapted into an animated feature film in the Soviet Union in 1952.