Gleb Uspensky - Biography - Career

Career

Uspensky's first short stories were published in 1862, in Leo Tolstoy's journal Yasnaya Polyana ("Mikhalych") and in the journal Zritel (Spectator, "The Idyll"). In 1863 Uspensky joined the staff of the Moskovskye Vedomosty newspaper as a proofreader. In the Autumn of that year he moved to Saint Petersburg and published "The Ragman" (Старьевщик) in Biblioteka Dlya Chteniya.

In January 1864 he started contributing to Russkoe Slovo ("At Night", "The Nameless One", "In the Country", "Sketches from the Official’s Life"). A year later his stories started to appear in Iskra ("Our Humble Place", "The Stranger") and Sovremennik ("The Village Encounters"). It was Nikolai Nekrasov who's made sure that the Literary Fund allotted his young author a 110 rubles a year grant. In 1866, right after the Sovremennik's closure the first collection of Gleb Uspensky's short stories came out in Saint Petersburg. Later that year he made a decision to become a teacher and, having passed the exams at the Moscow University, in August departed to the Tula Governorate to start working there.

In 1866 he published a series of sketches about life in the suburbs of his native city of Tula under the title Manners of Rasteryayeva Street, which established his reputation. First chapters of it appeared in February and March issues of Sovremennik. As the magazine got closed after the April 4th Alexander II's assassination attempt, parts of the book were published by Zhensky Vestnik and Luch. Thas year saw the publication in Saint Petersburg of the first Gleb Uspensky book, Sketches and Stories. In May 1867, having passed the special qualification exams in the Saint Petersburg University, Gleb Uspensky departed to the town of Epifanya in the Tula Governorate and started working there as a teacher. Later that year his second book Holidays and Daily Life in Moscow came out in Saint Petersburg.

In 1868 Uspensky joined the Moscow Attorney's Alexander Uvarov's office as a courier. In April his first story (The Booth) appeared in Otechestvennye Zapiski which he continued to contribute to up until the magazine's closure in 1884.working with Nikolai Nekrasov and Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin. In the Summer of 1868, while in Strelna, near Saint Petersburg he met for the first time A.V.Barayeva, a teacher in Elets, Oryol. On May 17, 1870 they got married. A year before that, Desolation (Razorenje)'s first part ("Mikhail Ivanovich Observations") were published in Otechestvennye Zapiski. Parts 2 and 3 appeared in 1870-1971. In 1871 the book was published for the first time as a separate edition. In May 1871 Uspensky embarked upon a trip along Oka and Volga rivers. As a result, two books of traveller' sketches were published later. In 1872 Gleb Uspensky came abroad and visited Germany, Belgium and France. In the end of that year Manners of Rasteryayeva Street came out as a separate edition for the first time, part of the Library of Contemporary Authors series.

Since October 1873 he remained under the 3rd Department's surveillance which continued for almost thirty years and was lifted in 1901. In 1874 the "Very Small Man" (Очень маленький человек) novella's two parts appeared in Otechestvennye Zapiski, but the publication cstopped: the May issue of the magazine was withdrawn by censors. In the 1870s, his finances being much improved, he traveled widely, becoming acquainted with a number of revolutionary populists, such as Pyotr Lavrov (the Vpered magazine's editor in London, who several months later published his essay "One Won't Hide a Needle in a Sack") and Sergey Stepnyak. In 1875 Uspensky went to Paris again where he met Ivan Turgenev. The latter recited one of his stories, Petitioners (Ходоки), at Pauline Viardot's literary morning, and had great success. Back in Russia, Uspensky started working at the railway office in Kaluga but quit in the end of the year, for the reason of being "unwilling to help these vile concessioners get fatter". Also in 1875 another of his book, The Backwater. Sketches from the Province and from the Capital came out in Saint Peterburg.

In April 1876 Uspensky returned to Paris where his family lived at the time. For a while he was cherishing the idea of writing a novel about "revolutionary, like Lopatin", of which he informed Mikhaylovsky in a letter. This project, though, has never materialized. In September that year he went to Serbia, as part of the Russian volunteers' movement willing to help Serbs, fighting Turkey's occupation. Several political essays entitled Letters from Serbia came out as a result.

Throughout the 1870s and '80s he continued to write about the living and working conditions of the Russian peasants. The Summer of 1877 Uspensky and his family spent in Novgorod gubernia. As a result, series of sketches "From the Country Diary", on local peasants' life there started being published in Otechestvennye Zapiski in October. In 1878 he moved to a village near Samara, again finding it a fertile ground for his reporter’s muse, "Country Diary" being continued. 1878 saw the publication of another two of Gleb Uspensky’s books: "From Memory Book. Sketches and Stories" and "From New and Old (Miscellaneous)", both in Saint Petersburg. A novella Small Children appeared in Otechestvennye Zapiski in 1880. On March of this year Uspensky served a host for an unusual meeting: Ivan Turgenev came there to meet a group of 'young authors' (Nikolai Zlatovratsky, Sergey Naumov, Alexander Ertel, Sergey Krivenko and others). Soon after that Uspensky moved to Novgorod region to stay at A.V.Kamensky’s estate. The resulting series, "Peasant and Peasant’s Labour" (Otechestvennye Zapiski, October–December) were highly praized by Ivan Turgenev (in his January 10, 1881 letter to the author). Another book of Uspensky, "People and Ways of Contemporary Village" came out in Moscow.

In 1881 Uspensky bought himself house in Syabrintsy village in Novgorod gubernia. There (visiting the capital from time to time) he spent the rest of his literary life. In November 1881 "The Old Man’s Stories" started his stint with Russkaya Mysl magazine. A year later a story calle "The Suspicious beletazh" appeared in OZ relating an incident when some secret police agent came to Syabrintsy and comiled there a protocol, stating that the author (who was not a home) was hiding in some secret place nearby, engaging himself in the revolutionary activity. In 1882 two more of his books came out: The Village Troubles (Vols.I-III) and The Power of the Land, arguably his best-known work, based on his studies of life in rural Novgorod region.

In the Spring of 1883 Gleb Uspensky travelled to the Russian South, visiting Tiflis, Baku and Lenkoran, meeting people from religious groups, fishing cartels and private oil enterprises. His Notes from the Road were published in OZ from May till December this year. Later in 1883 F.Pavlenkov’s Publishers released the first three volumes of The Works by Gleb Uspensky.

On April 20, 1884, Otechestvennye zapiski were closed and this rendered Uspensky a heavy blow. "If I've ever managed to bear all the brunt of the literary man's life's tribulations which were common in the days of the old writer-editor relationship, that was exclusively due to Otechestvennye Zapiski ", he wrote two months prior to the publication's end. In summer of this year Uspensky made his first attempt to make an extensive trip to Siberia but returned from Yekaterinburg explaining this sudden decision by the need to settle some of his 'private affairs'. His plans to spend the following winter in the Russian East came to naught. What he did instead in April 1885 was make another voyage down South, this time to Kiev, Odessa, Rostov-on-Don, Essentuki and Kislovodsk which served well to dispel depression which started to haunt him, and brought new ideas. This year Russkaya Mysl published his "Sketches from Russian Life" and Ruskye Vedomosti - Timelessness. A lengthy set of essays, Of This and That (Кой про что) started his relationship with Severny Vestnik in 1886. Another trip to the Southern Russia followed after which Uspensky signed a new, more lucrative contract with another publisher, I.M.Sibiryakov who bought the rights to all of his work for 18.5 thousand rubles. In December 1886 Uspensky suggested himself as a court correspondent to concentrate on political cases that were going on in Russia at the time, but the project proved too risky for Russkye Vedomosti. Meanwhile, in the late 1886 the last, 8th volume of The Works of Uspensky was released under the old contract.

In December 1886 Russky Vestnik started publishing another set of essays and sketches called "We: In Words, Dreams and Deeds". Vladimir Korolenko was impressed enough to meet the author and present him his autograph. "Met Gleb Ivanovich in Saint Peterburg... The impression he's made on me was most favourable", he wrote in a diary on March 9, 1887. The spring of 1887 Uspensky spent travelling over Danube, all through Bulgaria. Parts of his "Impressions of a Danube Trip" were banned by censors. In August he made another voyage down the Volga river to the Southern Russia. In the autumn of this year the 25th anniversary of his literary career was celebrated in the democratic press and literary circles. On November 16 Uspensky was elected the Honorary Member of the Russian Literary Society. Among numerous stories that Uspensky published at the time, one, "The Steam Chicken" (Russky Vestnik) has made particularly strong impression upon Lev Tolstoy.

Another series of essays, called Living Numbers describing the life of workers in the society of the rising capitalism, ended abruptly: the author decided to drop what's been causing him too much trouble with censorship. In May 1888 he went to Siberia which he returned from in August, with "Letters from the Road" series. In Tomsk he's met some political prisoners, writer Naumov among them, and participated in the celebration of the opening of Tomsk University. In October Russkaya Mysl started to publish the "Heavy Sins" (Грехи тяжкие) series, with heavy cuts. In December Works by Gleb Uspensky in two volumes was published by Florenty Pavlenkov, with Nikolai Mikhailovsky's foreword. "I am very happy and much cheered up by the completely unexpected success of my new collection... In the first three weeks 3 thousand copies were sold and it continues to sell", the author wrote in a letter to A.Kulakov.

In June 1889 Uspensky made a trip to Orenburg and Ufa gubernias to visit re-settled people and examine conditions of life there. This voyage which included visits to Rybinsk, Yaroslavl, Nizhny Novgorod and resulted in a collection of sketches From Orenburg to Ufa. Notes from the Road, published by Russky Vestnik. In August this year The Works of Gleb Uspensky in two volumes came out. On October 21, 1889, Nikolai Uspensky, Gleb’s cousin, committed suicide. "This awful death darkened my life in the most horrid way”, he wrote in one of the letters. In the early 1890 Gleb Uspensky made a trip to Belorussia. In summer he re-visited Volga and travelled down South. In January 1991 his Letters of Resettlers were published by Russkaya Mysl.