Nikolay Vasilyevich Uspensky , born May 31, 1837 – died November 2, 1889, was a Russian writer, and a cousin of fellow writer Gleb Uspensky

Gleb Uspensky

- Early life :Uspensky was born in the city of Tula, where his father was a government official. He attended the gymnasiums at Tula and Chernihiv, devoting much of his time to the reading of the Russian classics. He studied at the university of St. Petersburg for a short time in 1861, until it was...

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Biography

Nikolay Uspensky was born in a small village in Tula Governorate, where his father was a priest. He received his early education at the local seminary. In 1856 he enrolled in the Medical Academy at St. Petersburg University

Saint Petersburg State University

Saint Petersburg State University is a Russian federal state-owned higher education institution based in Saint Petersburg and one of the oldest and largest universities in Russia....

. He later transferred to the History Department of the university, but left without graduating in order to pursue a career in literature.

His first two fictional sketches were published in 1857. His third sketch A Good Existence was published in the popular journal The Contemporary

Sovremennik

Sovremennik was a Russian literary, social and political magazine, published in St. Petersburg in 1836-1866. It came out four times a year in 1836-1843 and once a month after that...

, and attracted the attention of many prominent liberals, including Nikolay Chernyshevsky, who appreciated the solid realism of the work, which was in marked contrast with the usual idealized portrayals of peasant life that were common at the time. In response to these sketches, Chernyshevsky wrote his essay Is This the Beginning of a Change?

For the next few years, Uspensky contributed regularly to The Contemporary. His writing, often lightly tinged with humor, described the poverty and the misery of the peasants, and the lives of Russian clergymen and raznochintsy intellectuals

Raznochintsy

Raznochintsy was an official term introduced in the Code of Law of the Russian Empire in the 17th century to define a social estate that included the lower court and governmental ranks, children of personal dvoryans, and discharged military, The category of raznochintsy grew significantly during...

. By 1861, though, his popularity began to decline, he had problems with the editor of The Contemporary, Nikolay Nekrasov, and his continued efforts at writing met with less and less success.

In 1862 he took a job as a teacher at Leo Tolstoy's

Leo Tolstoy

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...

 Yasnaya Polyana School, followed by other teaching jobs at various district schools and gymnasiums throughout the 1860s and 70s.

In 1878 Uspensky was married, but his wife died only three years later. After this he lived a wandering, and often homeless life, drinking heavily, and occasionally publishing his writing in The Russian Gazette, and in tabloids. He also made money performing as a street musician and singer.

In 1889 he committed suicide by stabbing himself.

English translations

• Porridge, and The Village Schoolmaster, (Stories) from The Humor of Russia, Ethel Voynich/Stepnyak, Walter Scott Publishing, 1909. from Archive.org