page_title: Nikolai Uspensky
section_title: Critical reception
hierarchical_section_title: Nikolai Uspensky / Critical reception
caption_attribution_description: The peasant Yeremei and his master, from Nikolay Uspensky's story Porridge
context_page_description: Nikolai Vasilyevich Uspensky was a Russian writer, and a cousin of fellow writer Gleb Uspensky. Uspensky wrote extensively about the realities of peasant life in rural Russia around the time of the Emancipation Act of 1861 by Tsar Alexander II, achieving critical and commercial success. After experiencing increasing alienation and career decline, Uspensky died on November 2, 1889, when he committed suicide.
context_section_description: In 1861 the Stories by Nikolai Uspensky came out in two miniature volumes and caused an uproar. Critics were almost unanimous in their hostility, accusing the author of "spitting onto people's beliefs and ways of life" and seeing nothing but cold cynicism behind the humour. "He's got a sharp but aimless eye focusing on whatever comes across without obvious reason," wrote Stepan Dudyshkin in Otechestvennye Zapiski. "He picks up every possible detail, totally irrelevant, not even thinking about somehow linking it to the main action," agreed Fyodor Dostoyevsky, writing in Vremya. "The indifferent nature of humour is essential to Uspensky's gift," Pavel Annenkov remarked several years later. "Intellectual indifference", "lack of care" and "mental hibernation" were typical to the author's prose according to Evgeny Edelson (Biblioteka Dlya Chtenya). Critics from the left mostly agreed with their colleagues from the liberal camp. Vsevolod Krestovsky expressed amazement at how totally devoid of ideas Uspensky's prose was. "He is rather good photographer. But his also is cold, impassive attitude towards the world he photographs in his sketches... He's never able to discern a poor man's cry from a drunkard's scream," Krestovsky noted.
  The only dissenting voice was that of Nikolai Chernyshevsky. In his essay Is This the Beginning of a Change? he hailed Uspensky's early stories as fresh evidence that the revolution in the Russian country was imminent. The critic attributed to Uspensky some views the latter never had, maintaining, for example, that the author denounced "darkness common people were plunged into" to highlight the reasons which were stopping people from rioting and "show the way progressive raznotchintsy should lead ignorant masses" towards their liberation. The very attitude of the author who, discarding all sympathy, scolded or ridiculed Russian men for the way they lived was, according to the critic, symptomatic of some radical change. In the new reality, he argued, the oppressed ones needed not sentimental sympathy (writers like Turgenev and Grigorovich provided in abundance) but some instigation for real action. Chernyshevsky's essay in a way opened a floodgate for a whole host of similar-minded authors: Sleptsov, Reshetnikov, Levitov, Gleb Uspensky, Pomyalovsky thus making Nikolay Uspensky a pioneer of the Raznochintsy movement in the Russian literature.
  After Uspensky's departure from Sovremennik he was warmly welcomed by Otechestvennye Zapiski. This magazine's 1863 review maintained that the writer's new stories demonstrated the maturity and he was now approaching the ideal of 'pure artistry' never letting ideology prevail over form. Sovremennik's reply was quick and to the effect that Uspensky indeed has slid down towards the 'arts for arts sake' platform and for that very reason his newest work is worthless. Later scholars came to the conclusion that both sides were right to some extent. Objectively, Uspensky's new stories were inferior to his earlier ones. On the other hand, what Sovremennik did was totally re-evaluate his first stories too (calling their author "a scribbler with chicken worldview") which looked indeed like a betrayal—not of Uspensky but rather of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov's ideas. This time Saltykov-Shchedrin (whose unsigned article was called "Ignorance and Greed Go Hand in Hand") emerged as Uspensky's opponent.
  By mid-1870 Nikolai Uspensky was the thing of the past, as far as Russian literary community was concerned. He was referred to as "a forgotten writer" even by those (like Nikolai Mikhailovsky, in 1877) who made attempts to remind the reading public about him. He fell into oblivion that lasted almost half a century, not because of his artistic decline, Chukovsky insisted, but for the change of the general atmosphere in the Russian society and the rapid rise of Narodnitchestvo, a peasant's Socialism doctrine. For narodniks any criticism of a 'common man' was blasphemy. Alexander Skabichevsky, one of the prominent figures in narodnik movement, accused Uspensky in consciously puttin
caption: The peasant Yeremei and his master, from Uspensky's story Porridge
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