page_title: Nikolay Nekrasov
section_title: Illness and death
hierarchical_section_title: Nikolay Nekrasov / Biography / Illness and death
caption_attribution_description: English: N.A. Nekrasov in the period of his "Last Songs"Русский: Н.А. Некрасов в период "Последних песен" (картина Ивана Крамского, 1877-1878)
context_page_description: Nikolay Alexeyevich Nekrasov was a Russian poet, writer, critic and publisher, whose deeply compassionate poems about peasant Russia made him the hero of liberal and radical circles of Russian intelligentsia, as represented by Vissarion Belinsky, Nikolay Chernyshevsky and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. He is credited with introducing into Russian poetry ternary meters and the technique of dramatic monologue. As the editor of several literary journals, notably Sovremennik, Nekrasov was also singularly successful and influential.
context_section_description: For many years Nikolai Nekrasov suffered from a chronic throat condition. In April 1876  severe pains brought about insomnia that lasted for months. In June Saltykov-Shchedrin arrived from abroad to succeed him as an editor-in-chief of OZ. Still unsure as to the nature of the illness, doctor Sergey Botkin advised Nekrasov to go to the Crimea. In September 1876 he arrived at Yalta where he continued working on Who Is Happy in Russia's final part, "The Feast for All the World". Banned by censors, it soon started spreading in hand-written copies all over Russia. In December the high-profile concilium led by Nikolay Sklifosovsky diagnosed the intestinal cancer.
  In February 1877 groups of radical students started to arrive to Yalta from all over the country to provide moral support for the dying man. Painter Ivan Kramskoy came to stay and work upon the poet's portrait. One of the last people Nekrasov met was Ivan Turgenev who came to make peace after years of bitter feud. The surgery performed on 12 April 1877 by Theodor Billroth who was invited from Vienna by Anna Alexeyevna Nekrasova brought some relief, but not for long. "I saw him for the last time just one month before his death. He looked like a corpse... Not only did he speak well, but retained the clarity of mind, seemingly refusing to believe the end was near," remembered Dostoyevsky.
  Nikolai Alekseyevich Nekrasov died on 8 January 1878. Four thousand people came to the funeral and the procession leading to the Novodevichy Cemetery turned into a political rally. Fyodor Dostoyevsky delivered a keynote eulogy, calling Nekrasov  the greatest Russian poet since Alexander Pushkin and  Mikhail Lermontov. One section of the crowd, the followers of Chernyshevsky (with Georgy Plekhanov as one of their leaders), chanted "No, he was greater!" Members of Zemlya i Volya alongside other radical groups (with wreaths "From the Socialists") were also present. "His funeral was one of the most striking demonstration of popularity ever accorded to a Russian writer," according to Mirsky.
caption: Nekrasov in late 1877. Portrait by Ivan Kramskoy
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "24003/250", "Image YResolution": "24003/250", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS3 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2008:10:03 01:44:02", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6649", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1038", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1196"}