page_title: Aleksandr Kuprin
section_title: The Pit. 1909–1917
hierarchical_section_title: Aleksandr Kuprin / Biography / Literary career / The Pit. 1909–1917
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Александр Куприн, призванный на войну в чине поручика и его жена, отправляющаяся на войну сестрой милосердия
context_page_description: Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuprin was a Russian writer best known for his novels The Duel and The Pit, as well as Moloch, Olesya, "Junior Captain Rybnikov", "Emerald", and The Garnet Bracelet, the latter made into a 1965 movie.
context_section_description: In 1908 Kuprin started working on The Pit, his most ambitious and controversial work. The first part of this novelistic study of prostitution appeared in 1909, the second in 1914, and the third in 1915. Part I, as it came out, provoked widespread controversy, parts II and III were met with almost universal indifference. Kuprin, who could not decide, apparently, whether his novel should be a documentary or fiction, either oscillated between the two or attempted to combine them in an artificial way. "He is more successful when in documentary vein, and so Part I, with its details of life in the brothel, is by far the best," argues Luker. The novel was criticized by some Russian critics and authors (Leo Tolstoy among them) for excessive naturalism; among those who admired it was the young Nina Berberova.
  The Pit was Kuprin's last major work, and to many it signaled the decline of his creativity. His best-known 1912–1914 stories are "Black Lightning" and "Anathema", while his visit to the South of France between April and July 1912 gave rise to "The Cote d'Azur", the twenty sketches forming a cycle of travel impressions. In 1911 he moved his family to Gatchina, near Saint Petersburg.
  As World War I broke out, Kuprin opened a military hospital in his Gatchina home, then visited towns on the Western front. Towards the end of 1914 he appealed through the press for money for the wounded, and in December rejected the idea of celebrating the 25th anniversary of his literary career. As a reserve officer, he was called up in November 1914, and commanded an infantry company in Finland till May 1915, when he was discharged on grounds of ill health. That was the reason why he could not become a war correspondent, a career he aspired to during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. Among his few stories that reflected the war, most notable were his satires ("Goga Veselov", "The Cantaloups", "Daddy", "Grunya"), taking swipe at the cynics who were making fortunes upon the nation's grievances.
  The February Revolution found Kuprin in Helsinki, where he had gone on medical advice. Returning to Gatchina, he expressed his enthusiasm at the collapse of tsarism in a series of articles and in May started editing the Socialist Revolutionary Party's newspaper Svobodnaia Rossiya (Free Russia), contributing also to Volnost (Freedom) and Petrogradskii Listok (The Petrograd Leaflet). While welcoming the freedom brought by the February Revolution, he foresaw the excesses that further upheaval might bring and warned against Russia's plunging into an orgy of bloodshed.
  The October Revolution did little to clarify Kuprin's political position. In the articles he contributed to various papers till mid-1918 – Petrogradskoe Ekho (Petrograd Echo), Vecherneye Slovo (Evening Word), and Zaria (Dawn) among them, – his attitude to the new regime remained ambivalent. He recognized the historical significance of the Bolshevik Revolution and admired Lenin as "an honest and courageous man," stating that "Bolshevism constitutes a great, pure, disinterested doctrine that is inevitable for mankind." Still, while working for a brief time with Maxim Gorky at the World Literature publishing company, he criticized prodrazverstka and the policy of the War Communism, arguing that the Bolsheviks threatened Russian culture, and that their insufficient knowledge of the country had brought suffering to peasants. In June 1918, Kuprin was arrested for a short time for an article in the paper Molva (Rumor) critical of the regime. One of his 1918 stories ("The Caterpillar") praised the heroism of women revolutionaries, another ("The Ghost of Gatchina") was an anti-Bolshevik tale of the tyranny of Russia's new masters.
  In the end of 1918 Kuprin drew up elaborate plans for Zemlia (Land), a paper designed especially for the peasantry. His proposed program involved assisting the government in the radical transformation of rural life along lines not conflicting with the principles of communism. Supported by Gorky and approved by Lenin who  met Kuprin on 25 December 1918, the project remained un
caption: Kuprin and his wife during World War I
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