page_title: Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: The Soviet Union 1939 CPA 702 stamp (Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin 15k). Seriesː 50th Death Anniversary of Mikhail E. Saltykov-Shchedrin (N. Shchedrin, 1826-1889), Writer and Satirist
context_page_description: Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin, was a major Russian satirist of the 19th century. He spent most of his life working as a civil servant in various capacities. After the death of poet Nikolay Nekrasov he acted as editor of the well-known Russian magazine, Otechestvenniye Zapiski, until the government banned it in 1884. His best-known work, the novel The Golovlyov Family, appeared in 1876.
context_section_description: Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin is regarded to be the most prominent satirist in the history of the Russian literature. According to critic and biographer Maria Goryachkina, he's managed to compile "the satirical encyclopedia" of contemporary Russian life, targeting first serfdom with its degrading effect upon the society, then, after its abolition, - corruption, bureaucratic inefficiency, opportunistic tendencies in intelligentsia, greed and amorality of those at power, but also - apathy, meekness and social immobility of the common people of Russia. His two major works, The History of a Town chronicles and The Golovlyov Family novel, are widely regarded as his masterpieces. Maxim Gorky wrote in 1909: "The importance of his satire is immense, first for… its almost clairvoyant vision of the path the Russian society had to travel - from 1860s to nowadays." "The pathos of satirical humanism was his driving force. The mere awareness of people being treated cruelly while causes for their suffer were removable, filled him with rage and with this murderous laughter that makes his satire so distinctive," wrote Alexander Fadeev.
  Saltykov-Shchedrin has been lavishly praised by Marxist critics as "the true revolutionary", but his mindset (as far as they were concerned) was not without a fault, for he, according to Goryachkina, "failed to recognize the historically progressive role of capitalism and never understood the importance of the emerging proletariat". Karl Marx (who knew Russian and held Shchedrin in high esteem) read Haven in Mon Repos (1878–1879) and was unimpressed. "The last section, 'Warnings', is weak and the author in general seems to be not very strong on positivity," he wrote.
  Some contemporaries (Nikolai Pisarev, Alexei Suvorin) dismissed Saltykov-Shchedrin as the one taken to 'laughing for laughter's sake'. Vladimir Korolenko disagreed; he regarded Shchedrin's laughter to be the essential part of Russian life. "Shchedrin, he's still laughing, people were saying, by way of reproach... Thankfully, yes, no matter how hard it was for him to do this, in the most morbid times of our recent history this laughter was heard… One had to have a great moral power to make others laugh, while suffering deeply (as he did) from all the grieves of those times," he argued.
  According to D.S.Mirsky, the greater part of Saltykov's work is a rather nondescript kind of satirical journalism, generally with little or no narrative structure, and intermediate in form between the classical "character" and the contemporary feuilleton. Greatly popular though it was in its own time, it has since lost much of its appeal simply because it satirizes social conditions that have long ceased to exist and much of it has become unintelligible without commentary. Mirsky saw The History of a Town (a sort of parody of Russian history, concentrated in the microcosm of a provincial town, whose successive governors are transparent caricatures of Russian sovereigns and ministers, and whose very name is representative of its qualities) as the work that summed up the achievement of Saltykov's first period. He praised The Golovlyov Family, calling it the gloomiest book in all Russian literature—"all the more gloomy because the effect is attained by the simplest means without any theatrical, melodramatic, or atmospheric effects." "The most remarkable character of this novel is Porfiry Golovlyov, nicknamed 'Little Judas', the empty and mechanical hypocrite who cannot stop talking unctuous and meaningless humbug, not for any inner need or outer profit, but because his tongue is in need of constant exercise," Mirsky wrote.
  Most works of Saltykov's later period were written in a language that the satirist himself called Aesopian. This way, though, the writer was able to fool censors in the times of political oppression and take most radical ideas to print, which was the matter of his pride. "It is one continuous circumlocution because of censorship and requires a constant reading commentary," Mirsky argued. The use of Aesopic language was one reason why Saltykov-Shchedr
caption: Saltykov-Shchedrin on a 1956 U.S.S.R. postage stamp
  The sole object of my literary work was unfailingly to protest against the greed, hypocrisy, falsehood, theft, treachery, and stupidity of modern Russians.[29]
   Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
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