Leonid Andreyev

Leonid Andreyev (born August 21 [August 9, Old Style], 1871, Oryol, Russia—died September 12, 1919, Kuokkala, Finland) was a novelist whose best work has a place in Russian literature for its evocation of a mood of despair and absolute pessimism.

At the age of 20 Andreyev entered St. Petersburg University but lived restlessly for some time. In 1894, after several attempts at suicide, he transferred to the University of Moscow, where he studied law. He became a barrister and then a law and crime reporter, publishing his first stories in newspapers and periodicals. Encouraged by Maxim Gorky, who became a close friend, he was at first regarded as Gorky’s successor as a Realist. His “Zhili-byli” (“Once There Lived…”) attracted attention and was included in his first collection of short stories (1901). Two stories of 1902, Bezdna (“The Abyss”) and V tumane (“In the Fog”), caused a storm by their candid and audacious treatment of sex. Andreyev’s work became widely discussed, and he acquired fame and wealth with a series of novels and short stories that, at their best, resemble Tolstoy in their powerful themes and ironic sympathy for suffering humanity. Among his best tales are Gubernator (1905; His Excellency the Governor) and Rasskaz o semi poveshennykh (1908; The Seven That Were Hanged).

Andreyev’s fame as a novelist declined rapidly as his works became increasingly sensational. He began a career as a dramatist in 1905. His most successful plays—Zhizn cheloveka (1907; The Life of Man) and Tot, kto poluchayet poshchyochiny (1916; He Who Gets Slapped)—were allegorical dramas, but he also attempted Realist comedy.

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Andreyev saw World War I as a battle of democracy against Germany’s despotism, which he strongly opposed. In 1916 he became the editor of the literary section of the newspaper Russkaya Volya (“Russian Will”), published with the support of the tsar’s government. He enthusiastically welcomed the February Revolution of 1917 but saw the Bolsheviks’ coming to power as a catastrophe for Russia. He moved to Finland in 1917, and Finland’s declaration of independence that same year gave him the opportunity to write and print anti-Bolshevik articles, among them “S.O.S.” (1919), his famous appeal to the Allies. Andreyev’s last novel, Dnevnik Satany (Satan’s Diary), was unfinished at his death. Published in 1921, it paints a world in which boundless evil triumphs. In 1956 his remains were taken to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg).