Ivan Fedorovich Nazhivin (1874–1940), the well-known Russian writer, overcame a difficult path toward understanding the truth: starting out as a novice Tolstoyan writer and a “populist,” who had tested the equality of human beings before labor on his own life, he passed through the terrifying baptism of the Revolution, saw firsthand the “truth” of the Whites and the Reds, and in emigration created a whole series of historical novels—trying to comprehend what he saw and its origins.
The novel “The Cossacks” (1928) for a quarter of a century was translated into all European languages and enjoyed constant success not only as a vivid, truthful depiction of the fierce clash between Stepan Razin’s free bands and the reformer-tsar Aleksey Mikhailovich, but also as an exciting read—an original encyclopedia of Russian life in the 17th century, presented through the collision of destinies and characters.