In the Sun

Mikhail Petrovich Artsybashev was born into a family of a district police chief, and that undoubtedly left an imprint on his perception of the world. While all his classmates, putting on pink spectacles, composed poems about first love and romantic stories, Artsybashev wrote stories about beggars, drunkards, domestic tyrants, and killers. The realism in his tales often bordered on naturalism, but his immense literary talent allowed him to turn grim stories into true masterpieces. Artsybashev didn’t indulge in savoring the disgusting details of life at the bottom of society, but he did search for the causes that drive a person to crime. In essence, he was one of the founders of the psychological thriller.

Alexander Amfiteatrov, in his memoirs, characterized the writer this way: “Not a prophet and not a teacher of his generation was Artsybashev, but his chronicler of everyday life—anxious and gloomy in his uneasy love for it. In Artsybashev, there was a lot of Lermontov’s element—perhaps even more than in any other of the major Russian writers after Leo Tolstoy. And this sharply accusatory love anxiety for his century is also purely Lermontov.”

He could write only directly and honestly before himself—his first and main critic, perhaps even the only critic for him, one who was fully authoritative.

After the revolution, Artsybashev emigrated to Poland and published accusatory articles in all the newspapers, speaking against Bolshevik power—earning the fame of the “first Russian émigré journalist.” He never returned to the USSR; he died of consumption in Warsaw. Zinaida Gippius, in an obituary published in the émigré press, admitted: “I don’t know a writer—none!— whose face remained so unclouded, whose answers were so clear, firm, and pure. His human and writerly ‘kindness’ was not an illusion—it manifested at just the right time and in the right way.”