Curated playlist
19th-century male writers from the Russian Empire
- Leo TolstoyLeo Tolstoy spent his last hours on a train, preaching non-violence to strangers.
- Nikolai GogolNikolai Gogol burned his manuscript for Dead Souls, part two, in 1852. He blamed the Devil and died nine days later.
- Vissarion BelinskyRussian critic Vissarion Belinsky died in 1848, just before the Tsar's police could arrest him.
- Fyodor RostopchinFyodor Rostopchin left Moscow in 1812 after ordering his own house burned to the ground.
- Alexander PushkinAlexander Pushkin could not speak Russian well until he was ten years old. He grew up speaking mostly French.
- Ivan TurgenevIvan Turgenev wrote an obituary for Nikolai Gogol and was jailed for a month. Censors had banned it in Saint Petersburg.
- Maxim GorkyWriter Maxim Gorky visited a Soviet labor camp that had been staged for him, and he did not notice.
- Alexander HerzenFor three years, Alexander Herzen's Russian press in London did not sell a single copy.
- Ivan KrylovIvan Krylov found his calling as a fable writer only at age 40.
- Leonid AndreyevLeonid Andreyev sold a quarter-million copies of his first book in 1901. The Russian writer died poor in Finland at 48.
- Nikolai LeskovRussian writer Nikolai Leskov ordered no speeches at his funeral. His 1892 will said he did not deserve praise.
- Afanasy FetPoet Afanasy Fet died in 1892 with a paper knife in his hand and a suicide note on the table.
- Fyodor TyutchevFyodor Tyutchev called his poems trifles and often lost the scraps of paper they were written on.
- Mikhail Saltykov-ShchedrinLenin used a character from Saltykov-Shchedrin's novel The Golovlyov Family to insult Trotsky.
- Nikolay NekrasovPoet Nikolay Nekrasov's funeral turned into a political rally. Four thousand people followed his coffin in 1878.
- Konstantin BalmontPoet Konstantin Balmont burned every leftover copy of his own first book after it flopped.