Editing Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin (section)

== Legacy ==
[[File:Tver salt 2.jpg|thumb|250px|Saltykov-Schedrin Memorial House in Tver]]

[[Mikhail Bulgakov]] was among writers, influenced by Saltykov.

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 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 satirical cycle ''Fables'' and the two major works, ''[[The History of a Town]]'' and ''[[The Golovlyov Family]]'', are widely regarded as his masterpieces.<ref name="gorychkina"/> [[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."<ref name="gorychkina"/>

James Wood calls Shchedrin a precursor of [[Knut Hamsun]] and the [[Literary modernism|modernists]]:
{{blockquote|The closer Shchedrin gets close to Porphyry, the more unknowable he actually becomes. In this sense, Porphyry is a modernist prototype: the character who lacks an audience, the alienated actor. The hypocrite who does not know that he is one, and really be told that he is one by anyone around him, is something of a revolutionary type of character, for he has no "true" knowable self, no "stable" ego... Around the turn of the twentieth century, Knut Hamsun, a novelist strongly influenced by [[Fyodor Dostoyevsky|Dostoevsky]] and the Russian novel, would invent a newkind of character: the lunatic heroes of his novels ''[[Hunger (Hamsun novel)|Hunger]]'' and ''[[Mysteries (novel)|Mysteries]]'' go around telling falsely incriminating stories about themselves and acting badly when they have no obvious reason to. <...> The line from Dostoevsky, through Shchedrin, and on to Hamsun, is visible.<ref>[http://www.nybooks.com/media/doc/2010/02/09/golovlyov-family-introduction.pdf James Wood. ''The Golovlyov Family Introduction'']</ref>}}

Saltykov-Shchedrin has been lavishly praised by Soviet 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)<ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.webmechta.com/poznay-mir/333-karl-marks|title = Karl Marx. Brief Biography| publisher = www.webmechta.com| access-date = 2012-03-01}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.bestreferat.ru/referat-214612.html|title = The Golovlyov's Family. Its Genre Peculiarities| publisher = www.bestreferat.ru| access-date = 2012-03-01}}</ref> 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.<ref name="gorychkina"/> Marx was also known reading other books by the author, namely ''The Gentlemen from Tashkent'' and ''Diary of a Provincial in St. Petersburg'';<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8GznDwAAQBAJ | isbn=978-1-78168-953-0 | title=Karl Marx and World Literature | date=3 April 2014 | publisher=Verso Books }}</ref> among the Russian authors that Marx read, he particularly valued Pushkin, Gogol and Shchedrin.<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QWZ9AAAAIAAJ | title=Soviet Literature | date=1983 }}</ref>

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.<ref name="korolenko">{{cite web | author = Korolenko, V.G.| year = 1889| url = http://az.lib.ru/k/korolenko_w_g/text_0850.shtml|title = About Shchedrin | publisher = The Works in 5 Volumes. Criticism and Memoirs. Ogonyok Library. Pravda Publishers, Moscow, 1953| access-date = 2012-03-01}}</ref>

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.<ref name="mirsky"/> 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.<ref name="mirsky"/>
[[File:Ugryum-Burcheev (Nik.Remizov, 1907).jpg|thumb|200px|left|Portrait of Ugryum-Burcheev. Illustration to ''[[The History of a Town]]'' by [[Nikolai Remizov|Re-Mi]] (1907)]]

Most works of Saltykov's later period were written in a language that the satirist himself called [[Aesopian language|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.<ref name="dic_1990"/> "It is one continuous circumlocution because of censorship and requires a constant reading commentary," Mirsky argued.<ref name="mirsky"/> The use of Aesopic language was one reason why Saltykov-Shchedrin has never achieved as much acclaim in the West as had three of his great contemporaries, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, according to [[Sofia Kovalevskaya]]. "It is unbelievable, how well we've learned to read between the lines in Russia," the great mathematician remarked in her essay written in 1889 in [[Swedish language|Swedish]]. Another reason had to do with peculiarities of Saltykov's chosen genre: his credo "has always been a satire, spiced with fantasy, not far removed from [[Francois Rabelais|Rabelais]], the kind of literature that's tightly bound to its own national soil... Tears are the same wherever we go, but each nation laughs in its own way," Kovalevskaya argued.<ref name="kovalevskaya">{{cite web | author = Kovalevskaya, Sofia| year = 1889| url = http://az.lib.ru/k/kowalewskaja_s_w/text_0050.shtml|title = М.Е.Saltykov (Shchedrin)| publisher = Stockholms Dagblad| access-date = 2012-03-01}}</ref>

Saltykov's style of writing, according to D.S.Mirsky, was based on the bad journalistic style of the period, which originated largely with [[Osip Senkovsky]], and which "today invariably produces an impression of painfully elaborate vulgarity."<ref name="mirsky">[[D.S. Mirsky]]. ''A History of Russian Literature''. Northwestern University Press, 1999. {{ISBN|0-8101-1679-0}}. Page 294.</ref> Many other critics (Goryachkina among them) disagreed, praising the author's lively, rich language and the way he mastered both stark realism (''The Golovlyov Family'', ''Old Times in Poshekhonye'') and satirical grotesque merged with fantasy.<ref name="gorychkina"/> Of the writer's stylistic peculiarities biographer [[Sergey Krivenko]] (of the [[Narodnik]] movement, the one which Saltykov has always been in opposition to) wrote: "It is difficult to assess his works using the established criteria. It's a mix of a variety of genres: poetry and documentary report, epics and satire, tragedy and comedy. In the process of reading it is impossible to decide what exactly it is, but the general impression is invariably strong, as of something very lively and harmonic. Ignoring the established formats, Saltykov was driven by two things: current stream of new ideas and those lofty ideals he’s been aspiring to." Saltykov, according to Krivenko, occasionally repeated himself, but never denied this, explaining it by the need of always being engaged with 'hot' issues – "things which in the course of decades were in their own right repeating themselves with such damning monotony".<ref name="kriv"/> "There are not many writers in Rus whose very name would give that much to one's mind and heart, and who'd leave such a vast literary heritage, rich and diverse both in essence and in form, written in a very special language which even in his lifetime became known as 'saltykovian'," wrote Krivenko in 1895. "Saltykov's gift was no lesser than that of Gogol, neither in originality nor in itspower," the biographer reckoned.<ref name="kriv"/>

Saltykov-Schedrin was a controversial figure and often found himself a target of sharp criticism, mainly for his alleged 'lack of patriotism' and negativism. He's never seen himself a promoter of the latter and often proclaimed his belief in the strength of a common man, seeing the latter as holder of principles of real democracy.<ref name="gorychkina"/> In 1882, as he, feeling depressed by the critical response to his work, made rather a pessimistic assessment of his life in literature, [[Ivan Turgenev]] was quick to reassure him. "The writer who is most hated, is most loved, too. You'd have known none of this, had you remained M.E.Saltykov, a mere hereditary Russian aristocrat. But you are Saltykov-Schedrin, a writer who happened to draw a distinctive line in our literature: that's why you are either hated or loved, depending [on who reads you]. Such is the true 'outcome' of your life in literature, and you must be pleased with it."<ref name="dic_1990"/>

For all his insight and taste for detail, Saltykov was never keen on examining individual characters (even if he did create memorable ones). Admittedly, he was always more concerned with things general and typical, gauging social tendencies, collective urges and what he termed 'herd instincts in a modern man', often resorting to schemes and caricatures.<ref name="dic_1990"/>

In his later years Saltykov-Schedrin found himself to be a strong influence upon the radical youth of the time. In 1885–1886, [[Vladimir Lenin]]'s brother [[Aleksandr Ulyanov|Alexander]] and sister [[Anna Ulyanova|Anna]] were members of one of the numerous student's delegations that came home to visit the ailing Schedrin, latter referring to him as "the revolutionary youth's favourite writer". Saltykov-Shedrin was a personal favourite of Lenin himself, who often namechecked the writer's characters to prove his point – Iudushka, in particular, served well to label many of his adversaries: Russian old landlords and emerging capitalists, Tzarist government members and, notably, his own associate [[Trotzky]].<ref name="gorychkina"/>