HISTORICAL DICTIONARY A–Z - Russia: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present - page 351

century, and the first to gain an international
reputation, Turgenev was overshadowed in his
lifetime by Lev TOLSTOY and Feodor DOSTOEVSKY .
Turgenev was born in Orel in central Russia to a
well-established aristocratic family and later
educated in St. Petersburg and Berlin. His
writer's education took place on his family's
estates, where he witnessed the inequities of
SERFDOM and the Russian social system, a recur-
rent theme in his major works. After a short stint
as a civil servant in St. Petersburg, Turgenev
devoted himself to his literary career. Beginning
with his long poem Parasha (1843) and the short
stories that established him as an important
writer, he developed an elegantly crafted, lucid
style with a relatively balanced point of view.
Nevertheless, Turgenev could not avoid taking
part in the debates that divided Russian intellec-
tuals in the period between the 1840s and
1870s. In the protracted debate between Slavo-
philes, who championed Russian traditions, and
Westernizers, who sought to make Russia more
European, Turgenev sided with the latter (see
SLAVOPHILES AND WESTERNERS ). His first important
work was Sportman's Sketches, published in 1852,
whose vigorous attacks on serfdom found wide
resonance in Russian educated society and
helped shape the intellectual climate that pro-
vided the foundation for the emancipation of the
serfs in 1861. During the 1850s, Turgenev con-
tinued to publish well-received novels such as
Rudin (1856), A House of Gentlefolk (1859), and
On the Eve (1860), which portrayed the fears and
aspirations of Russian educated society in the
midst of broader social and political changes. But
it was Fathers and Sons, published in 1862, that
made the deepest impact at the time of its publi-
cation and has lived on to become a classic of
Russian and world literature. Considered to be
his masterpiece, Fathers and Sons addressed the
issues of how to bring change to Russia through
the timeless vehicle of generational conflict.
Through the main character, an idealistic young
radical student named Bazarov, Turgenev cap-
tured the feelings of an impatient younger gen-
eration ready to embrace new ideologies and

Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, ca. 1880 (Library of Congress)

tactics such as nihilism and revolution. Contro-
versial at the time of its publication, the novel
was criticized by both the older and younger
generations portrayed in the topic, even though
Turgenev seemed to sympathize with Bazarov's
outlook while preferring gradual to revolution-
ary change. Other important, though less influ-
ential, novels followed Fathers and Sons, such as
Smoke (1867) and Virgin Soil (1877). After 1855,
Turgenev gradually distanced himself from Rus-
sia, living first in Germany and after 1870 in
Paris, where he was drawn by his love for the
celebrated opera singer Pauline Viardot-Garcia.
With the French translations of his works, Tur-
genev achieved international recognition. He
died near Paris in September 1883.