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Updated: June 7, 2025
There was need of a man, a writer like Gorky several years later born right in the midst of this movement, who would be the very product of it, and for whom its ideas would be a reason for existence. Veressayev was this man and writer, and it is as much by his political opinions as by his literary talents that he gained such a wide-spread reputation.
If his works are not always irreproachable from a literary standpoint, they are always accurate in describing exactly what the author himself has seen and lived through. Veressayev, in three great stories, gives us the three phases of the movement between 1880 and 1900.
In reality, there is not a single book by Veressayev which might not be a confession; all that he writes he has already experienced himself, and his work vibrates with a delicate and personal emotion. It is only necessary to read "The Memoirs of a Physician," which is almost an autobiography, in order to perceive the moral relationship that exists between Veressayev and the heroes of his stories.
This petition brought severe punishment to almost all the people whose names were signed to it. Veressayev went abroad; he visited Italy, France, Germany and Switzerland. Gifted with poetic inspiration, he had begun writing at an early age. He was not more than fourteen when he translated some poems of Koerner and Goethe into Russian verse.
However, his reputation in Russia is not based on this book, which is considered his masterpiece, but rather on his stories and tales. Let us, however, first take a glance at the life of this author, a life so closely connected with the subjects of his works that it forms an indispensable commentary on them. Veressayev, whose real name is Vikenty Smidovich, was born in 1867, in Tula.
But we must remember that the Marxian point of view, which the author takes, explains in part the horror of such pictures. According to Veressayev the poor peasants can better their position only by getting rid of their land, in order to become free proletarians. But if the peasant class is unfortunate, it is so, for the most part, because it is the most exploited and the most oppressed.
Let us now analyze the stories in which Veressayev describes the life of the people. The story of "The Steppe" is as follows: One beautiful autumn evening two men meet on the steppe. One of them, the forger Nikita, is returning to his native land; he is wounded in the leg and it is hard for him to walk. He is looking for work. The other is a professional beggar.
Nevertheless, Veressayev does not argue against this way of working; he shows the facts, and leaves it to the reader to decide. On the other hand, he does not hide his fear of the common ignorance of all doctors. Every individual differs from his neighbor. How distinguish their idiosyncrasies? Once the scope of a sickness is known, what remedy shall be used? Some say this, others, that.
We find the influence of Marx in his ideas, but we cannot affirm that he is an absolute Marxian. It seems as if Veressayev, troubled by the innumerable divergencies of opinion, asks himself secretly: "Will this war lead to the unity of opinion and program, so necessary for victory, or by its quarrels will it only retard the harmony so much sought after?"
The passage in "Crime and Punishment," in which Dostoyevsky depicts one of his heroes in the following manner: "He was young, he had abstract ideas, and was, consequently, cruel," perfectly fits Tanya. Veressayev tells the following incident: "One day, when she was at the station, some peasants rushed down from the platform. A railroad guard struck one of the peasants.
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