Vasily Sleptsov

Vasily Sleptsov
Born	(1836-07-31)July 31, 1836 Voronezh, Russia
Died	April 4, 1878(1878-04-04) (aged 41) Serdobsk, Russia

Vasily Alekseyevich Sleptsov (Russian: Васи́лий Алексе́евич Слепцо́в), (July 31, 1836 – April 4, 1878), was a Russian writer and social reformer.

Biography

Sleptsov attended the medical school at Moscow University in 1855-56. He then went to Yaroslavl to try being an actor. He soon returned to Moscow, where he was in government service from 1857 to 1861-62. In the early 1860s he organized a women's commune in Saint Petersburg, and set up a society for female translators. He wrote fiction for several magazines including Annals of the Fatherland, Russian Speech, and The Contemporary, where he published his novella Hard Times in 1865. Sleptsov's works were praised by Leo Tolstoy; especially his story The Ward (1863).

In 1866 he was arrested for political activities, and for his association with Dmitry Karakozov, a man who'd attempted to assassinate Tsar Alexander II. Upon his release, he helped to found the magazine The Women's Herald. His works were widely read in the 1860s, but his popularity began to decline in the 1870s. The novel A Good Man was left unfinished at his death in 1878.

English translations

• Choir Practice, (story), from The Humor of Russia, Ethel Voynich/Sergey Stepnyak-Kravchinsky, Walter Scott Publishing, 1909. from Archive.org
• The Ward, (story), from In the Depths, Raduga Publishers, Moscow, 1987.

Bibliography

• Brumfield, William С. (2014), "Sleptsov Redivivus", Znanie. Ponimanie. Umenie, 11 (2), archived from the original on 24 September 2014, retrieved 24 September 2014.
• Brumfield, William С. (2015), "Bazarov and Riazanov: The Romantic Archetype in Russian Literature", Informatsionnyi gumanitarnyi portal “Znanie. Ponimanie. Umenie” (3), archived from the original on 8 October 2015, retrieved 8 October 2015.