born July 15, 1853
Vladimir Korolenko has been completely forgotten as a writer. I read Korolenko as a child – he was idolized by my grandfather – and his collected works still stand on my shelf, although it has been years since I glanced at their pages. I can still conjure hazy memories of the unfortunate, sickly, and impoverished children, and the strict but fair judge of In Bad Company (written in 1885 and published in English translation in 1916); of the blind boy Pyotr who was able to overcome his misfortune and become a true Blind Musician in the novel of that name; of the devil who, on Yom Kippur, carried off the Jewish tavern keeper Yankel, whom the villagers blamed for their own drunkenness and empty pockets. The following year he returned Yankel and took in his stead an “upstanding” Christian miller, who turned out to be a much worse scoundrel and thief than the universally despised Jew. I can also recall images of life in provincial Ukraine from Korolenko’s autobiographical History of My Contemporary (also available in English translation) – and that’s about it.
But this writer of fiction, who penned many books that are quite good, but not outstanding, is only one side of the mighty and utterly astonishing personality who bore the name Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko. Even the irritable and sarcastic Ivan Bunin said, with good reason, that he felt better knowing that Russia had Korolenko, “the living conscience of the Russian people.”
Korolenko was one of those rare and amazing people who defend all who have been unjustly wronged – always, no matter the circumstances, no matter who is in power. He became involved in political struggles as a young man and endured arrest, exile, and life in cold and distant Yakutia in the 1880s. One would think that his political views fit a set mold. This, however, did not stop the writer many years later, toward the end of his life, from making every effort to defend people from political persecution of a very different sort: no longer tsarist, but Bolshevik.
Korolenko was primarily a political essayist, one who passionately and selflessly poured his heart and soul into his articles. It was his life’s vocation: the defense of human dignity “wherever the pen could be used to this purpose.”
But what made Korolenko unique is that he did not stop at the pen. In 1892, there was famine in Russia. Korolenko wrote an essay, “In the Hungry Year,” but he also collected aid for the starving and provided immediate assistance to peasants in Nizhny Novgorod Province.
In that same year, in Vyatka Province, ten Udmurt peasants – members of a Finnic tribe known as Votyaks, living in the village of Old Multan – were falsely accused of ritual murder of a vagabond, purportedly carried out as part of a pagan sacrifice. The trial resulted in the acquittal of three of the accused, but the other seven were sentenced to hard labor. Several years later, the case was reviewed and the poor Udmurts were again found guilty. If Korolenko had not been present at this second trial as a correspondent, the unknown peasants would have rotted away in a Siberian camp. His vivid reporting described the judges’ flagrant bias.
His conscience ought to have been clear at this point – he had done everything he could to acquaint the reading public with this abuse of power. Yet when the innocent were again sent back into forced labor, Korolenko went to the scene of the crime and conducted his own investigation. He became convinced of the convicts’ innocence. After returning to St. Petersburg, he wrote ten articles on the Multan case, and the unfortunate Votyaks and their fate was forced into public view. Prominent lawyer Alexei Koni wrote an opinion on the court’s decision, arguing it was unjust, and Korolenko, who by then had become an expert on the Udmurt religion and way of life, not only published scholarly articles on the subject, but took it upon himself to prepare the defense’s case at a third trial.
Leaving behind a gravely ill daughter, the writer traveled to Kazan Province, where a new investigation was taking place. His reporting was read throughout the country and his closing arguments so enthralled those present that the stenographers, captivated by his words, forgot their duty to record them, leaving posterity without a transcript. All of the convicts were acquitted, but as soon as the verdict was announced, the joyous Korolenko was handed a telegram, informing him of his daughter’s death.
The events associated with the Multan case and the loss of his child were a terrible blow, and Korolenko suffered a lengthy illness. Afterwards, he set out on a journey through the United States, where his primary interest was not the rich and fortunate, but the poor and wretched. He wrote a series of articles about Russian immigrants in America, describing how those who had been despised in their motherland were finding a new life across the ocean.
Korolenko returned to Russia not long before the revolution of 1905. The country was in turmoil. Swaths of southern Russia and Ukraine were being convulsed by Jewish pogroms. Again the writer was unable to remain outside the fray. He wrote outraged articles, awful, shocking sketches describing the cruelties, but still this was not enough. In 1905, in Poltava, where a pogrom appeared to be brewing, Korolenko spent three days in the bazaar, trying to calm passions and speaking to locals as his equals, working to change the minds of potential pogromists. The uneducated Ukrainian peasants were particularly impressed by the fact that, in parting, the famous writer shook their hands. No blood was shed.
In Kiev in 1911, a Christian boy named Andryusha Yushchinsky was murdered. All evidence pointed to a band of thieves perpetrating a cover-up – Andryusha had befriended the children of a woman leader of the gang. However it was a law-abiding Jew named Menachem Beilis who was arrested and accused of ritual murder, for the blood of a Christian child.
This was not the backwaters of Multan. A frenzied wave of anti-semitism swept through Kiev and spread to other towns. Suddenly “experts” were heard talking nonsense about the practice of ritual murders among Jews, and the only jurors that could be found in Kiev – a major cultural center – were from the uneducated layers of society. Calls for pogroms became louder and more insistent.
Beilis’ defense did not fall to Korolenko alone. To its credit, the Russian intelligentsia – many lawyers, academics, and commentators – spoke out in defense of the wrongly accused man. Still, it would be hard to overstate the importance of Korolenko’s reporting in bringing about Beilis’ acquittal.
Korolenko did not live long under Soviet rule. He died in Poltava in 1921, having seen the horrors of Revolution and Civil War. The Red Terror made police abuses under the tsars look like child’s play. Nonetheless, the elderly writer did not relent. He interceded on behalf of everyone he could, writing to the most powerful men in Soviet letters – Gorky and Lunacharsky (Commissar of Education). His letters became testaments to a man unwilling to allow himself or others to be debased. It is easy to understand how his actions would have irritated Lenin, who described him as a “pitiable philistine in the thrall of bourgeois prejudices.” Korolenko, meanwhile, was busy either defending someone, collecting money for hungry children, or working on his memoirs.
After his death, Korolenko was given the mantle of a classic writer. After all, he had suffered prison and exile under the tsar. Large print runs of The Blind Musician and In Bad Company were published for children and teenagers, and his collected works followed. But Korolenko the social activist, always ready to come to the aid of the falsely accused, was forgotten. Korolenko’s letters to Lunacharsky were circulated in samizdat, but they were not a sensation, just as their publication in Russia during perestroika was not a sensation.
Perhaps we still are not quite ready to appreciate Korolenko.
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