The second half of the 19th century brought to our country many talented literary figures. One of them is a journalist, prose writer and publicist Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko.
Birth and childhood
Vladimir Korolenko was born in 1853 in the city of Zhytomyr, Ukraine. Vladimir’s father worked as a judge. He had a rather strict, but incorruptible character, which distinguished him from other officials. Vladimir’s mother is a native of Poland, and that is why in the early years of his life, the Polish language became native to the future writer.
The family was large: Vladimir lived with two brothers and sisters. He spent all his childhood in Ukraine, and later on he filled many of his compositions with memories of these years.
Education and youth
Vladimir Korolenko studied at the Polish boarding school and Zhytomyr gymnasium. When his father passed away, leaving his family in a difficult position, his son was educated at the Rivne real school.
In the future, he had to leave the St. Petersburg Technological Institute, as there was not enough money for training. He continued to study at the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy and the Mining Institute, from which he was consistently expelled for revolutionary inclinations.
Attitude to the revolution
From his youth, Korolenko shared the idea of Narodism. For bold criticism of the tsarist regime, the authorities did not spare the young man, sending him a new link over and over again.
Six years in difficult conditions did not weaken him, only tempered his character and served in the future as good material for stories. But Vladimir Korolenko criticized the October Revolution, which, it would seem, was just in the interests of the populist movement. As a true humanist, he did not welcome massacres of people. He shared this with Lunacharky in Letters written in 1920.
Creation
In the magazine Slovo, Vladimir Korolenko published his first work, Episode From the Life of a Seeker. But the stories “In a Bad Society,” “Makar's Dream,” and “The Blind Musician” got the most recognition. The basis of these works Korolenko laid his childhood memories of life at home.
In addition to prose, Vladimir created a lot of journalistic works devoted to the acute social problems of his time. For example, the article “Domestic Appearance” on the suppression of the revolution in 1905.
Personal life: wife and children
Korolenko married once, on his old acquaintance Evdokia Ivanovskaya, who, like him, was a revolutionary populist. He lived with her until the end of his days, and together they gave birth to two daughters - Natalya and Sofia.
Already during his lifetime, Vladimir made many good acquaintances among famous writers who spoke of him as a kind, cheerful, intelligent person, whom you can go anywhere.
Death
Korolenko spent the last years of his life in Poltava. Here the family had their own cottage, where all its members came for the summer.
At the end of his life, the writer created a voluminous autobiographical essay, “The Story of My Contemporary”. He died of pneumonia in 1921, without completing the fourth volume.
Hobbit
