The biography of Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov is briefly the most important. Nikolay Alekseevich Nekrasov

Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov (1821-1877) - an outstanding Russian poet, writer and publicist, who became a classic of Russian literature. The most famous were his works “To whom it is good to live in Russia”, “Troika”, “Poet and citizen”, “Grandfather Mazai and hares”. For a long time he was engaged in active social work, managing the journals Sovremennik and Otechestvennye Zapiski.

Nikolai Alekseevich became famous as an apologist for people's suffering, trying to show through his works the true tragedy of the peasantry. He is also known as an innovative poet who actively introduced folk prose and speech patterns into Russian poetry.

Childhood and youth

Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov was born on November 22, 1821 in the Vinnitsa district of the Podolsk province in the family of a large Yaroslavl landowner Alexei Nekrasov. At this time, the regiment in which he served was stationed in these places. The mother of the great poet was the Polish Elena Zakrevskaya. Shortly after the birth of his son, his father quit military service, and the family moved near Yaroslavl to the family estate of Greshnevo.

The future poet got acquainted early with the realities of the serf Russian village and the difficult peasant life. All this made a depressing impression and left a deep imprint on his soul. The gloomy and dull life in these places will respond in the future poems of the poet "Motherland", "Unfortunate", "In the unknown wilderness".

The harsh realities were complicated by the bad relationship between mother and father, which adversely affected the life of a large family (Nekrasov had 13 sisters and brothers). There, in his native land, Nekrasov first fell ill with poetry. Instilled a love for art by his beloved mother, who was well educated. After her death, the poet found many books in Polish, in the margins of which she left notes. Little Kolya also dedicated his first poems, written at the age of seven, to his mother:

Dear mother, please accept
This weak work
And consider
Does it fit anywhere?

After entering the gymnasium, Nekrasov left his native hearth and enjoyed freedom. He lived in the city in a private apartment with his younger brother and was left to himself. This is probably why he did not study well, and he often entered into verbal skirmishes with teachers and wrote satirical poems about them.

At the age of 16, Nikolai moved to St. Petersburg. The change of circumstances turned out to be forced, since after being expelled from the gymnasium he was threatened with a military career with a barracks spirit unbearable for the freedom-loving Kolya. In 1838, he arrives in the capital with a letter of recommendation for admission to the cadet corps, but instead begins preparations for entering the university. Emphasizing his desire to break with the hated past, in which the only bright spot was the memories of his mother, the poet writes the poem "Thought".

Nekrasov's first collection of poetry entitled "Dreams and Sounds" was not accepted by critics or by the author himself. After that, he moved away from the lyrics for a long time, and immediately destroyed all copies of the book that fell into his hands. Until his death, Nikolai Alekseevich did not like to think about these plays and poems.

In the field of literature

After such a turn, his father refused material support, so Nekrasov was forced to survive by odd jobs and even risked dying of starvation. Nevertheless, he firmly believed in literature as the most perfect form of free and rational activity. Even the most severe need did not make him leave this field. In memory of this period, he began to write, but never finished the novel The Life and Adventures of Tikhon Trostnikov.

In the period from 1840 to 1843, Nikolai Alekseevich took up writing prose, while simultaneously collaborating with the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski. Many stories came out from his pen - “Morning in the Editorial Office”, “Carriage”, “Landowner 23”, “Experienced Woman” and many others. Under the pseudonym of Perepelsky, he writes the dramas “Husband is not at ease”, “Feokfist Onufrievich Bob”, Grandfather's parrots”, “Actor”. Along with this, he became known as the author of numerous reviews and feuilletons.

In 1842, the long-awaited reconciliation with his father took place, which opened the way for him home. "With a tired head, neither alive nor dead," - this is how he describes the return to Greshnevo. By that time, the already elderly father had forgiven him and was even proud of his son's ability to overcome difficulties.

The following year, Nekrasov met V. Belinsky, who at first did not take his literary gift very seriously. Everything changed after the appearance of the poem "On the Road", which made the famous critic call him "a true poet." Even more Belinsky admired the famous "Motherland". Nekrasov did not remain in debt and called the meeting with him his salvation. As it turned out, the poet with his great talent really needed a person who would illuminate him with his ideas.

Singer of the soul of the people

After writing the poem "On the Road", which exposed the soul of an intelligent person who was no stranger to people's suffering, he created about a dozen more works. In them, the author accumulates all his hatred for the senseless opinion of the crowd, ready to stigmatize any victim of a difficult life with false and empty chatter. His poems “When from the darkness of delusion” became one of the first attempts by Russian authors to show a bright image of a woman who was dying from poverty and misfortune.

In the period from 1845 to 1854, the poet did not write so much, creating immortal poems "In Memory of Belinsky", "Muse", "Masha", "Uncompressed Strip", "Wedding". It is difficult not to notice in them the vocation that the great poet found in his fate. True, he still followed this path with extreme caution, which was also facilitated by the not-so-best years for literature, connected with the strengthening of the reactionary Nikolaev regime.

Social activity

Beginning in 1847, the poet took the helm of the Sovremennik magazine, becoming its publisher and editor. Under his leadership, the publication turned into a full-fledged organ of the revolutionary-democratic camp, the most advanced literary minds of Russia collaborated with him. Despite desperate attempts to save the magazine, when Nekrasov recited his poems at a dinner in honor of the famous Count N. Muravyov (“the hanger”), in 1866 Sovremennik was closed. The reason for such a decisive step by the authorities was the shots of Karakozov in the Summer Garden, which nearly cost the emperor his life. Until the last days, the poet regretted his act, calling it "the sound is wrong."

Two years later, Nekrasov nevertheless returned to publishing, acquiring the right to publish Otechestvennye Zapiski. This magazine will be the last brainchild of Nikolai Alekseevich. On its pages, he published chapters of the famous poem "Who Lives Well in Russia", as well as "Russian Women", "Grandfather" and a number of satirical works.

Late period

Much more fruitful was the period from 1855 to 1864, which began with the accession of the new Emperor Alexander II. During these years, Nekrasov appears as a true creator of poetic pictures of folk and social life. The first work in this series was the poem "Sasha". It so happened that at this time there was a social upsurge, including the birth of the populist movement. The response to this of a caring poet and citizen was the writing of the poem "Peddlers", "Songs to Eremushka", "Reflections at the front door" and, of course, "The Poet and the Citizen". In an effort to support the impulse of the revolutionary intelligentsia, he calls for feat and self-sacrifice for the sake of people's happiness in the poem "To the Sowers".

The late creative period is characterized by the presence of elegiac motifs in the poems. They found expression in such poems as "Morning", "Elegy", "Three Elegies", "Despondency". Standing apart is the most famous work of the poet "To whom it is good to live in Russia", which became the crown of his creative activity. It can be called a real guide to folk life, where there was a place for folk ideals of freedom, the spokesman for which was the hero of the work Grisha Dobrosklonov. The poem contains a large layer of peasant culture, conveyed to the reader in the form of beliefs, sayings, colloquial folk language.

In 1862, after reprisals against many radical friends, Nekrasov returned to his native places in the Yaroslavl region. Staying in his small homeland inspired the poet to write the poem "Knight for an Hour", which the author especially loved. Soon he bought his own estate Karabikha, where he came every summer.

Poet and citizen

In Russian literature, Nikolai Nekrasov took his own, very special place. He became a real folk poet, the spokesman of his aspirations and suffering. Exposing the vices of those in power, he, as best he could, stood up for the interests of the village oppressed by serfdom. Close contact with colleagues in Sovremennik helped develop deep moral convictions associated with his active citizenship. In his works “About the Weather”, “The Cry of Children”, “Reflections at the Front Door”, he shares with readers his revolutionary ideas, born in the name of people's happiness.

In 1856, the literary collection "Poems" was published, which became a kind of manifesto for progressive literature, which dreamed of forever removing the shackles of serfdom. All this contributed to the growth of the authority of Nikolai Alekseevich, who became a moral guide for many representatives of the then youth. And it is no coincidence that he was proudly called the most Russian poet. In the 1860s, the concept of the “Nekrasov school” was established, in which poets of a real and civic direction were “enrolled”, who wrote about the people and spoke with their reader in its language. Among the most famous authors of this trend, D. Minaev and N. Dobrolyubov stand out.

A distinctive feature of Nekrasov's work was his satirical orientation. In his poems "Lullaby", "Modern Ode" he ridicules noble hypocrites and bourgeois philanthropists. And in the "Court" and "The Song of the Free Speech" one can see a bright sharply satirical political subtext. The poet exposes censorship, feudal landlords and the illusory freedom given by the emperor.

In the last years of his life, Nekrasov suffered from a severe oncological disease of the stomach. He agreed to an operation by the famous Dr. Billroth, but it was unsuccessful. A trip to the Crimea did not save him from a serious illness - on December 27, 1877, Nikolai Alekseevich died. His funeral turned into an unprecedented expression of the popular sympathies of thousands of people who came on a frosty winter day to honor the memory of the great poet.

Personal life

In the most difficult times of lack of money, Ivan Panaev, a well-known holder of a literary salon in St. Petersburg, helped Nekrasov. In his house, the poet met many prominent literary figures - Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Saltykov-Shchedrin. Acquaintance with the beautiful Avdotya Panaeva, Ivan's wife, stood apart. Despite her firm disposition, Nekrasov managed to achieve the location of a woman. After the successes that came, Nikolai Alekseevich acquired a large apartment on Liteiny, where the Panaev family also moved in. True, the husband had long lost interest in Avdotya and did not have any feelings for her. After the death of Panaev, the long-awaited marriage with Avdotya did not take place. She quickly married the secretary of Sovremennik A. Golovachev and moved out of the apartment.

Tormented by unrequited love, Nekrasov, together with his sister Anna, goes abroad, where he meets a new passion - the Frenchwoman Sedina Lefren. For five years they will maintain a relationship at a distance, however, having received a lot of money from a successful publisher, she disappeared from his life forever.

At the end of his life, Nekrasov became close to Fekla Viktorova, whom, according to legend, he won at cards. She was a girl of humble origin and was often embarrassed by her presence in educated society. Experiencing rather paternal feelings for her, the poet awarded the girl with his patronymic and contributed to the acquisition of a new name ─ Zinochka. An indirect proof of this is the fact that he dedicated all his later poems to A. Panaeva.

Nevertheless, shortly before his death, already greatly weakened and exhausted, the poet decided to marry Thekla, which took place in a temporary church built right in the dining room of his house.

Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov was born in 1821 in the Podolsk province (Ukraine), where at that time his father was on guard. The poet's mother was Polish Elena Zakrevskaya. Subsequently, he created almost a religious cult of her memory, but the poetic and romantic biography with which he endowed her was almost entirely a figment of the imagination, and his filial feelings during her life did not go beyond the usual. Shortly after the birth of his son, the father retired and settled in his small estate in the Yaroslavl province. He was an uncouth and ignorant landowner - a hunter, a petty tyrant, a rude and a petty tyrant. From an early age, Nekrasov could not stand his father's house. This made him declassed, although he retained until his death many of the features of a middle-class landowner, in particular, a love of hunting and a large card game.

Portrait of Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov. Artist N. Ge, 1872

At the age of seventeen, against the will of his father, he left his home and went to St. Petersburg, where he enrolled as an external student at the university, but due to lack of money he was soon forced to stop studying. Without support from home, he turned into a proletarian and lived from hand to mouth for several years. In 1840, he published the first collection of poems, in which nothing foreshadowed his future greatness. Belinsky subjected these verses to harsh criticism. Then Nekrasov took up daily - literary and theatrical - work, he also took on publishing enterprises and proved to be a smart businessman.

By 1845 he was on his feet and in fact was the main publisher of the young literary school. Several literary almanacs published by him have had significant commercial success. Among them was the famous Petersburg collection who first published poor people Dostoevsky, as well as several mature poems by Nekrasov himself. He became a close friend of Belinsky, who admired his new poems no less than he was indignant at the collection of 1840. After Belinsky's death, Nekrasov created a real cult of him, similar to the one he created for his mother.

In 1846, Nekrasov purchased from Pletnev former Pushkin Contemporary, and from a decayed relic, which this publication has become in the hands of the remnants of the former “aristocratic” writers, it has turned into a remarkably profitable business and the most lively literary magazine in Russia. Contemporary endured the difficult times of the Nikolaev reaction and in 1856 became the main organ of the extreme left. It was banned in 1866 after the first assassination attempt on Alexander II. But two years later, Nekrasov, together with Saltykov-Shchedrin, bought Domestic Notes and thus remained editor and publisher of the main radical journal until his death. Nekrasov was a brilliant editor: his ability to get the best literature and the best people who wrote on the topic of the day bordered on a miracle. But as a publisher, he was an entrepreneur—unscrupulous, tough, and greedy. Like all entrepreneurs of that time, he did not pay extra to his employees, taking advantage of their disinterestedness. His personal life also did not meet the requirements of radical puritanism. He played cards all the time. Spent a lot of money on his table and his mistresses. He was no stranger to snobbery and loved the company of superior people. All this, according to many contemporaries, did not harmonize with the "humane" and democratic nature of his poetry. But it was his cowardly behavior on the eve of closing that set everyone against him especially. Contemporary when, to save himself and his magazine, he composed and read publicly a poem glorifying Count Muraviev, the most firm and resolute "reactionary".

Lyrics of Nekrasov. Video tutorial

The article provides a brief biography of Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov.

The great classic of Russian poetry, writer and publicist Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov, years of life 1821 - 1877 (78).

Nekrasov, thanks to his views, is ranked among the "revolutionary democrats." Nikolai Alekseevich was the editor of two magazines: Sovremennik and Otechestvennye Zapiski.

One of the most significant and famous works is the poem "To whom in Russia to live well."

early years

Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov was born on November 28 (December 10), 1821 in the Podolsk province in the city of Nemirov in a wealthy large family of a landowner, the great poet had 13 sisters and brothers. The writer lived his early years in his family estate in the village of Greshnevo, Yaroslavl province. At the age of 11, Nekrasov entered the gymnasium, where he studied up to grade 5, but the future poet did not succeed with his studies. At the same time, Nikolai begins to try to write his first humorous poems.

Education and the beginning of a creative path

The poet's father had a very difficult character, having learned that his son decided to enter the military service, he refused him financial assistance. In 1838, Nekrasov moved to St. Petersburg, where he entered the university at the Faculty of Philology and became a volunteer. To feed himself, Nikolai finds a job, he also writes poetry to order and gives paid lessons.

This year, Nekrasov will meet the literary critic Belinsky, and in the future he will have a huge impact on the young writer. At the age of 26, Nekrasov, together with the writer Ivan Panaev, leased from P. A. Pletnev the magazine Sovremennik, Belinsky soon came to it. He handed over to Nekrasov part of his material, which he collected for the Leviathan collection he had conceived.

The magazine very quickly became famous and began to have a great influence in society. In 1862, the government banned the publication of the magazine.

Literary activity

In 1840, Nekrasov published his first collection of poems, Dreams and Sounds, the collection was unsuccessful, and Vasily Zhukovsky recommended that most of all the poems from this collection be published without indicating the author's name. After such events in his life, Nikolai Nekrasov decided to stop writing poetry and took up prose.

Nikolai writes novels and stories, is engaged in selective publication of almanacs, in one of which the debut of writers took place: D. V. Grigorovich, F. M. Dostoevsky, I. S. Turgenev, A. I. Herzen, A. N. Maikov spoke. The most famous almanac was the Petersburg Collection, published in 1846.

From 1847 to 1866 he was the publisher and editor of the Sovremennik magazine, in which the best representatives of Russian writers of their time worked. Nekrasov publishes several collections of his poems in the magazine.

The works "Peasant Children", "Pedlars" bring him great fame. The journal was the center of revolutionary democracy.

Thanks to the Sovremennik magazine, such talents shone: Ivan Turgenev, Alexander Herzen, Ivan Goncharov, Dmitry Grigorovich and many others. The well-known Alexander Ostrovsky, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Gleb Uspensky published in it for a long time. Thanks to the magazine and personally to Nikolai Nekrasov, Russian literature recognized such great names as Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy.

Nekrasov collaborated in the 1840s with the Otechestvennye Zapiski magazine, and after the closure of the Sovremennik magazine in 1868, he rented it from Kraevsky.
Nekrasov devoted ten years of his life to the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski.

Nekrasov in his works spoke about all the suffering experienced by the Russian people, showed how difficult life is for the peasantry. As a writer, Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov made an invaluable contribution to the development of Russian classical poetry and literature in general. In his works he used simple Russian colloquial speech, thanks to which the author brilliantly showed all the beauty of the Russian language. Nekrasov was the first to use together: satire, lyrics and elegiac motifs. Nekrasov did not always like his own works, and he often asked them not to be included in collections. But his publishers and friends persuaded Nekrasov not to remove a single work.

Personal life and hobbies

In the life of the poet there were several love experiences: In 1842, at a poetry evening, he met the mistress of the literary salon, Avdotya Panaeva. Further in St. Petersburg in 1863 he met a Frenchwoman Selina Lefren. Nekrasov's wife was the village girl Fyokla Viktorovna, a simple and uneducated girl, at that time she was 23 years old, and Nekrasov was already 48.

1. The first years in St. Petersburg
2. “Who should live well in Russia”: Nekrasov’s last major work

Nikolai Nekrasov is known to modern readers as the "most peasant" poet in Russia: it was he who was one of the first to speak about the tragedy of serfdom and explored the spiritual world of the Russian peasantry. Nikolai Nekrasov was also a successful publicist and publisher: his Sovremennik became a legendary magazine of its time.

“Everything that, having entangled my life from childhood, an irresistible curse fell on me ...”

Nikolai Nekrasov was born on December 10 (November 28 according to the old style) in 1821 in the small town of Nemirov, Vinnitsa district, Podolsk province. His father Alexei Nekrasov came from a family of once wealthy Yaroslavl nobles, he was an army officer, and his mother Elena Zakrevskaya was the daughter of a possessor from the Kherson province. Parents were against the marriage of a beautiful and educated girl with a poor military man at that time, so the young people got married in 1817 without their blessing.

However, the couple's family life was not happy: the father of the future poet turned out to be a harsh and despotic man, including in relation to his soft and shy wife, whom he called a "recluse". The painful atmosphere that prevailed in the family influenced Nekrasov's work: metaphorical images of parents often appeared in his works. Fyodor Dostoevsky said: “It was a heart wounded at the very beginning of life; and this wound that never healed was the beginning and source of all his passionate, suffering poetry for the rest of his life..

Konstantin Makovsky. Portrait of Nikolai Nekrasov. 1856. State Tretyakov Gallery

Nicholas Ge. Portrait of Nikolai Nekrasov. 1872. State Russian Museum

Nikolai's early childhood was spent in his father's family estate - the village of Greshnevo, Yaroslavl province, where the family moved after the resignation of Alexei Nekrasov from the army. The boy had a particularly close relationship with his mother: she was his best friend and first teacher, instilled in him a love for the Russian language and the literary word.

Things in the family estate were very neglected, it even came to litigation, and Nekrasov's father took on the duties of a police officer. When leaving on business, he often took his son with him, so from an early age the boy had a chance to see pictures that were not intended for children's eyes: knocking out debts and arrears from peasants, cruel reprisals, all kinds of manifestations of grief and poverty. In his own poems, Nekrasov recalled the early years of his life as follows:

The first years in St. Petersburg

In 1832, Nekrasov turned 11 years old, and he entered the gymnasium, where he studied until the fifth grade. Studying was difficult for him, relations with the gymnasium authorities did not go well - in particular, because of the caustic satirical poems that he began to compose at the age of 16. Therefore, in 1837, Nekrasov went to St. Petersburg, where, according to the wishes of his father, he was supposed to enter the military service.

In St. Petersburg, young Nekrasov, through his friend at the gymnasium, met several students, after which he realized that education interested him more than military affairs. Despite the demands of his father and the threats to leave him without material support, Nekrasov began to prepare for the entrance exams to the university, but failed them, after which he became a volunteer at the Faculty of Philology.

Nekrasov Sr. fulfilled his ultimatum and left his rebellious son without financial assistance. All of Nekrasov's free time from studies was spent looking for work and a roof over his head: it got to the point that he could not afford to have lunch. For some time he rented a room, but in the end he could not pay for it and ended up on the street, and then ended up in a beggar's shelter. It was there that Nekrasov discovered a new opportunity for earning money - he wrote petitions and complaints for a small fee.

Over time, Nekrasov's affairs began to improve, and the stage of dire need was passed. By the early 1840s, he made a living by composing poems and fairy tales, which later appeared in the form of popular prints, published small articles in the Literary Gazette and the Literary Supplement to the Russian Invalid, gave private lessons and composed plays for Alexandrinsky Theater under the pseudonym Perepelsky.

In 1840, at the expense of his own savings, Nekrasov published his first collection of poetry, Dreams and Sounds, consisting of romantic ballads, which traced the influence of the poetry of Vasily Zhukovsky and Vladimir Benediktov. Zhukovsky himself, having familiarized himself with the collection, called only two poems not bad, while he recommended printing the rest under a pseudonym and argued this as follows: “Subsequently you will write better, and you will be ashamed of these verses”. Nekrasov heeded the advice and released a collection under the initials N.N.

The book "Dreams and Sounds" was not particularly successful with either readers or critics, although Nikolai Polevoy spoke of the beginning poet very favorably, and Vissarion Belinsky called his poems "come out of the soul." Nekrasov himself was upset by his first poetic experience and decided to try himself in prose. He wrote his early stories and novels in a realistic manner: the plots were based on events and phenomena in which the author himself was a participant or witness, and some characters had prototypes in reality. Later, Nekrasov also turned to satirical genres: he created the vaudeville "This is what it means to fall in love with an actress" and "Feoktist Onufrievich Bob", the story "Makar Osipovich Random" and other works.

Publishing activities of Nekrasov: Sovremennik and Whistle

Ivan Kramskoy. Portrait of Nikolai Nekrasov. 1877. State Tretyakov Gallery

Nikolai Nekrasov and Ivan Panaev. Caricature by Nikolai Stepanov, "Illustrated Almanac". 1848. Photo: vm.ru

Alexey Naumov. Nikolai Nekrasov and Ivan Panaev at the patient Vissarion Belinsky. 1881

From the mid-1840s, Nekrasov began to actively engage in publishing activities. With his participation, the almanacs "Physiology of Petersburg", "Articles in Poetry without Pictures", "April 1", "Petersburg Collection" were published, and the latter was especially successful: Dostoevsky's novel "Poor People" was first published in it.

At the end of 1846, Nekrasov, together with his friend, journalist and writer Ivan Panaev, rented the Sovremennik magazine from the publisher Pyotr Pletnev.

Young authors, who had previously published mainly in Otechestvennye Zapiski, willingly switched to Nekrasov's publication. It was Sovremennik that made it possible to reveal the talent of such writers as Ivan Goncharov, Ivan Turgenev, Alexander Herzen, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin. Nekrasov himself was not only the editor of the magazine, but also one of its regular contributors. His poems, prose, literary criticism, journalistic articles were published on the pages of Sovremennik.

The period from 1848 to 1855 became a difficult time for Russian journalism and literature due to a sharp tightening of censorship. To fill in the gaps that arose in the content of the magazine due to censorship bans, Nekrasov began to publish in it chapters from the adventure novels Dead Lake and Three Countries of the World, which he wrote in collaboration with his common-law wife Avdotya Panaeva (she was hiding under the pseudonym N .N. Stanitsky).

In the mid-1850s, the demands of censorship softened, but the Sovremennik faced a new problem: class contradictions split the authors into two groups with opposing beliefs. Representatives of the liberal nobility advocated realism and the aesthetic principle in literature, supporters of democracy adhered to a satirical direction. The confrontation, of course, splashed out on the pages of the magazine, so Nekrasov, together with Nikolai Dobrolyubov, founded an appendix to Sovremennik - the satirical publication Whistle. It published humorous novels and stories, satirical poems, pamphlets and caricatures.

At various times, Ivan Panaev, Nikolai Chernyshevsky, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, and Nikolai Nekrasov published their works on the pages of the Whistle. Photo: russkiymir.ru

After the closure of Sovremennik, Nekrasov began publishing the Otechestvennye Zapiski magazine, which he rented from the publisher Andrei Kraevsky. At the same time, the poet worked on one of his most ambitious works - the peasant poem "Who should live well in Russia".

The idea for the poem appeared to Nekrasov as early as the late 1850s, but he wrote the first part after the abolition of serfdom, around 1863. The basis of the work was not only the literary experiences of the poet's predecessors, but also his own impressions and memories. According to the author's idea, the poem was to become a kind of epic, demonstrating the life of the Russian people from different points of view. At the same time, Nekrasov purposefully used for writing it not a “high calm”, but a simple colloquial language close to folk songs and legends, replete with colloquial expressions and sayings.

Work on the poem "Who Lives Well in Russia" took Nekrasov almost 14 years. But even during this period, he did not have time to fully realize his plan: a serious illness prevented him, which chained the writer to bed. Initially, the work was supposed to consist of seven or eight parts. The route of the heroes' journey, looking for "who lives happily, freely in Russia", lay across the whole country, to St. Petersburg itself, where they were to meet with an official, merchant, minister and tsar. However, Nekrasov understood that he would not have time to complete the work, so he reduced the fourth part of the story - "A Feast for the Whole World" - to an open ending.

During the life of Nekrasov, only three fragments of the poem were published in the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski - the first part with a prologue, which does not have its own name, "Last Child" and "Peasant Woman". "A Feast for the Whole World" was published only three years after the death of the author, and even then with significant censorship cuts.

Nekrasov died on January 8, 1878 (December 27, 1877 according to the old style). Several thousand people came to say goodbye to him, who accompanied the coffin of the writer from home to the Novodevichy cemetery in St. Petersburg. This was the first time that a Russian writer was given national honors.