Konstantin Mikhailovich Staniukovich

Born Mar. 18 (30), 1843, in Sevastopol’; died May 7 (20), 1903, in Naples. Russian writer.

The son of an admiral, Staniukovich was born into a family with a long naval tradition. He studied at the Naval Cadet Corps in St. Petersburg from 1857 to 1860. In 1860 he completed the voyage described in his first book of sketches, From a Voyage Around the World (1867). Staniukovich retired from the navy in 1864 with the rank of lieutenant and taught school in a remote village of Vladimir Province in 1865 and 1866. In 1872 he began contributing to the journal Delo (Affairs). He was a member of the journal’s editorial board from 1881 to 1884 and then its publisher.

In 1884, Staniukovich was arrested for his association with revolutionary Populist (Narodnik) émigrés; after a year of imprisonment he was exiled to Tomsk for three years.

Staniukovich wrote the novels No Way Out (1873), Our Mores (1879), In Troubled Waters (1878–79), Two Brothers (1880), The Slough (1881), First Steps (1891), The Outspoken Ones (1893–94), The Priests (1897), and The Indifferent Ones (1899). These works deal with the democratic intelligentsia and criticize bourgeois landowning society.

Staniukovich’s novellas and short stories about seafaring life, written between 1886 and 1903, have remained very popular. They display the best features of Staniukovich’s talent: realism, a democratic spirit, and advocacy of civic and personal courage and of inner steadfastness. Staniukovich’s sea stories were awarded the Pushkin Prize (1901). They have been translated into many foreign languages and national languages of the USSR.