Podiachev, Semen Pavlovich

Born Jan. 27 (Feb. 8), 1866, in the village of Obol’ianovo-Nikol’skoe, now Pod”ia-chevo, Dmitrov Raion, Moscow Oblast; died there Feb. 17, 1934. Soviet Russian writer. Member of the CPSU from 1918.

Pod”iachev began publishing in 1888. His novella Trying Experiences (1902) was singled out by V. G. Korolenko and M. Gorky. His works dealt chiefly with the tragic lives of millions of peasants suffering from lack of land and from exploitation and governmental tyranny; examples are Among the Old Believers (1907), Family Celebration (1910), and Life and Death (1912). He denounced the rapacity of rural shopkeepers and kulaks in The Career of Zakhar Fedorovich Drykalin (1915) and depicted the growth of the peasants’ political awareness as a result of revolutionary propaganda in Gathering Mushrooms and Berries (1916).

Pod”iachev’s short stories and sketches written during the Soviet period, such as “New Low Boots,” “Understood,” and “The Letter,” described the life of the countryside before and after October 1917. He also published an autobiographical novella, My Life (books 1–2, 1929–32).