Elpatevskii, Sergei Iakovlevich

Born Oct. 22 (Nov. 3), 1854, in the village of Novoselka-Kudrino, in present-day Vladimir Oblast; died Jan. 9, 1933, in Moscow. Russian writer. Priest’s son.

Elpat’evskii left his seminary studies to enter the medical faculty of Moscow University. He was arrested and repeatedly exiled for his activities in the liberation movement. His Sketches of Siberia (1893) drew sympathetic pictures of people in “victimized” Russia. In his autobiographical Stories About the Past (1900–01), Elpat’evskii harshly condemned the “dark kingdom” of musty traditions and snowed the emergence of people who were seekers and protestants. Lenin criticized Elpat’evskii for his Narodnik (Populist) views, dubbing him a “liquidator legalist” (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 25, p. 10). Elpat’evskii wrote his memoirs, Near Shadows (vols. 1–2, 1909–16), and the collections of sketches Abroad (1910), Egypt (1911), and Crimean Sketches (1913). After 1917, Elpat’evskii practiced medicine in Moscow.