Chapygin, Aleksei Pavlovich

Born Oct. 5 (17), 1870, in the village of Bol’shoi Ugol, in what is now Kargopol’ Raion, Arkhangel’sk Oblast; died Oct. 21, 1937, in Leningrad. Soviet Russian writer.

The son of a peasant, Chapygin was self-educated. His work was first published in 1903. The novella The White Monastery (1913) and the collection Along the Beastly Path (1918) display a tragic world outlook and are permeated with antiurbanism and an intense feeling for nature; in these works the author depicted the spontaneous protest of people against the social structure of prerevolutionary Russia. Chapygin’s epic works Razin Stepan (parts 1–3,1926–27) and Idle People (parts 1–4,1935–37) greatly influenced the development of the Soviet historical novel. The hero of these works is the people as a whole, rising to fight for freedom. These books demonstrate Chapygin’s familiarity with the popular speech and customs of 17th-century Russia.