Nikolay Alexeyevich Nekrasov (Russian: Никола́й Алексе́евич Некра́сов, IPA: [nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɐlʲɪkˈsʲejɪvʲɪtɕ nʲɪˈkrasəf] , 10 December [O.S. 28 November] 1821 – 8 January 1878 [O.S. 27 December 1877]) was a Russian poet, writer, critic and publisher, whose deeply compassionate poems about the Russian peasantry made him a hero of liberal and radical circles in the Russian intelligentsia of the mid-nineteenth century, particularly as represented by Vissarion Belinsky and Nikolay Chernyshevsky. He is credited with introducing ternary meters and the technique of dramatic monologue (On the Road, 1845) to Russian poetry. As the editor of several literary journals, notably Sovremennik, Nekrasov was also singularly successful and influential.
Nikolay Alexeyevich Nekrasov was born in Nemyriv (now in Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine), in the Bratslavsky Uyezd of Podolia Governorate. His father, Alexey Sergeyevich Nekrasov (1788–1862), was descended from Russian landed gentry and was an officer in the Imperial Russian Army. There is some uncertainty as to his mother's origins. According to the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary (and this corresponds with Nekrasov's 1887 autobiographical notes), Nekrasov's mother was Alexandra Zakrzewska, a Polish noblewoman and the daughter of a wealthy landlord who belonged to the szlachta. The church records tell a different story, and modern Russian scholars have her name as Yelena Andreyevna. "Up until recently the poet's biographers had it that his mother belonged to a Polish family. In fact she was the daughter of Ukrainian state official Alexander Semyonovich Zakrevsky, the owner of Yuzvino, a small village in the Podolia Governorate," Korney Chukovsky asserted in 1967. Pyotr Yakubovich argued that the records might have been tampered with so as to conceal the fact that the girl had been taken from Poland without her parents' consent (Nekrasov in his autobiography states as much). D. S. Mirsky explained this discrepancy by suggesting that Nekrasov "created the cult of his mother, imparted her with improbable qualities and started worshipping her after her death."
In January 1823 Alexey Nekrasov, ranked army major, retired and moved the family to his estate in Greshnevo, Yaroslavl province, near the Volga River, where young Nikolai spent his childhood years with his five siblings, brothers Andrey (b. 1820), Konstantin (b. 1824) and Fyodor (b. 1827), sisters Elizaveta (b. 1821) and Anna (b. 1823). This early retirement from the army, as well as his job as a provincial inspector, caused Aleksey Sergeyevich much frustration resulting in drunken rages against both his peasants and his wife. Such experiences traumatized Nikolai and later determined the subject matter of his major poems that portrayed the plight of the Russian peasants and women. Nekrasov's mother loved literature and imparted this passion to her son; it was her love and support that helped the young poet to survive the traumatic experiences of his childhood which were aggravated by images of social injustice, similar to Fyodor Dostoyevsky's childhood recollections. "His was a wounded heart, and this wound that never healed served as a source for his passionate, suffering verse for the rest of his life," the latter wrote.
In September 1832 Nekrasov joined the Yaroslavl Gymnasium but quit it prematurely. The reasons for this might have been the alleged trouble with tutors whom he wrote satires on (no archive documents confirm this) as well as Alexey Sergeyevich's insistence that his son should join the military academy. The biographer Vladimir Zhdanov also mentions the father's unwillingness to pay for his children's education; he certainly was engaged at some point in a long-drawn correspondence with the gymnasium authorities on this matter. Finally, in July 1837 he took two of his elder sons back home, citing health problems as a reason, and Nikolai had to spend a year in Greshnevo, doing nothing besides accompanying his father in his expeditions. The quality of education in the gymnasium was poor, but it was there that Nekrasov's interest in poetry grew: he admired Byron and Pushkin, notably the latter's "Ode to Freedom".
According to some sources he was then 'sent' to Saint Petersburg by his father, but Nekrasov in his autobiography maintained that it was his own decision to go, and that his brother Andrey assisted him in trying to persuade their father to procure all the recommendations required. "By the age of fifteen the whole notebook [of verses] has taken shape, which was the reason why I was itching to flee to the capital," he remembered. Outraged by his son's refusal to join the Cadet Corps, the father stopped supporting him financially. The three-year period of his "Petersburg tribulations" followed when the young man had to live in extreme conditions and once even found himself in a homeless shelter. Things turned for the better when he started to give private lessons and contribute to the Literary Supplement to Russky Invalid, all the while compiling ABC-books and versified fairytales for children and vaudevilles, under the pseudonym Perepelsky. In October 1838 Nekrasov debuted as a published poet: his "Thought" (Дума) appeared in Syn Otechestva. In 1839 he took exams at the Saint Petersburg University's Eastern languages faculty, failed and joined the philosophy faculty as a part-time student where he studied, irregularly, until July 1841. Years later detractors accused Nekrasov of mercantilism ("A million was his demon," wrote Dostoyevsky). But, "for eight years (1838–1846) this man lived on the verge of starvation... should he have backstepped, made peace with his father, he'd have found himself again in total comfort," Yakubovich noted. "He might have easily become a brilliant general, outstanding scientist, rich merchant, should he have put his heart to it," argued Nikolai Mikhaylovsky, praising Nekrasov's stubbornness in pursuing his own way.
In February 1840 Nekrasov published his first collection of poetry, titled Dreams and Sounds, under the initials "N. N.", following the advice of his patron Vasily Zhukovsky, who suggested the author might feel ashamed of his childish exercises in several years' time. The book, reviewed favourably by Pyotr Pletnyov and Ksenofont Polevoy, was dismissed by Alexey Galakhov and Vissarion Belinsky. Several months later Nekrasov retrieved and destroyed the unsold bulk of his first collection; some copies that survived have become a rarity since. Dreams and Sounds was indeed a patchy collection but not such a disaster as it was purported to be, and it featured, albeit in an embryonic state, all the major motifs of Nekrasov's later poetry.
Nekrasov's first literary mentor was Fyodor Koni, who edited theatre magazines (Repertoire of Russian Theatre, then Pantheon, owned by Nikolai Polevoy). Koni helped him debut as literary critic. Soon he became a prolific author and started to produce satires ("The Talker", "The States Official") and vaudevilles ("The Actor", "The Petersburg Money-lender") for Koni's publication and Literaturnaya Gazeta. Nekrasov's fondness for theater prevailed through the years, and his best poems (Russian Women, The Railway, The Contemporaries, Who Is Happy in Russia?) all had a distinct element of drama to them.
In October 1841 Nekrasov started contributing to Andrey Krayevsky's Otechestvennye Zapiski (which he did until 1846), writing anonymously. The prose he published in the early 1840s was of little distinction, but several of his plays (notably, No Hiding a Needle in a Sack) were produced at the Alexandrinsky Theatre to some commercial success. In 1842 (a year after his mother's death) Nekrasov returned to Greshnevo and made peace with his father, who was now quite proud of his son's achievements.
In 1843 Nekrasov met Vissarion Belinsky and entered his circle of friends which included Ivan Turgenev, Ivan Panayev and Pavel Annenkov. Belinsky, obsessed with the ideas of the French Socialists, found a great sympathizer in Nekrasov, for whom horrors of serfdom in his father's estate were still a fresh memory. "On the Road" (1845) and "Motherland" (1846), two of Nekrasov's early realistic poems, delighted Belinsky. The poet claimed later that those early conversations with Belinsky changed his life and commemorated the critic in several poems ("In the Memory of Belinsky", 1853; "V. G. Belinsky", 1855; "Scenes from The Bear Hunt", 1867). Before his death in 1848, Belinsky granted Nekrasov rights to publish various articles and other material originally planned for an almanac, to be called the "Leviathan".