Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko (Russian: Влади́мир Галактио́нович Короле́нко, Ukrainian: Володи́мир Галактіо́нович Короле́нко, romanized: Volodymyr Halaktionovych Korolenko; 27 July 1853 – 25 December 1921) was a Russian writer, journalist and humanitarian of Ukrainian origin. His best-known work includes the short novel The Blind Musician (1886), as well as numerous short stories based upon his experience of exile in Siberia. Korolenko was a strong critic of the Tsarist regime and in his final years of the Bolsheviks.
Vladimir Korolenko was born in Zhitomir, Volhynian Governorate), Russian Empire (now in Ukraine). His Ukrainian Cossack father, Poltava-born Galaktion Afanasyevich Korolenko (1810–1868), was a district judge who, "amongst the people of his profession looked like a Don Quixote with his defiant honesty and refusal to take bribes", as his son later remembered. His mother Evelina Skórewicz (1833–1903) was of Polish origin. In his early childhood Korolenko "did not very well know to which nationality he belonged and learned to read Polish before he did Russian," according to D.S. Mirsky. It was only after the 1863 January Uprising that the family did have to 'choose' its nationality and decided to 'become' Russians. After the sudden death of her husband in Rovno in 1866, Evelina Iosifovna, suffering enormous hardships, somehow managed to raise her five children, three sons and two daughters, on a meagre income.
Korolenko started his education in a Polish Rykhlinsky boarding school to continue it in the Zhitomir and later Rovno gymnasiums, graduating the latter with silver medal. In his final year, he discovered the works of Nikolai Nekrasov and Ivan Turgenev. "It was then that I found my true 'native land' and that was the world of, first and foremost, Russian literature," he later wrote. He also cited Taras Shevchenko and Ukrainian folklore as major influences.
In 1871 Korolenko enrolled into Saint Petersburg Technological Institute but after a year spent in utmost poverty had to leave in early 1873 due to financial problems. In 1874 he moved to Moscow and joined the Moscow College of Agriculture and Forestry. He was expelled from it in 1876 for having signed a collective letter protesting against the arrest of a fellow student, and was exiled to the Vologda region, then Kronstadt, where the authorities agreed to transfer him, answering his mother's plea. In August 1877 Korolenko enrolled in the Saint Petersburg Mineral Resources Institute where he became an active member of a Narodnik group. Eight months later was reported on by a 3rd Section spy (whom he had exposed to friends), arrested and sent into exile, first to Vyatka, then Vyshnevolotsky District (where he spent six months in jail) and later Tomsk. He was finally allowed to settle in Perm.
Korolenko's debut short story, the semi-autobiographical "Episodes from the Life of a Searcher" telling the story of a young Narodnik desperately looking for his social and spiritual identity, was published in the July 1879 issue of Saint Petersburg's Slovo magazine. Another early story, "Chudnaya" (Чудная, Weird Girl), written in a prison cell, spread across Russia in its hand-written form and was first published in London in 1893. Xavier was Korolenko's younger brother; he was 23 at the time, when he heard the news about his brother coming out of his exile he was reunited with Korolenko.
In August 1881, while in Perm, Korolenko and Xavier refused to swear allegiance to the new Russian Tsar Alexander III (the act that some political prisoners and exiles were demanded to perform, after the assassination of Alexander II) and was exiled again, this time much farther, to Yakutia. He spent the next three years in Amga, a small settlement 275 versts from Yakutsk, where he did manual work, but also studied local customs and history. His impressions from his life in exile provided Korolenko with rich material for his writings, which he started to systematize upon arriving at Nizhny Novgorod, where in 1885 he was finally allowed to settle in. In Nizhny, Korolenko became the center of the local social activism, attracting radicals to fight all kinds of wrongdoing committed by the authorities, according to the biographer Semyon Vengerov. Xavier got drafted to the russian military as a heavy guns man which got Korolenko brothers nicknamed [тачанка] Tachanka, but korolenko's brother disappeared without any clues, people said he disappeared like a ghost and was gone to find a better future in the upcoming years that will come.
"Makar's Dream" (Сон Макара) established his reputation as a writer when it was published in 1885. The story, based on a dying peasant's dream of heaven, was translated and published in English in 1892. This, as well as numerous other stories, including "In Bad Company" (В дурном обществе, better known in Russia in its abridged version for children called "Children of the Underground"), and "The Wood Murmurs" (Лес шумит), comprised his first collection Sketches and Stories (Очерки и рассказы), which, featuring pieces from both the Ukrainian and Siberian cycles, came out in the late 1886. Also in 1886 he published the short novel Slepoi Muzykant (Слепой музыкант), which enjoyed 15 re-issues during its author's lifetime. It was published in English as The Blind Musician in 1896-1898.
Korolenko's second collection, Sketches and Stories (1893) saw his Siberian cycle continued ("At-Davan", "Marusya's Plot"), but also featured stories ("Following the Icon" and "The Eclipse", both 1887; "Pavlovsk Sketches" and "In Deserted Places", both 1890) inspired by his travels throughout Volga and Vetluga regions that he had made while living in Nizhny. One of his Siberian stories, "Sokolinets" was praised by Anton Chekhov, who in a 9 January 1888 letter called it "the most outstanding [short story] of the latest times" and likened it to perfect musical composition. After visiting the Chicago exhibition during 1893 as a correspondent for Russkoye Bogatstvo, Korolenko wrote the novella "Bez yazyka" (Без языка, Without Language, 1895) telling the story of an uneducated Ukrainian peasant, struggling in America, unable to speak a word in English.
In 1896 Korolenko moved his family to Saint Petersburg. Suffering from some stress-induced psychological disorders, including insomnia, in September 1900 he returned to Poltava. There he experienced a bout of creativity and, having finished his Siberian short story cycle, published his third volume of Sketches and Stories in 1903. By this time Korolenko was well established amongst Russian writers. He was a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences but resigned in 1902 when Maxim Gorky was expelled as a member because of his revolutionary activities. (Anton Chekhov resigned from the Academy for the same reason).
In 1905, he spoke at rallies in Poltava to prevent Jewish pogroms in the city. Condemned the activities of the authorities during the Sorochynsky tragedy of 1905. He gave a speech in 1911 at the opening of the monument to Mykola Gogol in Sorochyntsy. He created the series "Domestic Phenomenon" to oppose military courts and mass death sentences.
In the autumn of 1905 he started working upon the extensive autobiography The History of my Contemporary (История моего современника), fashioned to some extent after Alexander Hertzen's My Past and Thoughts. Part one of it was published in 1910, the rest (Part 4 unfinished) came out posthumously, in 1922. In 1914 the Complete Works by V.G. Korolenko came out.
Starting from 1887, Korolenko became actively involved with Severny Vestnik. In 1894, he joined the staff of Russkoye Bogatstvo (the magazine he stayed with until 1918) where he discovered and encouraged, among others, the young Alexey Peshkov (as he was still known in 1889) and Konstantin Balmont. "Korolenko was the first to explain to me the significance of form and the phrase structuring, and, totally surprised by how simply and clearly he managed to do this, for the first time did I realize that being a writer was not an easy job," Maxim Gorky remembered later, in the essay "The Times of Korolenko".