Faddei Bulgarin
Faddei Bulgarin was a Polish expatriate and notable figure in 19th-century Russian literature, born Tadeusz Bulharyn on June 24, 1789, in what is now Belarus. He was raised in a noble family and educated in a military academy in St. Petersburg, where he began his literary pursuits. After serving in the Russian army and the Polish Legion against Russian forces, Bulgarin became a prominent journalist and publisher in St. Petersburg from 1820. He founded influential literary journals and was known for his satirical sketches and utopian tales. Although his early career was marked by liberalism, he later adopted a staunch Russian patriotism, distancing himself from his Polish roots and liberal associations.
Bulgarin achieved commercial success with his works, including the didactic novel "Ivan Vyzhigin" and the historical novel "Dimitrii the Pretender." Despite his initial popularity, his influence waned as he struggled to adapt to the changing literary landscape of Russia, particularly resisting the rise of realism exemplified by contemporaries such as Nikolai Gogol. In his later years, he lived in relative seclusion, and upon his death, there was little acknowledgment of his contributions to the democratization of Russian literature and the introduction of various literary forms. Today, Bulgarin is recognized as a literary pioneer, reflecting a complex legacy within Russian literary history.
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Subject Terms
Faddei Bulgarin
Writer
- Born: June 24, 1789
- Birthplace: Pieryszew, Minsk, Belorussia (now in Russia)
- Died: September 1, 1859
- Place of death: Karlovo, Estonia
Biography
Though the nineteenth century, Polish expatriate Faddei Bulgarin was despised by contemporaries in his adopted country of Russia for his disagreeably opportunistic character, the twentieth century saw something of a rehabilitation of Bulgarin as the literary pioneer he was at the height of his career as a critic, journalist, and publisher. Only the circumstances of Bulgarin’s early life are certain. He was born Tadeusz Bulharyn in Pieryszew, an estate in the Minsk province of Belorussia, on June 24, 1789, to Benedykt Bulharyn, a civil-military commissar, and Aniela Buczyska. Both of Bulgarin’s parents hailed from Polish nobility. In 1798 Bulgarin entered the school of the Cadet Corps in St. Petersburg, where he was exposed to contemporary European and Russian literature and began to write fables, play fragments, poems, and satires. Upon his graduation in 1806, Bulgarin joined the Russian army, and received honors for his valor in battle. He was discharged for poor conduct in 1811. Subsequently he enlisted in the Polish Legion of the French army and fought against Russian forces in Lithuania and Belorussia in 1813. From 1816 to 1820, Bulgarin spent time in Wilno (Vilnius), the Lithuanian intellectual center where he became an honorary member of the satirically inclined literary group Towarzystwo Szubrawców (society of scamps), an association that strongly influenced Bulgarin’s literary method and ideology.
Bulgarin began his career as a liberal journalist in St. Petersburg in 1820. He helped Nikolai Ivanovich Grech edit the journal Syn otechestva (the son of the fatherland) and founded two of his own: Severnyi arkhiv (the northern archive), devoted to geographical, historical, and scientific issues, and Literaturnye listki (literary pages), devoted to literature and literary criticism. During the first half of the 1820’s, prior to the Decembrist Revolt, Bulgarin also established himself as a popular and significant writer of prose fiction in two genres: the satirical sketch on contemporary mores and manners (nravy) and the utopian tale. After 1825, Bulgarin sought to sever all ties with any Polish, Catholic, liberal, or Decembrist associations and to affirm his zealous Russian patriotism. He also tried his hand at longer works of fiction. His first novel, Ivan Vyzhigin (1829), though blatently didactic, was an overwhelming commercial success. Still, critics objected to the novel’s artistic mediocrity and to Bulgarin’s attempts to transform the hitherto aristocratic exclusivity of Russian letters into something democratic, professional, and commercial. Bulgarin’s first historical novel, Dimitrii the Pretender (1830), was also a success among readers eager to learn about their Russian past. By the 1840’s, Bulgarin had turned his attention to literary criticism and to railing against the new realistic tendency in Russian prose as exemplified by Nikolai Gogol. Bulgarin became less influential as he failed to keep attuned to the actual social conditions of a rapidly changing Russia. He lived the final ten years of his life in relative seclusion, and the public silence that met the news of his death held no suggestion of Bulgarin’s pioneering democratization of Russian literature and his crucial introduction of such literary genres as the feuilleton, military anecdote, satiric sketch, travel chronicle, and utopian tale.