Ivan Ivanovich Lazhechnikov

Fiction Writer and Playwright

• Born: September 14, 1790
• Birthplace: Kolomna, Russia
• Died: June 26, 1869
• Place of death: Moscow, Russia

Biography

Historical novelist Ivan Ivanovich Lazhechnikov was born in Kolomna, near Moscow, Russia, on September 14, 1790 or 1792, to a prosperous merchant family. Following his education at home, where he learned Russian, French, and German literature and language, Lazhechnikov worked in the Moscow Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and studied with Moscow University professors. His earliest publication, an essay entitled “Moi mysli” in Vestnik Evropy, dates from 1807. Against his father’s wishes, Lazhechnikov joined the Russian army and fought in the War of 1812. His resultant travels through Poland, Germany, France, and the Baltics informed his successful Pokhodnye zapiski russkago ofitsera, serialized from 1817 to 1820 and published as a novel in 1820.

Lazhechnikov’s stint as Count Aleksandr Ivanovich Osterman-Tolstoi’s aide-de-camp, in which capacity he catalogued the count’s books on military history, fueled his interest in historical fiction. In 1819 Lazhechnikov resigned from the army and soon married Avdotia Alekseevna Shurupova. He also began a career in the Ministry of Education, where he worked until 1837. He held a variety of posts in Penza, Kazan’, and Tver’, Russia. From 1827 to 1831, Lazhechnikov was granted leave of his post to work on his first historical novel, Poslednii Novik, ili Zavoevanie Lifliandii v tsarstvovanie Petra Velikago, published in installments from 1831 through 1833. Lazhechnikov’s immersion in the meticulous research for, and composition of, this book paid off; Poslednii Novik enjoyed enormous success. Both Poslednii Novik and Lazhechnikov’s final historical novel, Basurman (1838; The Heretic, 1844), demonstrate the significance of humanism and Western European culture to Russian culture. Although Lazhechnikov’s second novel, Ledianoi dom (1835; The Palace of Ice; 1860), was eventually banned in 1850, it, too, was a popular and critical sensation. In Ledianoi dom Lazhechnikov tackles the historical period after Czar Peter the Great, during Anna Ivannovna’s reign.

In 1837, Lazhechnikov retired, moved to Konoplino, completed Basurman, and started to write historical drama in verse. His play Oprichnik, written in 1842 and an indictment of Czar Ivan the Terrible’s despotism, was initially censored; it was finally published in Russkoe Slovo in 1859. Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky’s opera of the same name, based upon Lazhechnikov’s play, was performed in St. Petersburg and Moscow in 1874.

Lazhechnikov resumed government work in 1842; by the following year he was vice governor of Tver’. After his wife’s death in 1852, he became vice governor of Vitebsk. There he married Mariia Ivanovna Ozerova, with whom he had two daughters and a son. Lazhechnikov disliked Vitebsk and soon moved to Moscow, where he continued to write and stage plays. Money troubles eventually necessitated that he join the censorship committee in St. Petersburg. In 1858, Lazhechnikov retired and moved to the village of Khoroshevo. Obshchestvo liubitelei rossiiskoi slovestnosti (The Society of Lovers of Russian Literature) commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of his literary career in 1869, although Lazhechnikov himself was not well enough to attend. He died in Moscow on June 26, 1869,