Sergei Nikolaevich Sergeev-Tsensky
Sergei Nikolaevich Sergeev-Tsensky was a prominent Russian writer born in 1875 in Babino, Tambov province, and is noted for his extensive literary contributions in the early 20th century. Orphaned at a young age, he trained as a teacher and initially pursued a career in education before becoming a full-time writer in Crimea. His literary career spanned significant historical events, including the Russo-Japanese War and World War I, during which he served in the military. Sergeev-Tsensky's most notable work, "Preobrazhenie Rossii," is a vast historical epic that examines Russian society from pre-Revolutionary times through Soviet industrialization, comprising twelve novels and numerous short stories. His novel "Brusilovskii proryv" focuses on a pivotal moment in World War I, while "Sevastopol'skaia strada," which details the Crimean War, earned him the Stalin Prize in 1941. Despite his prolific output, which includes both prose and poetry, his works have largely faded from contemporary readership and are infrequently translated. Sergeev-Tsensky's house has been transformed into a literary museum, honoring his contributions to Russian literature until his death in 1958.
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Subject Terms
Sergei Nikolaevich Sergeev-Tsensky
Writer
- Born: 1875
- Birthplace: Babino, Tambov, Russia
- Died: 1958
- Place of death: The Crimea, U.S.S.R. (now Ukraine)
Biography
Sergei Nikolaevich Sergeev-Tsensky was born Sergei Nikolaevich Sergeev in 1875 in the village of Babino, in the Tambov province of Russia. His parents died at an early age: his mother, Nataliia Il’inichna, in 1891, his father in 1892. He then moved to Glukhov, Chernigov, where he entered a teachers-training college, graduating with distinction in 1895. The same year he joined the army, but transferred to the reserves in 1896. He became a school teacher until 1905, when he settled down in the Crimea on the Black Sea, in the resort of Alushta, where he spent much of the rest of his life as a full-time writer.
During the Russo-Japanese War, he was stationed in Kherson 1904-1905. In the abortive revolution that followed, Sergeev- Tsensky sided with the revolutionaries. A brief stay in St.Petersburg in 1906 determined him to continue living in the Crimea rather than join mainstream Russian literary life. At the outbreak of World War I, he served in Sevastopol until the summer of 1915. During the Bolshevik Revolution, he stayed in the Crimea, not at first sympathetic to it. During the civil war that followed, he married Khristina Mikhailovna Bunina, who has a very positive influence on him. During World War II, the Crimea was occupied by the Nazi forces, and he and his wife were evacuated to Moscow, and then to Alma-Ata in Russian Asia. They returned to the Crimea after the war, where he died in 1958. His house was turned into a literary museum in 1961.
Sergeev-Tsensky was one of the most prolific Russian prose writers of the twentieth century. His style evolved along with the political environment. He became best known for a monumental historical work, Preobrazhenie Rossii: Epopeia. Chetvertyi tsikl romanov i povestei (transfiguration of Russia), which was begun in 1913, but not completed until his death, finally being published in 1959. It started with two short stories: “Pristav Deriabin” (police officer Deriabin, 1911) and “Naklonnaia Elena” (inclined Elena, 1914), and then developed into a sprawling interconnected series of twelve novels and three volumes of short stories and two sets of sketches, exploring the evolution of Russian society from pre- Revolutionary days to the period of Soviet industrialization. The whole work examines various layers of society: capitalism, the intelligentsia, the military and police, and the proletariat. One novel, Brusilovskii proryv (translated as Brusilov’s Breakthrough: A Novel of the First World War) is about a breakthrough in the Russian-German front in World War I, in the summer of 1916. This became one part of a trilogy of novels, yet all included under the banner of Preobrazhenie Rossii.
His other major historical epic is Sevastopol’skaia strada (the ordeal of Sebastopol), a three-volume novel on one episode in the Crimean War of 1853-1856. This earned him the Stalin Prize of 1941, and became very popular during World War II. Sergeev-Tsensky wrote many other novels and stories, and also several volumes of poetry. Unfortunately, since his death, he has become very little read, and few of his works exist in translation.