| Evgeny Chirikov | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 5, 1864 Kazan, Russia |
| Died | January 18, 1932 (aged 67) Prague, Czech Republic |
Evgeny Nikolayevich Chirikov (Russian: Евге́ний Никола́евич Чи́риков), born August 5, 1864 – died January 18, 1932, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, dramatist, and publicist. Chirikov was a member of the Moscow literary group Sreda.
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Chirikov was born in Kazan into a gentry family. His father, a former office in the Imperial Russian Army, was a policeman.[1] He studied mathematics at Kazan University, but was expelled in 1887 for taking part in student demonstrations, and exiled to Nizhni Novgorod. He was arrested in January 1888 for writing and publicly performing an antimonarchist poem, and in 1892 for his involvement in a group of young followers of Narodnaya Volya.[1] He lived in several cities at this time, always under police surveillance.[2][3]
His first articles appeared in the Kazan newspaper Volga Herald in 1885. He published his first story Red in January 1886, in the same paper.[1] He wrote many plays, the most popular being Jews (1904), and Peasants (1906). His best known novel is The Life of Tarkhanov (1925). His works were published in some of Russia's leading journals, such as Russian Wealth, and The Northern Herald.
The writers Ivan Bunin, Leonid Andreyev, and Maxim Gorky were among his friends. He was also a shareholder in the publishing company Znanie (Knowledge), along with Gorky, which published his collected works.[2][3]
In 1921 he left Russia and moved to Sofia, before settling in Prague in 1922. His novel The Beast from the Abyss, written after he left Russia, was critical of the roles of both the Bolsheviks and the White Guards in the Russian Revolution of 1917. He died in Prague in 1932.[2][3]