Kalpana Kalpana (Editor)

Viktor Klyushnikov

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
Viktor Klyushnikov

Full Name
  
Клюшников Виктор Петрович

Born
  
March 22, 1841 (
1841-03-22
)
Gzhatsk region, Smolensk Governorate, Imperial Russia

Occupation
  
writer, editor, journalist

Died
  
7 November 1892, Saint Petersburg, Russia

Viktor Petrovich Klyushnikov (Russian: Виктор Петрович Клюшников, born 22 March 1841, village Leksianovka, Gzhatsk region, Smolensk Governorate, Imperial Russia, - 19 November 1892, Saint Petersburg, Imperial Russia) was a Russian writer, editor and journalist, whose debut novel, Marevo (Марево, Haze, Russky Vestnik, 1864), was for a while considered to be one of the four 'great anti-nihilist' novels of the time, alongside Troubled Seas by Alexey Pisemsky, No Way Out by Nikolai Leskov and Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Both Ivan Turgenev and Alexey K. Tolstoy reacted positively, hailing the arrival of the original, even if erratic literary talent, "who [was playing] with his gift in acrobatic fashion", as Tolstoy put it.

None of Klyushnikov's later works - among them Bolshiye korabli (Большие корабли, Big Ships, 1866), Tsygane (Gypsies, Цыгане, 1869), Drugaya zhizn (Другая жизнь, Another Life, 1865), Pri Petre (При Петре, In the Peter's Times, 1872, with Vasily Kelsiyev), Semya Volnodumtsev (Семья вольнодумцев, Free-Thinkers' Family, 1872, with Pyotr Petrov), Gosudar-otrok (Государь-отрок, The Young Tsar, 1880) - have come even close to repeating the success of his debut.

According to the modern scholar O. Mayorova, Klyushnikov was continuously dogged by financial troubles which might have accounted for the fact that most of his novels and novelets, bearing the mark of utter haste, boasted caricature characters and improbable twists of plots, the two drawback only to some extent compensated by fine, lively language and occasionally brilliant observations of the real life. In retrospect, she argued, Klyushnikov's major achievement was his work (in 1870-1876, then 1887-1892) as the editor-in-chief of the popular and influential Niva magazine, to which he devoted himself totally. He also published his own Krugozor magazine (1876-1878) which proved to be financial disaster, and edited the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Science (1877-1886).

References

Viktor Klyushnikov Wikipedia