Long Fiction:
Smert’ Lande, 1904 (novella; Ivan Lande, 1916)
Sanin, 1907 (Sanine, 1914)
U posledney cherty, 1912 (Breaking-Point, 1915)
Dikie, 1923 (The Savage, 1924)
Short Fiction:
The Millionaire, 1915
Rasskazy, 1917
Tales of the Revolution, 1917
Drama:
Zakon dikarya, pb. 1912 (The Law of the Savage, 1921)
Revnost’, pr., pb. 1913 (Jealousy, 1923)
Vragi, pb. 1913 (Enemies, 1923)
Voyna, pr. 1914 (War, 1916)
Nonfiction:
Zapisky pisatelya, 1925
Mikhail Petrovich Artsybashev (ur-tsih-BAH-shihf) lived through some of the darkest years that Russia has known. As a writer he was affected by his troubled times and by the literary influence of Fyodor Dostoevski, and he is considered one of the most pessimistic writers of his era.
Artsybashev’s parentage was partially Tartar, and he early demonstrated a rebellious, nihilistic spirit. His early education was in art, and he had achieved some fame as a caricaturist when he turned to writing fiction and drama. Although he did not become recognized as a first-rank writer, his short stories, particularly his first one, “Pasha Tumanov” (1901), were popular. With the publication of his first novel, Sanine, in 1907, he became an overnight international sensation. The revolt against social traditions and the excessively vivid pictures of vice he presented appealed to his unsettled Russian readers, especially to the young people, who formed Sanin cults and organized their defiance of tradition and restraint. Sanine was written when Artsybashev was not yet thirty years of age, but his maturing years brought no relaxation of his frank, brutal, vision. The themes of his second novel, Breaking-Point include death, sexual irregularity, and suicide. The plays War and The Law of the Savage resemble the novels in tone, except that they have the advantage of being more direct in structure.
Artsybashev was imprisoned by the czarist government in 1912. After the revolution of 1917 he was almost equally unpopular with the Bolsheviks, even though he had written scathing stories about imperialistic tyranny. He was often berated for the “immorality” of his works, and in 1923 he left Russia permanently. After his departure his novels were often confiscated and burned, and his popularity declined. Although he never gained critical favor, his work cannot be dismissed. He had a direct style, a good sense of plot, and an attitude toward life which, if not widely accepted, must be understood for literary and historical reasons. As Janko Lavrin has pointed out, Artsybashev spoke for and to a demoralized intellectual and political generation. He died in exile at Warsaw, Poland, in 1927, still advocating his doctrines of individuality and the illusoriness of love.