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Teleshov (Телешов) Nikolay Dmitrievich
(1867—1957)

Russian writer. He belonged to the generation of intellectuals who were confronted with the October coup leading to the exile or destruction of Russian culture. However, Teleshov remained in Russia and survived the worst years.

The future writer was born in Moscow in 1867, to a merchant family which, like most Russian merchant families, was of peasant origin. He graduated from the Moscow Practical Commercial Academy in 1884. His first publication was a poem. This was followed by a series of short stories, which appeared in literary journals at the end of the 1880s.

In 1894 Nikolai traveled to the Urals and Siberia. The trip yielded more stories and essays, which established him as an important writer of his time. He wrote mostly of the difficult life of Siberian settlers, which was to become a major theme in his works. On Troikas, Through Siberia, and Settlers were particularly popular. Simultaneously, he also began to write children's stories.

Teleshov was concerned with the effect of need on morals and the capacity of people for self-sacrifice. The extreme situations described in his stories make them not only serious literature but also a good read. The focus is on the lower classes, and the writer's attitude to middle-class values is highly critical. Teleshov is particularly sentimental with regard to peasants.

Today it is possible to say that the writer's main contribution to Russian culture was not his literary works but his public activity. In 1899 the writer with several friends and relatives founded a literary circle, which attracted the leading authors of the day, including Leonid Andreyev, Anton Chekhov, Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak, Maxim Gorky and Vladimir Korolenko, as well as artists and musicians over more than sixteen years. It is not an exaggeration to say that Nikolai Teleshov grouped around him virtually the entire literary intelligentsia of Russia at the turn of the century. He was the chairman of the mutual aid fund for writers and scientists for many years and member of the court of honor at the press and literature society. In 1908 Teleshov founded a school for the children of peasants and workers.

In 1912 he was instrumental in organizing the Writers Publishing House and also issuing a series of cheap books for the common people. In the early 1900s he continued to write and publish stories about social conflicts, and also legends and fairytales dealing with moral issues. He was influenced by the early works of Maxim Gorky, and to a lesser degree, by Chekhov and Korolenko.

World War I prompted Teleshov to write antiwar stories and also provide material assistance for the wounded. After the Bolsheviks (Communists) came to power in October 1917, Teleshov's propensity for public activities found a new outlet in the new Communist bureaucratic structures. It is to be noted that many Russian intellectuals collaborated with the Communists in the 1920s, especially at the beginning. There were two reasons for that: the desire to contribute to the new regime and the harsh need to stave off starvation, since the only way to obtain food, shelter and other goods was by collaborating with the regime. Teleshov worked in the People's Commissariat for Education and other agencies. The writer had always showed a particular interest in the theater, and soon became the director of the newly established museum of the Moscow Arts Theater. Finally he also contributed to the organization of a publishing house printing children's books.

Teleshov was fully aware of his precarious position under the new regime. At the beginning of the 1920s the new critics attacked him for various real or invented sins, and as a naturally cautious man, the writer soon learned to avoid original fiction. In 1925 he began to write his memoirs, a project that lasted for nearly two decades. They were first published separately in 1943, at the same time as many reforms were carried out in the country restoring, at least outwardly, traditions of the past. He recreated the atmosphere of literary life at the turn of the century, drew portraits of writers, artists and theater actors; a particularly colorful figure among them was the publisher Ivan Sytin.

Despite all his caution, it is difficult to understand how Teleshov survived the persecution of the intelligentsia under the Soviet regime.

The writer played an exceptional role in the founding and extension of the literary and artistic archives in Moscow and particularly the collection of material on the theater after 1945. One of the officials of the archives recalled Teleshov in the following terms:

"All the archive staff of the time remember his tall, slightly stooping figure, his gray hair, and his invariably friendly smile." He was a person from a different world. His punctuality and courtesy were proverbial. He was a living reference book on the turn-of-the-century cultural life in Russia, and many people exploited him. He always provided competent and exhaustive answers to their queries.

Teleshov's life spanned a time period usually reserved for several generations. The writer died in 1957, in his ninetieth year. He was born only six years after the Emancipation of the Serfs in Russia and died in the year when the first artificial earth satellite was launched.

The humanistic ideals that Teleshov incarnated were incompatible with the Soviet regime, and he never became a "Soviet writer," although he lived forty years under the regime. His collected works were published only twice, in four volumes in 1913-1917 and in three volumes in 1956, the latter in the last year of his life. Hopefully we will have his complete works published some day in the future, although projects of this kind have become too expensive in these times.

USSR, 1967, Nikolay Teleshov