Aleksandr Olkhin

Ol’khin, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich 

Born Oct. 13 (25), 1839, in St. Petersburg; died Nov. 22 (Dec. 4), 1897, in Beloostrov. Russian lawyer and revolutionary poet.

The son of a general, Ol’khin graduated from the Aleksan-drovskii Lycée in 1859. From 1865 to 1870 he served as a justice of the peace. Ol’khin was defense lawyer in a number of political trials, including those of the Nechaev followers (1871) and of V. M. D’iakov (1875). He also defended the accused in the Trial of the 50 (1877) and the participants of the Kazan Demonstration of 1876; he was defense lawyer in the trial of N. I. Kibal’-chich (1878).

Ol’khin was close to the revolutionary Narodniki (Populists). He worked with the underground press (the newspapers Nachalo and Obshchee delo, the journal Zemlia i volia [Land and Liberty]) and with the Free Russian Press. He was brought to trial in the L. F. Mirskii case (1879) for his association with revolutionaries, and from 1879 to 1887 was in exile. From 1895 he lived in St. Petersburg.

Ol’khin’s civic poetry continued the tradition of N. A. Nek-rasov; this is reflected in his “To Our Poets” (1878), “With Responsive Mind and Sensitive Soul” (1896), and “In Memory of M. E. Saltykov” (1896).

WORKS

In Poety-demokraty 1870–1880-kh gg. [Leningrad] 1968.

REFERENCE

Troitskii, N. A. “Russkaia advokatura na politicheskikh protsessakh narodnikov.” In the collection Iz istorii obshchestvennogo dvizheniia i obshchestvennoi mysli v Rossii, fasc. 2. Saratov, 1968.