Astyrev, Nikolai

Astyrev, Nikolai Mikhailovich 

Born Nov. 16, 1857, in Tikhvin, Novgorod Province; died June 3, 1894, in Moscow. Russian public and literary figure and statistician.

Astyrev was close to the ideas of populism. He worked as a volost (small rural district) clerk in Voronezh Province, in the statistics bureau of the Moscow Province zemstvo (district assembly), and in the Irkutsk statistics bureau. Astyrev was a contributor to Russkie vedomosti, Vestnik Evropy, Russkaia mysl’, and other publications. In 1891 and 1892 a circle of the democratic intelligentsia grouped itself around Astyrev in Moscow. He was the author of the proclamation “First Letter to Starving Peasants” (from Peasants’ Well-Wishers), which was published in 1892 by the underground press of the Grappa Narodovol’tsev (Populist Group). He was in prison from 1892 to 1894.

WORKS

V volostnykh pisariakh. Moscow, 1886. Second edition: Moscow, 1896. (Repeatedly republished.)
Derevenskie tipy i kartinki: Ocherki ... Moscow, 1891.
Na taezhnykh progalinakh: Ocherki zhizni naseleniia Vostochnoi Sibiri. Moscow, 1891.
Mirskie raskhody po Evropeiskoi Rossii. [No place or year.]

REFERENCES

Lenin, V. I. Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 5. Pages 282, 451.
Istoriia Moskvy, vol. 4. Moscow, 1954. Pages 451, 452, 458.
Vengerov, S. A. Kritiko-biograficheskii slovar’ russkikh pisatelei i uchenykh, vol. 1. St. Petersburg, 1889.
Men’shikov, L. Okhrana i revoliutsiia, part 1. Moscow, 1925.