Chapygin, Aleksei Pavlovich

Chapygin, Aleksei Pavlovich 

Born Oct. 5 (17), 1870, in the village of Bol’shoi Ugol, in what is now Kargopol’ Raion, Arkhangel’sk Oblast; died Oct. 21, 1937, in Leningrad. Soviet Russian writer.

The son of a peasant, Chapygin was self-educated. His work was first published in 1903. The novella The White Monastery (1913) and the collection Along the Beastly Path (1918) display a tragic world outlook and are permeated with antiurbanism and an intense feeling for nature; in these works the author depicted the spontaneous protest of people against the social structure of prerevolutionary Russia. Chapygin’s epic works Razin Stepan (parts 1–3,1926–27) and Idle People (parts 1–4,1935–37) greatly influenced the development of the Soviet historical novel. The hero of these works is the people as a whole, rising to fight for freedom. These books demonstrate Chapygin’s familiarity with the popular speech and customs of 17th-century Russia.

WORKS

Sobr. Soch., vols. 1–7. [Foreword by V. Desnitskii.] Moscow-Leningrad, 1928.
Sobr. soch., vols. 1–5. [Introductory article by N. Totubalin.] Leningrad, 1967–69.

REFERENCES

“Gor’kii i sov. pisateli: Neizdannaia perepiska.” In Lit. nasledstvo, vol. 70. Moscow, 1963. Pages 629–70.
Val’be, B. Aleksei Pavlovich Chapygin: Ocherk zhizni i tvorchestva, 2nd ed. Leningrad, 1959.
Andreev, Iu. Russkii sovetskii istoricheskii roman: 20–30-e gody. Moscow-Leningrad, 1962.
Semenov, V. S. Aleksei Chapygin. Moscow, 1974.
Russkie sovetskie pisateli-prozaiki: Biobibliografich. ukazatel’, vol. 6, part. 1. Moscow, 1969.