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Mikhail Osorgin
Mikhail Andreyevich Osorgin (real surname Ilyin) was born in 1878 in the city of Perm in the Urals to a family of intelligentsia. His father a was lawyer while his mother, who spoke several languag...view moreMikhail Andreyevich Osorgin (real surname Ilyin) was born in 1878 in the city of Perm in the Urals to a family of intelligentsia. His father a was lawyer while his mother, who spoke several languages and had received a good education from a school in Warsaw, dedicated her life to the family and the children. The family's life was intense, and their cultural interests numerous and varied. They shared a typical set of values adhered to by the educated classes in provincial Russia at the time: the precedence of social interests over private, and an acute sense of justice.Osorgin's first publication was a tiny piece in the local newspaper, written in 1897 when he still a schoolboy, on the occasion of the death of his form teacher. Having received his degree from Moscow State University, he briefly worked as a barrister. It was then that he became involved with the party of Socialist Revolutionaries, a popular organisation at the time, rather militant in its methodology and a real rival to the Bolsheviks. However, he never made a career in the party, and shunned internal squabbles and rigid party discipline.He did not take part in the revolution of 1905, but was nonetheless arrested and spent six months in jail. He was on the brink of starting to serve a five-year prison sentence when, due to a lack of coordination between various penal departments, he was released by mistake, and used the opportunity to flee to Italy.It was there that he started writing in earnest, becoming a foreign correspondent of The Russian News and European Herald. In 1916, after 10 years in Italy, he returned to Russia, overcoming significant obstacles, and eager to sign up for the front. However, he was unable to join the army because of his criminal record (the five-year sentence had never been repealed). In 1917, the Provisional Government invited him to become Ambassador to Italy, but he declined this flattering offer in order to become a full-time journalist and author. He stayed in Moscow during the horrific years immediately after the revolution and the 'Red Terror', like many other members of his class, was arrested by the secret police (Cheka), and spent time in the notorious Lubyanka Prison. He was released under the guarantee of Lev Kamenev, the then head of the Moscow Soviet, but was forced to emigrate shortly afterwards, leaving on the ignominious 'Philosophers' Steamer'.After a short stint in Berlin (the initial capital of post-revolution Russian cultural emigration) he went to Paris, where he contributed articles, fiction, and book reviews to émigré papers. He was still holding onto his Soviet passport when in 1937, during a routine registration visit to the embassy, this passport was removed from him by force. He never sought or received French citizenship, and lived the remaining years of his life as a stateless person. Unlike most of his colleagues and contemporaries, Osorgin never held extreme anti-Soviet views. Being highly critical of the system and the government, he believed that Russian literature, whether produced inside the Soviet Union or in the diaspora, was one whole; it was simply that the writers were working under different circumstances and saw the world in their individual way. Osorgin's best known works were his novels A Quiet Street (1930) - Syvtsev Vrazhek in an earlier translation, and My Sister's Story (1931), both translations into English never reprinted. During the 1930s he spent much of his time in the village of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, in the province of Essonne, where he owned a cottage. Here he rejected urban civilisation, promoting a lifestyle that was closer to nature. He stayed in France during the German occupation and died in 1942 in the village of Chabris, where he and his wife had escaped as refugees. Living on the border of the Free Zone, he had been actively publishing anti-Nazi pamphlets until the very end.view less