Ivan Sergeevich
Shmelev
1873-1950
Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev was a Russian writer, publicist, and Orthodox thinker whose work is imbued with kindness to the common man and nostalgia for pre–revolutionary Russia. He was born into a wealthy family of Zamoskvoretsky merchants. His family was not in need, and the children were brought up in reasonable strictness and reverence for religious traditions. At an early age, Shmelev’s mother read to him the works of Russian classics, which had a significant influence on the formation of the literary style of the future writer. In 1895, as a student at the Law Faculty of Moscow University, Shmelev wrote his first short story “At the Mill”. His work began to take shape in the direction of a narrative about overcoming difficulties and becoming a personality. In 1905, under the influence of revolutionary events, Shmelev created his significant novel “Citizen Ukleikin”. His success was strengthened after the publication of the story “The Man from the Restaurant” in 1911. In 1922, I.S. Shmelev emigrated to Berlin and then to Paris, where he immersed himself in memories of pre-revolutionary Russia. In his works such as “Native”, “Summer of the Lord”, “Pilgrimage”, he described life in Russia with high poetry and spirituality. I.S. Shmelev was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1931 and 1932. His last work was the three-volume novel “The Ways of Heaven”, which he never managed to complete. A bust has been erected in memory of I.S. Shmelev in Moscow on Bolshoy Tolmachevsky Lane.
Address: Moscow, Bolshoy Tolmachevsky Lane, 3, p. 6
