Leonid Andreev was born on August 21, 1871 in Orel, Russia. His father,
named Nikolai Ivanovich Andreev, was a member of the provincial Russian
Nobility and worked as a land inspector for the government. His mother,
Named Anastasia Nikolaevna Andreeva (Pazkovska) belonged to the Polish
Nobility. Andreev graduated from the Orel Gymnasium, went to study law
at the St. Petersburg University, and graduated from the Moscow
University. His work as a crime reporter for "Moscovski Vestnik"
(Moscow daily paper) provided material for his stories. He was fond of
reading Fyodor Dostoevsky, Lev Tolstoy, and Anton Chekhov. He also red then popular Friedrich Nietzsche
and Schopenhauer. After the death of his father and a painful first
love experience in 1894 he was depressed and tried to shoot himself in
a suicide attempt. He survived and worked hard to support his mother
and his two sisters and two younger brothers. He successfully passed
the Russian Law Bar in 1897 and practiced law as an attorney for five
years from 1897-1902.
Andreev published his first story "Bargamot and Garaska" in 1898. It
was noticed by Maxim Gorky, who promoted Andreev to the circle of writers
and publishers, called Znanie (Knowledge). In 1901 his first book of
stories was published by Znanie. His story "Bezdna" (Abyss, 1902),
about a teenager's experience with a prostitute ending in her murder
and his suicide, was attacked by Lev Tolstoy. But Andreev became an instant
celebrity in Russia. After his anti-war story "Krasny Smekh" (Red
Laughter, 1904), written during the Russian-Japanese war, he got
involved with anti-Czar revolutionaries. Andreev was arrested and
jailed by the Czar's secret service in 1905, after that he emigrated to
Europe and lived in Capri, Italy as a guest of Maxim Gorky. While
developing his expressionist style, Andreev wrote a bluntly realistic
anti-war story "Rasskaz o semi poveshennykh" (A Story About the Seven
Hung, 1909) and a realist novel "Sashka Zhegulev" (1911). After the war
and the first Russian revolution of 1905, Andreev was writing a play
every year. His plays were staged at the Moscow Art Theatre and
theatres in Vienna, Berlin, Odessa and Kazan by directors Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko and
Vsevolod Meyerhold among others. His best plays "Anathema", "Tsar-Golod"
(Czar-hunger), "Samson v okovakh" (Samson in Handcuffs, 1914) were
banned by Russian censorship under the Czar. Andreev built a big villa
in Kuokkala, Finland, where many Russian intellectuals lived, just 50
km. West of St. Petersburg. He was a regular member of the circle of
Korney Ivanovich Chukovskiy and maintained friendship with Maxim Gorky. Leonid Andreev also was
a friend of writers Aleksandr Kuprin, Vladimir Korolenko, Ivan Bunin, Vikenti Veresaev, and
singer Feodor Chaliapin Sr.. During WWI he was a strong critic of German aggression.
In 1917 he opposed the Bolshevik Revolution.
Leonid Andreev was the founder of the Russian Expressionism in
literature. He modernized his style through experiments with
spiritualism, symbolism, eroticism and mysticism, and also studied a
range of occult and religious traditions. His literary parallel was the
American writer H.P. Lovecraft. Andreev remained in his villa in Finland after
it's separation from Russia during the Russian revolution of 1917. He
was a staunch critic of the Soviet communism and wrote powerful
articles about the atrocities of communists in Russia. He died on
September 12, 1919, at his home in Kuokkala, Finland, at the age of 48.
Some mystery was haunting his burial; his grave in Finland was later on
the Soviet territory since WWII. His magnificent villa was destroyed.
In 1957 Leonid Andreev's remains were exhumed and moved to the
prestigious "Poet's Alley" at the "Literatorskie Mostki" (Literary
burials) near the graves of Ivan Turgenev, Ivan Goncharov, Nikolai Leskov and other Russian
cultural luminaries at the Volkovo Cemetery in Leningrad (now St.
Petersburg).
