Independence of a Person in the Early Journalism of N. S. Leskov of the Late 1850s — Early 1860s

Abstract

The author turns to the journalism of the early 1860s — the time of economic and political reforms in the Russian Empire, accompanied by a powerful surge of magazine activity as an intellectual and socio-political practice. The path of the writer N. S. Leskov (1831–1895) lay in literature through journalism, his early articles are the subject of the author’s analysis. The main thesis of this article is determined by the interest of the beginning journalist and writer in affi rming the essential importance of independence and self-respect of a person as a supporting value in the process of reforming social relations of the Russian Empire. Leskov, analyzing the existing social problems of the Russian Empire: bribery, unemployment of commoner youth, class isolation of the population, hired labor and owner arbitrariness, enslaving conditions of child and female labor, the state of the “distilling industry”, the resettlement of peasants (colonization of outlying territories), etc., believes that the value of self-respect of a person is a necessary condition for the development and improvement of both the economy and Russian society as a whole. The realization of this value, as Leskov believed, depends on the level of development of education in society for people who do not belong to the nobility, that is, on the solution of the practical task of enlightenment and education of the people. The author of the article concludes that the coincidence in time in Leskov’s biography of the idea of human independence and his fi nding his place as a writer in the complex world of Russian post-reform literature is not accidental. In the early 1860s, many things coincided: reforms that began with the liberation of the peasants, the breakdown of the class structure of Russian society, the passing of “Old Rus'”, etc. The writer Leskov became a rationally thinking singer of this complex period of Russian imperial society, realizing the independence of his literary creative destiny, having begun it with a journalistic practical word.