Viktor Burenin
Russian critic and satirist (1841-1926)
Viktor Petrovich Burenin (Russian: Ви́ктор Петро́вич Буре́нин, March 6 [O.S. February 22], 1841 – August 15, 1926) was a Russian literary and theatre critic, publicist, novelist, dramatist, translator and satirical poet notorious for his confrontational articles and satirical poems, mostly targeting leftist writers. He was the author of several popular plays (some co-authored by Alexey Suvorin), novels and opera librettos (Tchaikovsky's Mazepa; Cui's Angelo).
Biography
Viktor Burenin was born in Moscow, the twelfth child in the family of architect Pyotr Petrovich Burenin. As a student of the Moscow College of Architecture (1852-1859), he became friends with some amnestied Decembrists (Ivan Pushchin, Ivan Yakushkin, Gavriil Batenkov among others) who introduced the young man to the Russian literary circles. A strong influence proved to be petrashevets Sergey Durov who advised him to translate Barbier's Iambes et poemes for the Geneva-based The Word of the Underground magazine. In 1861 Burenin spent several months in Germany, Switzerland and France; since then his visits to the Western Europe became yearly.
In the early 1860s Burenin drifted towards the Russky Vestnik-centered literary society; attended Alexey Pleshcheev's "Meetings" (it was there that he met for the first time Suvorin, Lev Tolstoy, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin) and also Ivan Aksakov's "Fridays", the meeting place for the Moscow slavophiles. Burenin assisted Nikolai Nekrasov in gathering the historical data on the Decembrist revolt for the latter's poem Russian Women. At 20 he debuted with an article in Alexander Hertzen's Kolokol, in 1862 started contributing satirical poems to magazines Iskra and Zritel, writing under the pseudonym Vladimir Monumentov.
In 1863 Nekrasov, Burenin moved to Saint Petersburg and a year later became a professional author.
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