The provincial town of Kaluga in Gleb Uspensky’s works

Abstract

The article deals with Kaluga’s provincial environment as depicted by the writer Gleb Uspensky. As a young boy, he lived for a time at his grandfather’s in Kaluga. Uspensky’s memories about that period provided the material for his vignette Mikhalych. But it is his stories written during Uspensky’s brief six-month tenure as an officer of the Ryazhsk-Vyazma Railroad administration that stand out: A Checkbook [Knizhka chekov], Tax Dodgers [Neplatelshchiki], Whether You Want It Or Not[Khochesh-ne-khochesh], People of a Mediocre Mind [Lyudi srednego obraza mysley], The Truth Will Out[Shila v meshke ne utaish], The Guard Booth [Budka], etc. Kaluga gets a critical look, providing the subject for definition of ‘the physiognomy of a modern provincial town’. Examining the reasons for Uspensky’s short career in the railways, the article quotes from Uspensky’s letters, as well as from the memoirs of A. Ivanchin-Pisarev, an active figure in the Narodniks movement and the writer’s close friend. The article focuses on this selected period of Uspensky’s life and its significance for Kaluga, and sets out to clarify certain details of the writer’s biography, helping his name back into the collective mental map.