Daniil Mordovtsev

Daniil Mordovtsev
Born	December 19, 1830(1830-12-19) Sloboda Ukraine
Died	June 23, 1905(1905-06-23) (aged 74) Kislovodsk, Russia

Daniil Lukich Mordovtsev (Russian: Дании́л Луки́ч Мордо́вцев; December 19, 1830 – June 23, 1905) was a Russian/Ukrainian writer and historian.

Biography

Mordovtsev's father was a Zaporozhian Cossack and an estate manager. Mordovtsev spent his childhood in Sloboda Ukraine, where he learned the Russian language in school.^[1] He graduated from the faculty of history and philology at St. Petersburg University in 1854.^[2]

Mordovtsev's literary debut came in the mid 1850s when he began writing in Ukrainian.^[1] His first work was the poem The Cossacks and the Sea (1854, published 1859).^[2] He began writing in Russian in the 1860s.^[1] His novella New Russian People (1868) dealt with the Narodniks and their cause, and with the position of raznochintsy intellectuals, as did the novel Signs of the Times (1869), although Mordovtsev did not share the views of the Narodniks.^[2] His historical novels were widely read;^[1] (The False Dmitry, 1879; Tsar Peter and the Regent Sophia, 1885; The Tsar and the Hetman, 1880; Lord Novgorod the Great, 1882; For Whose Sins?, 1890); these novels demonstrated Mordovtsev's democratic leanings.^[2] He served for more than thirty years as an official in Saratov and was the editor of the Saratov Provincial News. He contributed to several popular journals, including Russian Word, Notes of the Fatherland, and Affairs.^[2]

Mordovtsev also published many historical works, such as Impostors and the Freemen of the Lower Reaches (1867), The Haidamak Uprising (1870), Political Movements of the Russian People (2 vols, 1871), and On the Eve of Freedom (1872, published 1889), and his memoirs, From My Past and Experiences (1902, written in Ukrainian), in which he tells of his meetings with Taras Shevchenko and Nikolay Chernyshevsky.^[2] His historical works were received favorably in St. Petersbug academic circles, and he was even considered for a position on the faculty of St. Petersburg University.^[1]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e} Plotting History: the Russian Historical Novel in the Imperial Age, Univ of Wisconsin Press, 2007.
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Great Soviet Encyclopedia, Gale Group, 1979.

Persondata
Name	Mordovtsev, Daniil
Alternative names
Short description	Russian writer
Date of birth	December 19, 1830
Place of birth	Sloboda Ukraine
Date of death	June 23, 1905
Place of death	Kislovodsk, Russia