He Served, Wrote, and Created Satire: The 200th Anniversary of Saltykov-Shchedrin

The collections and museum holdings of the RUDN University Scientific Library contain unique publications that reveal the multifaceted journey of the great satirist.

"It is impossible to understand the history of Russia in the second half of the 19th century without the help of Shchedrin" (A.M. Gorky)

January 27, 2026, marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin (1826-1889), a Russian writer who was "more of a writer than all other writers" (V. Korolenko) and whose name was borne for 60 years by Russia's oldest state library.

A small reference book ("Pamyatka," 1939), printed at the printing house of this very library, can be seen in the "Rare Book Museum" collection. The "Pamyatka" contains a unique manuscript from 1857-1858 by Saltykov and his autobiographical note stating that he "served and wrote, wrote and served," with an interruption for an almost eight-year exile, during which he "served but did not write." And he served in prominent administrative positions within the Russian state apparatus.

While still at the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, Mikhail Saltykov developed a passion for poetry and was even proclaimed the "Pushkin of his class." However, after graduating from the Lyceum (1844), he wrote no more poetry. It was not his poetic attempts but his stories "Contradictions" (1847) and "A Complicated Affair" (1848) that became his main works of the 1840s.

These stories, which cost the young writer his exile from St. Petersburg to Vyatka, can be found in the RUDN University library collection within the first volume of the fundamental 20-volume collected works of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin (published 1933-1941 and 1965-1977), alongside his poems, which survived partly thanks to magazine publications.

The "Rare Book Museum" collection also holds the first (1889-1890), author-approved collection of works by M.E. Saltykov (N. Shchedrin). Its first volume, published during the writer's lifetime, opens with "Provincial Sketches" (1856-1857) – the artistic result of Saltykov's Vyatka exile and the beginning of such an epoch-making phenomenon in literature as Shchedrin's satire.