Ivan Turgenev wrote "Mumu" — and the whole world wept over a mute serf and his dog. He wrote "A Sportsman's Sketches" — and Alexander II later said the book had influenced his decision to abolish serfdom.
Turgenev was born in Oryol in 1818. His mother, a wealthy landowner, was despotic and cruel to her serfs; his father, a dashing cavalry officer, died young. Childhood at the family estate of Spasskoye meant watching how human beings were treated.
"Fathers and Sons" (1862) gave the world the nihilist Bazarov, a new kind of man who acknowledged no authority. The novel scandalized both camps: some saw Bazarov as a caricature, others as a betrayal.
Pauline Viardot, the French singer, was the love of forty years. He lived close to her family in Europe and kept returning to Russia. He died at Bougival in 1883, and his coffin travelled to Petersburg across the whole of Europe.