Pavel Ivanovich Melnikov-Pechersky (1818–1883) was a Russian writer, ethnographer, and civil servant, Nizhny Novgorod Province, who wrote under the literary pseudonym "Andrey Pechersky." He was born in Nizhny Novgorod on November 6, 1818, and died there on February 13, 1883.[1] He gained worldwide renown for In the Forests and On the Hills, written on the basis of years of observation of Old Believers in the Nizhny Novgorod Region. The Nizhny Novgorod land was both his native home and the principal subject of his creative and scholarly inquiry.

Nizhny Novgorod Roots and the Family Estate

In the second half of the 19th century, Melnikov-Pechersky owned the selo of Lyakhovo, now part of Prioksky District of Nizhny Novgorod. He conducted extensive research into the history of his family estate, establishing that in the 18th century Lyakhovo had belonged to a Life Guards lieutenant, S. I. Letitsky; in 1792 it was sold to Yelena Fyodorovna, wife of Second Major Karl Maksimovich Rebinder, and then passed as a dowry to their daughter. The new owners, the Zapolsky family, managed their affairs incompetently, and in the 1820s the estate was seized for debts and repurchased by Rebinder, who left it to his great-granddaughter E. A. Rubinskaya — who later became the writer's wife.[1]

The Study of Old Belief and the Kerzhenets

Melnikov The Kerzhenets River and later visited there repeatedly on matters related to the schism. From 1845 to 1850 he edited the unofficial section of the *Nizhny Novgorod Guberniya Gazette*, publishing local history and ethnographic materials.[1] From 1847, Melnikov served in the Nizhny Novgorod Governorate administration, and in 1850 he was attached to the staff of the Ministry of Internal Affairs as a special-assignments official charged with investigating the Old Believer schism.[1] The life and daily customs of the Old Believers on the Kerzhenets he depicted in the novels *In the Forests* and *On the Hills* — the principal literary fruit of those observations. The two-part sequence *In the Forests* and *On the Hills* inspired the Nizhny Novgorod painter Mikhail Nesterov to create the paintings *In the Forests*, *On the Hills*, *The Nightingale Sings*, and *Beyond the Volga*.[2] In *On the Hills*, the writer offered Pyana (disambiguation): "In other parts of our Russia, you would rarely find rivers like the Pyana… The very first Russian settlers named it Pyana — the Drunk — because it lurches and staggers in every direction, like a tipsy woman, and after winding and twisting for some five hundred versts, it comes running back to its own source and flows into the Sura almost at the very spot where it began."

In 1909, his "Report on the Current State of the Schism" was published in the *Proceedings of the NGUAK* (vol. 9). For his service he was awarded the rank of Actual State Councillor (1864) and the Order of Saint Anna, 1st Class (1878).[1] Melnikov also recorded the legend according to which the elder nun Fotiniya, venerated on the Kerzhenets, was supposedly Tsarevna Sophia Alekseyevna, who had fled to the hermitage sketes.

Ethnographic Works

In 1867, his Mordva" were published in *Russky Vestnik* (nos. 6, 9, 10) — one of the first systematic studies of the religious beliefs and daily life of the Mordva people, dealing in particular with the correspondences between the pagan deities of the Mordva and Christian saints.

Journalism on the Nizhny Novgorod Region

Melnikov-Pechersky left vivid sketches of the crafts trades of the Nizhny Novgorod region. Of Pavlovo he wrote: "Who has not heard of Pavlovo goods? — nearly every one of us dines with a Pavlovo knife and fork, sharpens his quill with a Pavlovo penknife, locks up his belongings with a Pavlovo padlock, and of late people have even taken to shaving with Pavlovo razors." Melnikov-Pechersky wrote "Recollections of Vladimir Ivanovich Dal" and "Historical Notes on Nizhny Novgorod" — texts reflecting his interest in the history of the region and in the figures of Russian culture whom he knew personally.[3] Among Melnikov-Pechersky's early prose works are the stories "The Old Days" and "Bear's Corner," published in *Russky Vestnik* in 1857, and "The Benefactress," which appeared in *Sovremennik* in 1863.[3]

Sources

  1. ru.wikisource.org — Among Melnikov-Pechersky's early prose works are the stories "The Old Days" and "Bear's Corner," published in *Russky Vestnik* in 1857, and also (archive)
  1. Wikipedia (ru) — Melnikov-Pechersky was born and died in Nizhny Novgorod: on November 6, 1818, and February 13, 1883, respectively.
  2. izvestnye-lyudi.ru — The two-part sequence *In the Forests* and *On the Hills* inspired the Nizhny Novgorod painter Mikhail Nesterov to create the paintings *In the Forests*, *On the Hills*, *The Nightingale Sings*, and *Beyond the Volga*. (archive)
Materials from articles used (6)

Lyakhovo, Semenovsky District, Pavlovo, The Piana River, The Monastic Nun Photinia, Deities of Mordovia