Maxim Antonovich
Maxim Alexeyevich Antonovich was a Russian literary critic, essayist, memoirist, translator and philosopher.Biography
Maxim Antonovich was born in Belopolye, Kharkov Governorate, to the family of a clergyman. After studying at the Kharkiv seminary he enrolled in the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy which he graduated in 1859.
Antonovich's literary career started in Sovremennik where several articles promoting the philosophy of materialism brought him the reputation of an "ideological heir to Chernyshevsky." As a head of the magazine's literary criticism department Antonovich waged bitter feuds against Vremya, Epokha, and later Russkoye Slovo, after his slagging of Ivan Turgenev's Fathers and Sons in 1862 outraged Dmitry Pisarev and a violent confrontation ensued which Fyodor Dostoyevsky called "the break-up of the Russian nihilism."
As Nekrasov refused Antonovich an invitation to the renewed Otechestvennye Zapiski in 1869, he accused the former in "betrayal of the old friends" and turned to translation work. In 1898—1916 he published memoirs on Nikolai Dobrolyubov, Nikolai Chernyshevsky, Nikolai Nekrasov and Pyotr Lavrov. Antonovich died on 14 November 1918 in Petrograd, Soviet Russia.
