Vasily Kurochkin
Vasily Stepanovich Kurochkin was a Russian satirical poet, journalist and translator.Biography
Vasily Kurochkin was born in Saint Petersburg. His father, a former serf peasant who had been granted freedom and worked his way up the social ladder to nobility status, died young, and the boy was brought up by his stepfather, Colonel E.T. Gotovtsev. Two of his brothers, Vladimir and Nikolai Kurochkins, became writers as well.
Having graduated the First Cadet Corps in 1849, Vasily Kurochkin joined the Russian Army as a junior officer. He started writing poetry while a cadet, debuted as a published poet in 1848 and in 1856 started the career of a literary professional. Highly acclaimed were his translations of Beranger and Molière.
In the late 1850s Kurochkin became one of Russia's most prominent political satirists. In 1859, along with the cartoonist Nikolai Stepanov, he founded the influential satirical Iskra magazine. In 1861 Kurochkin joined the underground radical group Zemlya i Volya and a year later became one of the five members of its central committee. After Dmitry Karakozov's attempt upon the life of Alexander II, he was arrested and spent two months in the Petropavlovsk Fortress. In 1867 the first edition of The Works of V.S. Kurochkin was published.
Kurochkin died on 27 August 1875 in Saint Petersburg after accidentally overdosing on chloral hydrate prescribed to him by the doctor. He is interred in Volkovo Cemetery in Saint Petersburg.
