Fyodor Sologub

Fyodor Sologub was the pen name of Fyodor Terternikov, born in 1863, the son of a poor tailor, in St. Petersburg. His father’s death from tuberculosis when he was only four forced Fyodor’s illiterate mother to work as a house servant. The young man was determined to rescue his mother from this life of drudgery and, in 1884, he got a job as a teacher and moved his mother and sister to a town far away from the capital. At the same time, he started writing children’s stories and, soon after, poems. Sologub’s mother and sister both died of the lung disease that had killed his father, just after the author had retired from teaching and returned to St. Petersburg. He married in 1907 and became well-known for his novel ‘The Pretty Demon’. Sologub welcomed the Russian Revolution of 1917, but soon found that his works were no longer published. He asked permission from the government to leave the country but did not get an answer until 1921. In the years of waiting, Sologub and his wife often went hungry and, in the end, she killed herself by jumping from a bridge. Two days later, the letter giving the couple permission to move abroad arrived. However, Sologub remained in Russia. He died, heart-broken by his loss, in 1927.