September 9: The birthday of Valerian Maikov, a critic who died at 23
On September 9, 1823, Valerian Maikov was born in Moscow—a publicist, literary critic, and popularizer of science, one of the first Russian positivists and a member of the Petrashevsky circle. He lived only 23 years, but managed to head the critical section of Otechestvennye Zapiski and was the first to recognize Dostoevsky's genius.
Everyone knows and explains everything to himself only by comparison with himself.
Home education and Goncharov's lessons
Valerian Maikov's father was Nikolai Maikov, a prominent artist of the Nicholas era. His son received an excellent education at home: he was taught Russian literature by the writer and family friend Ivan Goncharov. Goncharov later wrote that Maikov became a critic so early—at the age of 19—precisely because of his "reasonable, free upbringing, alien to outdated and pedantic forms."
Maikov graduated from the Law Faculty of St. Petersburg University. While still a student, he became fascinated with political economy: he criticized Adam Smith and defended workers' rights to a share of production profits. He was one of the publishers of the handwritten newspaper "Spletnya."
After graduating, he served in the Department of Agriculture. Less than a year later, he resigned due to poor health and his liberal beliefs. He spent several months in Europe, where he studied political economy, philosophy, and chemistry.
Petrashevtsy and the Forbidden Dictionary
Returning to St. Petersburg, Maikov joined the Petrashevsky circle. Unlike its other members, he did not share the belief in the peasant commune and placed his emphasis on the development of industry and science.
Together with his friend and circle founder, Mikhail Petrashevsky, he compiled the "Pocket Dictionary of Foreign Words That Have Become Part of the Russian Language." Under the guise of simple explanations of foreign terms, the authors promoted ideas of materialism, democracy, and utopian socialism. Maikov authored articles such as "Analysis," "Criticism," "Ideal," "Drama," and "Journal." He advocated "a trial of the mind over reality" and highly valued the role of the social sciences in society.
In 1846, the dictionary was banned, and it subsequently became one of the key pieces of evidence in the Petrashevsky Circle case. Maikov—like Belinsky—was not among the defendants only because he died before the investigation began.
The dictionary is full of such audacity that it is unlikely that it was found even in manuscripts put into general circulation.
This is what investigator Ivan Liprandi wrote. During his lifetime, Maikov's works repeatedly landed in the censor's office—for example, the continuation of his seminal article "Social Sciences in Russia" about the benefits of science to society.
Criticism as a way to lure the public into science
Valerian Maikov considered himself a popularizer of scientific ideas. He sought to introduce methods from the natural and exact sciences, as well as rigorous proof, into literary criticism.
I've always dreamed of a career as a scientist. But how can one get the public to read scholarly works? I've seen and still see criticism as the only way to lure them into the net of scientific interest. There are people, many of them, who will read a scholarly treatise in "Critique" but would never read the "Sciences" section of a journal, much less a scholarly book.
True science explains the laws of phenomena, and true art reveals the phenomena themselves.
Dostoevsky's first reader
Maikov organized his own circle, close to the Petrashevsky group, which included Pleshcheyev, Saltykov-Shchedrin, and Dostoevsky. He was perhaps the first to truly appreciate Dostoevsky's genius: while Belinsky dismissed his novella "The Double" as "nervous nonsense," Maikov discerned in it a profound psychological analysis of the anatomy of the human soul.
Dispute with the "furious Vissarion"
In 1846, Maikov took over the criticism department of Otechestvennye Zapiski, replacing the departed Belinsky. A polemical correspondence ensued between them. "The Furious Vissarion" criticized Maikov for excessive cosmopolitanism and called him a "universal man." He reproached him for too easily dismissing the national component, while he himself championed originality. Maikov, a utopian, truly dreamed of an abstract, harmonious individual and an ideal civilization.
Later, Dostoevsky “reconciled” Belinsky with Maikov in his concept of “universal responsiveness,” calling the ability to reconcile all the cultures of the world the main national trait of the Russian people.
23 years
In 1847, Maikov began publishing in Belinsky's Sovremennik, but managed to publish only a few reviews. He died of a stroke while swimming in the heat in a village near Peterhof. He was 23 years old. In his obituary, Goncharov called him "a critical talent of the highest order."
