Ivan Kushchevsky

Ivan Afanasyevich Kushchevsky ; 1847 – ) was a Russian writer.

Biography Kushchevsky was born in Barnaul, Siberia, Russian Empire where his father was a minor official. He received his early education at the Tomsk gymnasium. He went to Saint Petersburg in the mid-1860s to study at the University, but had to leave school due to lack of money. He worked at odd jobs and lived in cheap boarding houses in the slums for several years. In 1870 he began writing sketches describing his experiences among the lower classes.

In 1871 his only novel Nikolai Negorev; or, The Successful Russian, was serialized in Otechestvennye Zapiski. In the novel, Nikolai tells the story of his progress from age twelve to the beginning of what promises to be a solid career in the civil service. In the writing of Nikolai Negorev, Kushchevsky was strongly influenced by Nikolai Chernyshevsky's novel What is to be Done?. Nikolai Negorev was highly praised by the critics of the day. |D. S. Mirsky. A History of Russian Literature: From Its Beginnings to 1900

English translations Nikolai Negorev; or, The Successful Russian, (novel), Calder and Boyars, 1967.