Leonid Andreyev
1871–1919
Biography
Leonid Nikolayevich Andreyev (1871–1919) was born in Oryol and became one of the most popular Russian writers of the Silver Age, the flowering of Russian literature around 1900. He wrote novels, short stories and about twenty-five plays. Critics often count him as a forerunner of Russian expressionism, because his work uses stark, distorted images and heightened emotion to convey fear and inner turmoil. He moved between realist, naturalist and symbolist methods, and he was an early enthusiast of colour photography.
Andreyev's fiction often turns to guilt, despair and the approach of death. His best-known play is He Who Gets Slapped (1915). His stories share the same concern for individuals pressed down by fate and by the state. The Seven Who Were Hanged (Рассказ о семи повешенных, The Seven Who Were Hanged) was written in the years of repression after the 1905 revolution. It follows seven people sentenced to hang for a political killing, and it watches them in the days before their execution.
Andreyev does not build a political argument in that story. He sets out each man's fear and dignity, and the cruelty of a state that kills them, which is why it remains one of the most discussed Russian works against capital punishment. It is on this site under its Russian title. Andreyev was hostile to the Bolshevik government after 1917, left Russia, and died in Finland in 1919.
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Books
Рассказ о семи повешенных
by Леонид Николаевич Андреев (1871 — 1919)
Five young revolutionaries and two common criminals wait in prison for execution, each facing death differently. Andreyev's story follows them to the gallows, with a plot against a minister at its start.
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.