Ivan Turgenev

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. Raised on his family's Spasskoye-Lutovinovo estate near Oryol, he studied at the universities of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Berlin, where he absorbed Western philosophy. His story cycle "A Sportsman's Sketches" (1852) depicted peasant life under serfdom, and his novels "Rudin," "On the Eve," and "Fathers and Sons" (1862) traced generational and ideological change in Russian society; the last popularized the term "nihilist." He spent much of his later life in Western Europe near the singer Pauline Viardot, following her household from Baden-Baden to London during the Franco-Prussian War and then to Paris, where he wintered at 50 bis rue de Douai; he died at Bougival, at the Viardots' summer property outside Paris.