Creating a National Biographical Series: F. F. Pavlenkov's ‘Lives of Remarkable People’, 1890–1924

Abstract

In 1890, the publisher F. F. Pavlenkov founded the biographical series, ‘Lives of Remarkable People’, to enable the self-education of the masses by producing clearly written, inexpensive, socially progressive books. This article examines the wide-ranging influence Pavlenkov's biographical library had on the establishment of a national biography tradition in Russia, one which continues to the present. It begins with a survey of nineteenth-century biography as it existed in Western Europe and Russia to contextualize Pavlenkov's own ideas on the genre. Pavlenkov cultivated an enlightened mass readership — an important growing segment of the Russian reading public — while fostering a circle of professional biographers. He also pioneered innovative marketing, branding and distribution techniques which ensured the series' primacy. The article considers the continuities between Pavlenkov's series and its Soviet and post-Soviet successors, and elucidates the values that have remained stable from the pre-Revolutionary era to the present day.