Outstanding Russian critic and publicist D.I. Pisarev was born on October 2 (15), 1840 on a family estate in the village of Znamensky, Yeletsk district, Oryol province (now Lipetsk region). He was born into a poor noble family. However, some biographers, especially of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, call the Pisarev family wealthy and even prosperous. His father was a retired staff captain, and his mother, Varvara Dmitrievna (nee Danilova), was a former college student, an educated and cultured woman who devoted herself entirely to raising her son.

The boy began to show abilities early: at the age of four he read Russian fluently and “like a little Parisian” spoke French; later he mastered the German language. The family — among them the main role was played by the mother, who showed great care for her son — sought to give him a typically noble upbringing, as a result of which he would turn out to be a well-bred and successful landowner or official. It was to his mother that Pisarev owed his early intellectual development, tireless thirst for knowledge, need for self-education, and amazing hard work. As a seven-year-old child, he became interested in writing novels and read a lot. The inquisitiveness of the mind and spiritual needs, the psychological experiences of the teenager are evidenced by the diaries that he kept. Until the age of 11, he grew up in a family, the only and beloved son. The boy was prohibited from any contact with serfs; he was being prepared for a brilliant secular career.

The same goal was pursued by one of the best in the capital, the 3rd St. Petersburg Gymnasium, which Pisarev entered in 1852. Everything was aimed at ensuring that he “followed the path of the most well-bred young man.” While studying at the gymnasium, Pisarev lived in St. Petersburg in his uncle’s house and was raised at his expense, surrounded by the same lordly atmosphere as in the village. He was distinguished by exemplary diligence, unquestioning obedience to his elders, in his own words, “belonged to the category of sheep.” In his autobiographical article “Our University Science,” Pisarev says that when he graduated from high school, his favorite pastime was coloring pictures in illustrated publications, and his favorite reading was novels by F. Cooper and especially A. Dumas. Macaulay’s History of England proved irresistible to him; critical journal articles gave the impression of a «code of hieroglyphic inscriptions»; Russian writers were known to him only by name.

In 1856, 16-year-old D.I. Pisarev graduated from high school “with a medal, but with extremely mediocre knowledge and very low mental development” and entered St. Petersburg University. He entered the Faculty of History and Philology of the university with the sole purpose of avoiding mathematics and legal dryness, which he hated. At the university, Pisarev languished under the yoke of scholasticism, was forced to translate a German book, the content of which was not interesting to him (“The linguistics of Wilhelm Humboldt and the philosophy of Hegel”), languish over the translation of Strabo, or, on the recommendation of a professor, satisfy his attraction to history by studying primary sources and reading an encyclopedic dictionary. Subsequently, Pisarev found that even reading the “Petersburg” or “Moscow Gazette”, which by no means shone with literary merits, would have brought more benefit to his mental development than the first two years of university science. Literary education also made little progress: Pisarev only managed to get acquainted with Shakespeare, Schiller and Goethe, who constantly dazzled before his eyes in the history of literature.

In letters of 1857-1858 to his mother and his beloved cousin R.A. Korenev Pisarev still often talks about his dream of becoming a scientist, passing the master’s exam, and occupying a department. “Science, truth, light, activity, development were just tumbling around in my head,” Pisarev later recalled about this impulse to devote himself to the service of science, “and this tumbling seemed to me terribly fruitful, although nothing came of it, and nothing would come of it.” couldn’t. I want to serve science, I want to be useful, take my life and make something useful for science out of it. There was a lot of delight, but little sense.” Due to the deterioration of the family’s financial situation, he was forced to look for income.

At the end of 1859, in his third year at university, Pisarev began literary work in the magazine Rassvet, the direction of which he characterized as “sweet, but decent.” “Dawn”, published by artillery officer V.A. Krempin, was typical for that time, one of the many short-lived publications — “a magazine of sciences, arts and literature for adult girls.” Pisarev begins to lead the bibliographic department. The critic discovers an excellent knowledge of modern literature and the ability to subordinate the analysis of works of art to the tasks of ideological and aesthetic education already in the first year in articles devoted to “Oblomov” by I.A. Goncharov, “The Noble Nest” by I.S. Turgenev, story by L.N. Tolstoy’s «Three Deaths». “My bibliography,” said Pisarev, “pulled me out of the clogged cell into the fresh air.” The new business required independence of thought: “I did not copy from a book, I did not repeat other people’s words and, through my own reflection, reached generally known truths. That’s why my work was attractive to me…”

From now on, the university is completely left aside; Pisarev decides not to leave the literary field. Pisarev’s articles and reviews published in this magazine quickly attracted the attention of readers with their sharpness of thought, fearlessness of the author’s position, sincerity of tone, and polemical spirit. Bibliographic work in a girls’ magazine could not, however, be particularly free. Pisarev learned a lot of facts, memorized other people’s ideas, but remained still in the category of sheep. Pisarev dates the “rather abrupt revolution” in his mental development to 1860, although in the article “Our University Science” he names the summer of 1859 as the time of his “mental crisis.” A mental crisis coincided with a spiritual drama. That summer, a romantic drama unfolded that deeply shocked Pisarev — unrequited love for his cousin Raisa Alexandrovna Koreneva. Neither the object of his hobby nor his relatives sympathized with this passion, and Pisarev had to endure a fierce struggle with unsatisfied feelings. Relatives did not want them to get closer, and the cousin was going to marry someone else.

Collaboration in the magazine, as well as personal drama, awakened Pisarev’s independent thought, pushing him onto the path of intense reflection and revaluation of conventional ideas. Yesterday’s “sheep” felt like “Prometheus”. Idyllic submission to elders suddenly gave way to unlimited skepticism, reaching the point of denial of the Sun and Moon. All reality gave the young man the impression of a mystification. In a fit of megalomania, Pisarev began studying Homer in order to prove one of his “titanic ideas” about the fate of the ancients. The mania ended in real mental illness; in the winter of 1859, Pisarev was placed in a psychiatric hospital. Here he attempted suicide twice and then, 4 months later, fled. He was taken to the village; his health was restored, but some of his “oddities and eccentricities” remained until the end of his life.

St. Petersburg University In 1860, after recovery and rest, Pisarev moved to a new journal — “Russian Word” (edited by G.E. Blagosvetlov). The flourishing of Pisarev’s activities is associated with this body. «Russian Word», thanks to Pisarev’s participation in it, became in those years one of the most influential magazines, which was closely monitored by the tsarist government and censorship. In the spring of 1861, Pisarev completed his university course (his candidate’s work on Apollonius of Tyana on the history of the decline of the Roman Empire was awarded a silver medal) and devoted himself entirely to literary activity, becoming a permanent employee and assistant editor of the Russian Word magazine. Pisarev quickly became the ideological leader of the magazine, although back in April 1861 he was looking for cooperation in the Wanderer, a more than conservative organ. When Pisarev was subsequently reproached for this step, he justified himself by saying that before his close acquaintance with Blagosvetlov, he “had no idea about the serious responsibilities of an honest writer.” For Pisarev, collaboration in “Russian Word” was a break with his university comrades, who considered journalism a betrayal of science.

In the first articles, Pisarev focuses all his attention on the problems of “private morality and everyday relationships.” He calls for a reorganization of family and household relations and for the destruction of inert moral traditions. Pisarev reproaches criticism for the wrong attitude towards egoism, “as a vice,” and calls on everyone to become egoists, since “egoistic beliefs… will make you a happy person, not difficult for others and pleasant for yourself.” According to Pisarev, “the emancipation of the individual and respect for his independence is the last product of later civilization.” “We still see nothing beyond this goal in the process of historical development,” he asserts.

At the beginning of his activity, Pisarev denied socialism and found the utopias of the communists “unrealizable and insulting to the individual,” and stood by the point of view of the inviolability of private property. However, already the second half of his article “Scholastics of the 19th Century,” published in the September book of “Russian Word” for 1861, gives reason to talk about the beginning of a shift to the left in his worldview. In it, Pisarev expressed the famous “ultimatum of our camp: what can be broken, must be broken; whatever can withstand a blow is good; “Whatever shatters into smithereens is rubbish: in any case, hit right and left, there will be no harm from this and cannot be.”

The shift to the left in Pisarev’s worldview quickly deepens in the future. “Issues of nationality and civil life” are becoming more and more the focus of Pisarev’s attention. In the essay “Bees” (1862), Pisarev in allegorical form depicted the parasitic nature of the political and economic system, trampling on the interests of the masses, and expressed deep sympathy for the working “bees” exploited by parasites — “drones and the queen.” Thinking about how to eliminate the poverty of workers, Pisarev in 1862 came to the adoption of socialist ideas. The issue of the hungry and naked can be resolved only by establishing a social order that “would deprive one person of the opportunity to exploit the labor of hundreds of other people,” Pisarev asserts in his article “Essays on the History of Printing in France” (1862).

In 1862, in No. 3 of “Russian Word”, Pisarev published the article “Bazarov”, which refers to the pinnacle of literary critical speeches of revolutionary democrats. Pisarev sees his task as “outlining in large outlines the personality of Bazarov, or, rather, that general, emerging type, of which the hero of Turgenev’s novel is a representative.” The critic openly sympathizes with Bazarov and his strong, honest character. Pisarev defines his attitude towards Bazarov and his predecessors in Russian literature: “The Pechorins have will without knowledge, the Rudins have knowledge without will; The Bazarovs have both knowledge and will, thought and deeds merge into one solid whole.”

Bazarov is depicted as a herald of selfishness and complete “self-liberation” of the individual. “Neither above himself, nor outside himself, nor within himself does he recognize any regulator, any moral law, any principle.” The Bazarovs are taller than the crowd, taller than the masses, they have “tremendous strength,” social loneliness does not bother them. “They are aware of their difference from the masses and boldly distance themselves from them through their actions, habits, and entire way of life. Whether society will follow them is of no concern to them. They are full of themselves, their inner life.”

At the same time, this article by D.I. Pisarev already testifies that changes are planned in his program; Bazarov, it turns out, does not find happiness in his nihilistic “self-liberation,” only in his “inner life.” “But it’s still bad for the Bazarovs to live in the world,” writes Pisarev at the end of the article. “No activity, no love, therefore, no pleasure… But what to do?” To this question, Pisarev, who did not share revolutionary sentiments at that time, gave the following answer: “What to do? To live while you live, to eat dry bread when there is no roast beef, to be with women when you cannot love a woman, and not to dream of orange trees and palm trees at all, when there are snowdrifts and cold tundra under your feet.”

Peter and Paul Fortress Pisarev’s worldview of 1860-1862 is in continuous and intensive development. It is complex and contradictory. But the path of its development is obvious. This is the path to the left, towards revolutionary and socialist positions. His articles clearly show the growth of revolutionary sentiment: “The people who are ready to endure all kinds of humiliation and lose all their human rights, just so as not to take up arms and risk their lives, are on their last legs.” The highest point of this path falls on June 1862, when, in an illegal article-proclamation directed against the agent of the III department, Shedo-Ferroti (pseudonym of F.I. Firks), Pisarev rose to a direct call for the overthrow of the autocracy:

“The overthrow of the happily reigning Romanov dynasty,” he wrote, “and the change in the political and social system constitute the only goal and hope of all honest citizens. In order not to desire a revolution in the current state of affairs, one must be either completely limited, or completely bribed in favor of the reigning evil. What is dead and rotten must fall into the grave of its own accord; all we can do is give them the final push and throw dirt at their stinking corpses.” Pisarev expresses deep confidence in the intransigence of tsarism and the younger generation: “The prisons are filled with honest young men who love the people and the idea… The government intends to act with us as with irreconcilable enemies. It is not mistaken: there is no reconciliation. On the side of the government are only scoundrels, bribed by the money that is squeezed out of the poor people by deception and violence. On the side of the people stands everything that is young and fresh, everything that is capable of thinking and acting.”

The article about Chedeau-Ferroti was not published, but the police discovered it during a search of student Ballod. For this proclamation, on June 2, 1862, Pisarev was arrested and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. During interrogation by the investigative commission, stating that the proclamation was caused by the government’s counter-offensive (closing Sunday schools, suspending Sovremennik and Russian Word for 8 months, etc.), Pisarev at the same time admitted that it was “written sharply , is arrogant and goes to such extremes that I do not approve of in a calm mood.”

In the fortress, Pisarev was kept as a dangerous political criminal, but after a year in solitary confinement, in August 1863, he was allowed to engage in literary work, which was the only source of livelihood for his entire family. Pisarev worked a lot in the fortress, wrote 24 articles, which in 1864-1865 appeared in almost every issue of the Russian Word. The strengthening of the autocratic-serf reaction from the second half of 1862, the disappointment in hopes for an immediate peasant revolution that gripped democratic circles, the decline in the wave of public excitement — all these events could not but influence Pisarev. They did not push him onto the path of political indifference, abandonment of issues and interests that previously worried him. In the first of his articles written in conclusion, in “Essays on the History of Labor” (July-August 1863), Pisarev takes a clear socialist position and expresses confidence in the fall of the “tyrannical rule of capital.”

Poverty, according to Pisarev, is generated by slavery and the appropriation of the instruments of production by the exploiters. Hence “the constant war that is waged in society between the capitalist resting on his laurels and the proletarian overworked.” European civilization is faced with a dilemma: either perish, leaving exploitation in force, or reorganize social relations so that exploitation is stopped at its roots, i.e. move to the path of socialism. The latter is inevitable, and there is a bright future for humanity ahead. “All the efforts of all honest workers of thought on the globe are directed towards the approach of this moment”…

The events of the end of 1862 and 1863 strengthened Pisarev’s skeptical attitude towards the people, towards their revolutionary, creative capabilities. In articles of this time, Pisarev speaks of the people as an inert and unconscious mass. Contrasting the masses with the thinking minority, he completely denied the possibility of causing an “awakening” among the masses through revolutionary propaganda and agitation. “The masses generally understand poorly and are imbued with the clearest ideas extremely slowly; enthusiasm generally evaporates soon, both among individuals and among entire nations.” To realize the passionate explosion of hope that occasionally awakens among the people, what is needed is “not a momentary explosion, but long-term, intense and strictly consistent activity.” Meanwhile, “until now there has not yet been a people in the world in which the majority was capable of conscious collective activity.” Therefore, “a moment of hope was always followed by bitter disappointment, and then by the same apathetic mistrust.”

It is therefore clear that Pisarev in the articles of 1863-1864. pays primary attention to the “chemical” way of transforming society. This is the way to disseminate natural scientific knowledge. According to Pisarev, social reorganization in the interests of workers will occur as a result of a long process of their accumulation of culture and knowledge. It is necessary, therefore, “to open the way to broad and fruitful mental development for the working majority.” To do this, it is necessary to “awaken public opinion and form thoughtful leaders of the people’s labor”; the latter should play the role of intermediaries in the transfer of knowledge to the people. “And in order to accomplish these two tasks… we must act exclusively on the educated classes of society.

The fate of the people is decided not in “public schools, but in universities.” The creation of a cadre of “thinking people” is necessary, according to Pisarev, also because only they can ensure a positive result of the people’s revolution if it happens. “Reproducing thinking people is the alpha and omega of any reasonable social development,” says Pisarev. – Therefore, natural science is currently the most pressing need of our society. Whoever distracts young people from this matter harms social development.”

To eliminate poverty in Russia, you need to get rich, i.e. develop the country’s productive forces. And this, in turn, depends on raising the mental level of society. “To get rich, we must at least slightly improve the antediluvian methods of our agricultural, factory and handicraft production, i.e. I need to wise up.» There is only one cure for ignorance — science. True science is only natural science.” Science will have an impact on all social life. The people’s wealth will increase. Social contradictions will smooth out. Art, by diverting living social forces away from this main task, thereby brings harm to society. But the sin of art is not only that it dissipates the mental forces of society, it also leads to an unproductive waste of public funds. The money spent on the purchase of paintings and statues, on the creation of opera and ballet, could be used with immeasurably greater benefit on establishing farms, on building factories and railways, on increasing bread, meat, clothing, shoes, tools and all other material products labor. DI. Pisarev constantly poses a dilemma: either “feed hungry people” or “enjoy the wonders of art.”

Pisarev, following the example of Chernyshevsky, compares a society that has hungry and poor people in its midst and at the same time develops the arts with a hungry savage who adorns himself with jewelry. Creativity, according to Pisarev, is a “nonsensical need.” Pisarev denied the social significance of painting, sculpture, and music. He believed that in the presence of hungry classes, “it is early, absurd, disgusting, indecent and harmful for society to worry about satisfying other needs of secondary importance that have developed in a tiny minority of well-fed and fat people.” DI. Russia owes a lot to Pisarev for the fact that it was in the 1860s that the inquisitive interest of young people in various areas of exact knowledge was awakened.

In the article “Our University Science” (1863), Pisarev gives a merciless verdict on the entire educational system of that time, in which educators do not strive to awaken the spirit of creativity in their students, but want to invest in them a certain mass of “soporific” information and materials for memorizing for future use: “Student reads one writer, reads another, and still does not become smarter, and still waits for his brain to clear up, and keeps piling facts upon facts, and suddenly, unexpectedly for himself, one fine morning he finds himself with a tightly stuffed historical suitcase, exactly like his own prototype and beloved leader.» Pisarev sees the main disadvantage of the child’s learning process in the obviously passive position of the child being educated. The teacher, in his opinion, should strive, first of all, to bring the spiritual needs of his students into proper clarity.

Pisarev offers an exemplary program for gymnasiums and universities; mathematics should form the basis of gymnasium teaching. At the same time, the study of crafts is planned; finally, physical labor most of all leads “to a sincere rapprochement with the people,” who supposedly recognize only physical workers. At universities, Pisarev proposes to abolish the division into faculties. Having previously rejected history as a science, he now connects it with the mathematical and natural sciences, starting the compulsory program with differential and integral calculus and ending with history, taught only in the last year. The fantastic nature and impracticability of these projects is clear at first glance. Pisarev is absolutely right when he says that his pedagogical articles “take a purely negative point of view and are devoted to the systematic exposure of pedagogical quackery and home-grown mediocrity”; He didn’t find any creative thought here either.

Russian Word In the articles “Realists” (1864), as well as in the articles of 1865 “Pushkin and Belinsky”, “Destruction of Aesthetics”, “Let’s see!” The propaganda of natural sciences is more and more clearly combined with a negative attitude towards speculative disciplines that have not achieved “scientific firmness and certainty.” Pisarev puts forward the idea of ​​utility, the idea of ​​what is “needed.” And what is needed, first of all, is food and clothing; everything else is “a nonsense need.” All nonsense needs can be united by one concept: aesthetics. “Wherever you look, you come across aesthetics”; “Aesthetics, lack of accountability, routine, habit – these are all completely equivalent concepts.” Hence the vast range of dark forces that the realist must destroy: pygmies engaged in sculpture, painting, music, learned phrase-mongers like Macaulay and Granovsky, parodies of poets like Pushkin: therefore let Walter Scott “pass by” with his historical novel, the Grimms, Russian scientists with their studies of folk art and worldview, even in general “the ancient period of Russian literature.”

Pisarev admits only poets, but on the condition that they “clearly and vividly reveal to us those aspects of human life that we need to know in order to think and act thoroughly.” But this reservation does not save poetry at all. Pisarev demands that the critic treat poetry exclusively as factual material, read it as we “run through the foreign news section of a newspaper,” and not pay any attention to the peculiarities of the author’s talent, language, or his manner of narration: this is a matter of “aesthetics,” and not a “thinking person.” He demands that poetry be reduced to the level of reporting and deprives it of any independent right to exist: “The dignity of the telegraph lies in the fact that it transmits news quickly and accurately, and not in the fact that the telegraph wire depicts various convolutions and arabesques.” Quite consistently, Pisarev went so far as to identify architects with cooks pouring cranberry jelly into intricate shapes, and painters with old women who whiten and blush. In his opinion, “figures of science and life” do not write poetry and drama because the size of their minds and the strength of their love for the idea do not allow them to engage in all this “aesthetics.”

Rejecting idealistic aesthetics, Pisarev at the same time did not recognize the existence of an objective criterion of beauty: “The concept of beauty lies in the personality of the connoisseur, and not in the object itself. What is beautiful in my eyes, you may not like, what our fathers liked, can make us sleepy and drowsy… Personal impression and only personal impression can be a measure of beauty.” Considering A.S. among the “aestheticians.” Pushkin, Pisarev judges Onegin, Lensky, the Larins, their life and morals, the nature of their relationships from the position of a plebeian democrat, “an attentive and distrustful reader.” Pisarev approaches a poetic line with an anatomical scalpel and evaluates it as an ordinary phrase from scientific and business speech. With deadly irony, he retells Pushkin’s novel and lyric poems, choosing the position of a simple-minded literalist commentator, who every now and then weaves quotes extracted from Pushkin’s poetic structure into his prosaic speech.

On every page one can feel the author’s delight in the task of “reasoning” the public about Pushkin, “resolving” the issues resolved by Belinsky, “from the point of view of consistent realism.” Articles about Pushkin are an extreme expression of Pisarev’s criticism. They are also curious because Pisarev discovered remarkable originality here, breaking with all authorities, even with the most respected of them, Chernyshevsky. As always, Pisarev remains faithful to Bazarov: Bazarov attributed to Pushkin thoughts and feelings that were not expressed by him, and Pisarev does the same. All accusations are based on identifying the author’s personality with his hero. Pushkin is guilty of everything for which Eugene Onegin can be blamed: he is responsible for the vulgarity and mental inertia of the upper Russian class; it is his fault that his bored hero is not a “fighter” or a worker. Pisarev does not make any condescension to Pushkin even in such cases when for others he diligently sought justifications and explanations. The most heated criticism of Pushkin was given regarding the duel between Onegin and Lensky. The words of the poet: “And here is public opinion! The spring of honor is our idol! And that’s what the world revolves on!” — Pisarev understood it as if Pushkin idealized his hero and recognized the legitimacy of the prejudice leading to the duel: “Pushkin justifies and supports with his authority the timidity, carelessness and slowness of individual thought…”

D.I. Pisarev spent four and a half years in captivity. Arrested on June 2, 1862, he was released from the fortress on November 18, 1866 under an amnesty. The government, allowing him to write while in prison, kept a vigilant eye on his articles. At the end of 1865, censor I.A. Goncharov drew the attention of the censorship committee to Pisarev’s article “The Thinking Proletariat” as “seditious.” The magazine “Russkoe Slovo” was given a warning for publishing this article, which “promoted theories of socialism and communism.” Soon after the publication of the article by D.I. Pisarev’s «Historical Ideas of Auguste Comte» magazine received a second warning. In May 1866, after D. Karakozov’s assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander II, “Russian Word” was closed by order of the government.
Coming out of the Peter and Paul Fortress, D.I. Pisarev showed obvious exhaustion of strength. His articles for 1867 and 1868 are pale and impersonal: now Pisarev limits himself to a more or less eloquent presentation of the content of the works under analysis (“The Struggle for Life” — about F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment”; an article about the novels of Andre Leo).

Pisarev conducted his analysis of works during these years at a very low, politically neutral level. The personality of the author and his attitude towards the depicted are completely eliminated by Pisarev from his field of vision. When starting to analyze Dostoevsky’s novel, he announces in advance that he does not care either about the author’s personal beliefs or about the author’s thoughts contained in the work. The only subject of his attention will be the phenomena of social life depicted in the novel. In contrast to N.A. To Dobrolyubov, to whom “The Thunderstorm” gave rise to the broadest generalizations, Pisarev identified the “dark kingdom” with the family chicken coop. In Katerina’s passive protest, in which Dobrolyubov caught the first surges of revolutionary upsurge, Pisarev saw only “the last and greatest absurdity.” The ideas of the works, which gave Pisarev the basis for their positive assessment, are trivial. Thus, one of F. Tolstoy’s stories “Olga,” according to Pisarev, is remarkable in that “this story explains to the reader what influences and circumstances can turn an honest and educated girl into a corrupt woman.”

At the beginning of 1867, D.I. Pisarev moved to the new “scientific-literary, radical-democratic journal” G.E. Blagosvetlov’s “Delo”, which replaced “Russian Word”, but soon more and more definitely and irrevocably diverged from it for fundamental ideological reasons. The pretext for the break was Blagosvetlov’s insufficiently courteous attitude towards M.A. Markovich (pseudonym — Marko Vovchok), Pisarev’s second cousin, a widely known writer at that time, whom Pisarev fell in love with tenderly and passionately and with whom he was inseparable until the end of his days. After parting with G.E. Blagosvetlov, Pisarev at the beginning of 1868 moved to Otechestvennye zapiski, which by this time had been acquired by N.A. Nekrasov.

Pisarev’s creative path ended suddenly. At the end of June 1868, on the advice of doctors, he, Maria Markovich and her son, went near Riga to treat his poor health with sea bathing. On July 4 (17), 1868, in Dubbelna (now Dubulti, part of Jurmala), while swimming in the sea, Pisarev drowned. The tragic death of D.I. Pisareva resonated with pain in the heart of democratic Russia. “A brilliant and promising star disappears, taking with him barely developed talents, leaving a barely begun literary field. Pisarev, a caustic critic, sometimes prone to exaggeration, always full of wit, nobility and energy, drowned while swimming. Despite his youth, he suffered a lot…” wrote A.I. Herzen in the «Bell» September 15, 1868. Funeral of D.I. Pisarev were held at the Volkovsky cemetery (“Literary Bridges”) in St. Petersburg.

DI. Pisarev went down in the history of Russian social thought and literature not only as a tireless fighter who fought against the diverse enemies of social progress, but also as an inspired builder, as one of those who laid the foundation of a new world. Possessing broad knowledge and brilliant literary talent, he had a great influence on the democratic youth of his time. He knew how to awaken the consciousness of readers, ignite and inspire. He is rightfully considered the third, after Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, the great Russian critic of the sixties. Plekhanov called him “one of the most outstanding representatives of the 1860s.”

“The time will come, and it is not at all far away, when the entire intelligent part of youth, without distinction of class and condition, will live a full mental life and look at things judiciously and seriously. Then the young landowner will put his farm on a European footing; then the young capitalist will start the factories that we need and arrange them as required by the common interests of the owner and workers; and that is enough; a good farm and a good factory, with a rational organization of labor, constitute the best and only possible school for the people.”

DI. Pisarev. «Motives of Russian Drama» (1864)