Leonid Nikolayevich Andreyev

Leonid Nikolayevich Andreyev , 1871-1919, Russian writer. Andreyev's early stories were realistic studies of everyday life. Gorky was attracted by the note of social protest in his work and used his influence to obtain publication of Andreyev's first volume of short stories. After an enormous initial success Andreyev turned to more metaphysical themes, frequently employing allegory and symbol. He declared his anti-Bolshevism, and his friendship with Gorky was terminated. Andreyev went to Finland at the Bolshevik accession to power and died there. His strongest dramatic work is King Hunger (1907), an acerbic portrait of Russian society. Besides the popular drama of a circus clown, He Who Gets Slapped (1915, tr. 1921), his best-known plays are Anathema (1909, tr. 1910), an allegory on the futility of goodness, and The Pretty Sabine Women (1911, tr. 1914), a political satire. The pessimism of his later writings cost Andreyev his popularity. His name also appears as Andreev.

Bibliography: See Letters of Gorky and Andreev, ed. by P. Yershov (1958); biographical studies by A. S. Kaun (1924, repr. 1969), J. B. Woodward (1969), and J. M. Newcombe (1973).

Andreyev, Leonid Nikolaivich (1871–1919), Russian dramatist, was encouraged in his early days by Gorky. He was at first a revolutionary, but after the October Revolution emigrated to Finland, where he died. His plays, permeated with a bitter pessimism, express the despair and desolation of the period between 1905 and 1917. The only one to have survived on the stage is the theatrically effective He Who Gets Slapped (1914), an allegorical play set in a circus, first produced in New York in 1922 (London, 1927).