ARTSIBASHEV, MIKHAIL PETROVICH 1927), Russian novelist, was born in south Russia, Oct. 18, 1878, and died at Warsaw March 3, 1927. His family was of Tartar descent, and on the mother's side he was a great-grandson of Kosciusko. He at first followed an artistic career and attained some fame as a caricaturist, but subsequently began writing short stories, followed by novels. In he was imprisoned for several months by the Imperial Government as a revolutionary. His first novel, Sanin, 1907 (Eng. trans. 1915), showed him in revolt against all social restraints, and both it and his later novels exhibit a society in dissolution and give a grotesquely exaggerated picture of crime and folly. He was a violent misogynist, even more violent than Tolstoi in the Kreutzer Sonata. His novels had a great vogue in Russia in their time.
His collected works published in Moscow (1912-17, 10 vols.) con tain:—Razskazi (Tales) ; U poslednei chertiy ("At the Extreme Limit," translated into English as The Breaking Point, 1915) ; Zakon dikarya ("The Law of a Misanthrope") ; Revnost ("Jealousy") ; a play Voina ("War," translated into English 1918 under the same title) and Sanin (translated into English as Sanine, 1915) .