BELINSKY, VISSARION GRIGORIEVICH (181 I 1848), Russian critic, born on June 13, 1811, at Fribourg, and died on June 9, 1848, at St. Petersburg; the son of an army doctor. At the University of Moscow he became friendly with Stankevich and other young writers, but he took no degree. On leaving the university, he wrote first of all for Nadezhdin's Telescope, and then after its suppression (1836), edited the Moskovsky Nablyu datel, of which Bakunin was at that time the proprietor. On the failure of this undertaking he became the principal literary critic of the Otechestvennya Zapiski in St. Petersburg. By this time he had come under the influence of the philosophy of Hegel, and his early friends were surprised to find that their champion, who had always supported what was new and revolu tionary in Russian literature, was supporting the existing social and political regime, but after a few years he returned to his earlier position, and now supported the advanced school of Rus sian writers who sought to give pictures of life with a social signif icance. In 1846 he became critic of the Sovremennik, which had been purchased by Nekrasov and Panayev. Next year he was obliged to leave Russia for reasons of health, and addressed to Gogol a letter criticizing Gogol's Correspondence with Friends, a letter which became a kind of profession of faith among young Russians.
His collected works were edited by Vengerov (19o1—IO) and his life was written by Pypine (1876) . See also D. S. Mirsky, History of Rus sian Literature (1927), for an estimate of Belinsky's influence on Rus sian literature.