KOROLENKO, Vladimir Galaktionovitch, Russian novelist : b. Zhit6mir in Volhynia, 27 July 1853. His father, a mem ber of an old Cossack family, was a judge, of stern and honorable character, who believed in a Spartan education for his children. His mother Was of aristocratic Polish origin, and when she was left a widow in straitened cir cumstances, she opened a boys' boarding-school. Korolenko, a boy of 15, assisted her and also gave lessons outside. In 1E70 he entered the Technical School at Saint earning his way by teaching and doing copying. His mother was unable to aid him and he often suffered from hunger. In 1872 he entered the Agricultural Institute at Moscow, but having become affected with revolutionary opinions he was expelled and sent to Kronstadt. He man aged to return to Saint Petersburg where he finally secured a 'position as reader in a pub lishing house. He embodied his experience in a small volume entitled, in the Life of a Seeker) or 'Prokhan and the Students.' This was begun in Russian Thought (Russkaya Muisl) but was stopped by the censor. He was already a marked man and was arrested in 1879 and sent to Kama and Tomsk. He wrote a letter protesting against such per secution and as a reward was transferred to Yakutsk in eastern Siberia, where, amid the immense forests known as in a filthy, smoky village, he spent three miserable years. aMy tiny hut he says, °was like an island i lost in a boundless He experienced the terrible sadness of exile and absolute loneli ness, amid a degraded and hopeless people. He wrote his first notable story, 'Makar's Dream> ('Son Makira>), which was published several years later, as well as a number of tales t giving remarkably realistic pictures of life in that desolate region and of suffering humanity, and introducing various types of revolutionists, exiles and vagabonds as he saw them in the frozen Siberian forests and in far-distant Sag halien. His (Sketches of a Siberian Traveler)
was published in 1896. In these stories and in
Tramp)
he gives many remi niscences of his own experiences, as a boy and as a young man.