KOROLENKO, VLADIMIR GALAKTIONOVICH

born July 27 [July 15, Old Style], 1853, Zhitomir, Ukraine, Russian Empire died Dec. 25, 1921, Poltava, Ukraine Russian short-story writer and journalist whose works are memorable in showing compassion for the downtrodden. Korolenko was expelled from two colleges for his revolutionary activities. In 1879 he was exiled to the Yakut region of Siberia, where he encountered the tramps, thieves, pilgrims, and social outcasts that were to figure prominently in his stories. Released after five years, he published his best-known story, Son Makara (1885; Makar's Dream), which conveys with sympathetic insight the world of a Yakut peasant. During his editorship (c. 1900) of the influential review Russkoe Bogatstvo, Korolenko championed minorities and befriended younger writers, including Maksim Gorky. Unwilling to cooperate with the Bolshevik government, he retired after the October Revolution in 1917 to the Ukraine, where he worked on an unfinished autobiography, Istoriya moyego sovremennika (190521; The History of My Contemporary).