Demert, Nikolai Aleksandrovich

Born in the Chistopol district of the Kazan province , Demert came from a middle-class landowner family.

Education

Educated at the Kazan gymnasium, where he enrolled in 1844, and graduated in 1852 to enter the University of Kazan , where he graduated from the course as a candidate in law school ^[2] . After leaving the university, Demert was a home tutor for one landowner for several years. Then, after the peasant reform, he was a world mediator of the first draft, and had the opportunity and opportunity to closely recognize the village and the needs of the peasant life, and with the opening of the Zemstvo institutions he became a member of the Chistopol zemstvo, and then the chairman of the government.

Beginning of literary activity

Demert to the capital and in 1864 he moved first to Moscow and then to St. Petersburg, where he decided to devote himself exclusively to literary work, the vocation to which manifested itself in him very early, even in the gymnasium, where he wrote a whole pile of poems; however, before his arrival in Moscow, they only published a story: “From student memories” in Moskovsky Vestnik, 1860, and a small comedy: “Third-grade governess with music,” in Sovremennik, 1861. In Moscow, Demert was fond of the scene and took some part in the "Moscow Statements" and "Entertainment . "

Journalism

In 1865, on arrival in St. Petersburg, he became a permanent employee of Petersburg Vedomosti , edited by V.F. Korsch, and was in charge of the department of provincial news. The lively humor, the original warehouse, the cheerfulness and at the same time the strangeness of Demert's articles put forward the author, led him to get acquainted with V. S. Kurochkin and marked the beginning of his continued collaboration in Iskra, which cost this newspaper several loud press-related processes. In 1867, in order to dispose of his vast and versatile knowledge of national life and to understand the needs and rural affairs, Demert began writing a novel entitled: “Black Earth Forces”, but wrote only its beginning, which was published in the Nevsky Collection "1867. Then Demert briefly took the place of home teacher in the provinces. But in 1868, when Russian journalism began to revive, he returned to St. Petersburg and began to work hard at Iskra, writing for Tiblen's Modern Outlook, and since the fall for Domestic Notes . From 1869, at the invitation of the first edition of the reformed “Week” (P. Konradi), he began to lead the internal department of this newspaper, and wrote correspondence to the Moscow “Sovremennye Izvestia” and other provincial publications, and from 1874, when changing the editorial board, he became a permanent employee The “Exchange News” , referred to Poletik , and led here the department of internal chronicles.

The brokenness of the soul was expressed in the propensity to revels, which, lengthening and becoming more frequent with years, went little by little into the booze. Booze did not hesitate to have a disastrous effect on his mental abilities, and in early 1875 there were some signs of insanity in him. Without ceasing to drink and into the frenzy of insanity, Demert arrived in Moscow in 1876, and spent the night in a hotel, disappeared and was then taken on the street with obvious signs of mental disorder and placed in a Moscow police hospital, where he died. So this talented publicist, buried at the Vagankovo ​​cemetery in a common grave, ended his life, and there was no way to find it.

The result of hard and diligent labor in the last 6–7-year period of Demer’s life was his monthly chronicles in “Domestic Notes”: “Our public affairs,” and numerous internal newspaper reviews, as well as individual articles signed by Kushetkov (“On our land schools "," Zemstvo and the Clergy ", etc.), the letter D. (" New Will. From the notes who once served on peasant affairs "in the Fatherland. West. 1869 v. 186 and 187." With a sore head healthy ”,“ Our social life ”, ibid., vol. 213, etc.).

The Demert Chronicles were a very original phenomenon in the literature of the time, and even exceptional in their own way; each of his articles was imbued with deep passion in which the bright mind of a zemtsa practitioner, who knew well all the secret secrets of zemsky affairs, shone. Demert represented a direct nature, alien to any development and contrived principles. It was a deeply passionate nature, with all the forces of its soul that hated all the age-old lies in Russia and cracked by the same crook.

• Demert, Nikolai Alexandrovich // Russian Biographical Dictionary : 25 tons. / Under the supervision of A. A. Polovtsov. 1896-1918.