Establishing friendships with other writers such as Gustave Flaubert, George Sand, Henry James, Émile Zola, and Guy de Maupassant, Turgenev also promoted the works of his fellow Russians during his country's literary golden age, helping to bridge the vast cultural divide between eastern and western Europe. To Russian readers he offered an alternative to the prophetic literature of Tolstoy in his focus on realistic characters and human situations rather than allegory.
Benefits from Aristocratic Heritage and Bourgeois Affluence
Born in Russia's Orel Province in 1818, Ivan Sergeievich Turgenev was the second of three sons of a wealthy family of the Russian landed gentry. His mother, Varvara Petrovna, had inherited wealth and land from a childless uncle and made her home at the family seat of Spasskoye. An educated and ambitious woman--only French was spoken in her home--Varvara oversaw her estates and her five thousand serfs with an iron hand, and she treated her children just as harshly. His father, Sergei Nikolaievich Turgenev, was a retired colonel who hailed from a family that included a Tatar prince but little money.
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