Literary critic, social thinker, essayist, known as "furious Vissarion", often called the father of the Russian radical intelligentsia. Vissarion Belinskii believed passionately that Russian literature had to progress beyond the native form of Russian folk poetry. Literature should honestly reflect the reality of the country and transform society.

"Socialism, socialism - or death! That is my motto. What I care if genius on earth live in heaven when the crowd is wallowing in the dirt?... My heart bleeds and shudders when I view the crowd and its representatives... And that is life: to sit in the street in rags with an idiotic expression of face collecting farthings in the daytime to be spent on booze in the evening - and men see it and no one cares about it!" (in a letter to V.P. Botkin, Polnoje sobranie sochinenii, XII, 1953-59)

Vissarion Belinskii was born in Sveaborg, Finland (then part of Russia), where his father served as a medical officer in the Russian army. After retiring he ran a small practice and drank. Belinskii grew up in the city of Chembar in the province of Penza. His childhood was unhappy, his father beat him and he was chronically ill. After studies at a gymnasium in Penza, he entered in 1829 the University of Moscow with a government stipend. At the time French Utopian Socialism began to make its way to Russian social thought. In 1832 Belinskii was expelled from the university for writing a play, entitled Dmitrii Kalinin, that attacked the institution of serfdom. He then earned his living as a journalist, pouring out a steady stream of articles and reviews. His first substantial critical pieces he wrote for the most important journals of the day: Moskovskii Nabliutadel', Otechestvennye Zapiski, Sovremennik, and Teleskop, which was closed down for publishing Chaadaev's first 'Philosophical letter'.

After spending some time in the Caucasus to recover from an illness, Belinskii began to edit the Moskovskii Nabliudatel' (Moscow Observer), which was closed in 1839. He then went to St. Petersburg, where he wrote for Otechestvennye Zapiski (Notes of the Fatherland). In his essay The Idea of Art (1841) Belinskii saw art and literature as primarily utilitarian -  they had to transform society, not focus on contemplation of aesthetic principles. Under the influence of Hegel and Romanticism, Belinskii emphasized the historical context of literature. Later he approached Utopian socialism ideologically and rejected Hegelian conservatism. In his letter to V. P. Botkin he stated that the fate of a single individual is more important than the fate of the whole world or the health of the Emperor of China. With this he refuted Hegel - the German philosopher had argued that individuals and whole nations are only instruments in the development of history and state. Belinskii's theories were further developed by N.G. Chernyshevsky in his famous dissertation The Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality (1855), in which art was taken as essentially a reproduction of reality.

In appearance Belinskii was of "middle height, thin, bony, and slightly stooped; his face was pale, slighly mottled, and flushed easily when he was exited." (Isaiah Berlin, in Russian Thinkers, 1978) Socially fearless but shy,  he was uncomfortable in group gatherings and did not talk well, but as his friend Alexander Herzen recalled, "when his dearest convictions were touched ... he would fling himself at his victim like a panther, he would tear him to pieces, make him riciculous, make him pitiful...." In St. Petersburg Belinskii was a member of a group of progressive writers that included Ivan Goncharov and Ivan Turgenev. He defended sociological realism in literature and reviewed the works of such contemporary authors as Turgenev, Pushkin, Lermontov, Dostoyesvky, and Gogol. Between the years 1843 and 1846 Belinskii published 11 essays on Pushkin, describing his poem Evgenii Onegin as an "encyclopedia of Russian life", but holding Pushkin's prose in relatively low esteem. Russian literature began, Belinskii claimed, in 1739, the year when Lomonosov published his first poem, Ode on the Taking of Khotin from the Turks.

In 1835 Belinskii proclaimed Gogol as the head of Russian literature. At first Belinskii saw in his work a critical attitude toward reality, but Gogol did not share Belinskii's stand: the author considered himself a conservative. However, Belinskii's classification of Gogol as a "critical realist" was widely accepted and the term was also used by all Soviet critics.  

As a result of his disappointment Belinskii wrote in 1847 in Silesia his famous "Letter to Gogol", which was banned from circulation by the government. He accused Gogol of defending the church and state authorities and being a traitor to the common good. "... one cannot keep silent when lies and immorality are preached as truth and virtue under the guise of religion..." The letter was published in Gogol's Selected Passages from Correspondence with My Friends (1847). It was during a reading of the text by the Petrashevskii circle that Dostoyevsky was arrested. The article had a wide, illegal distribution and became in the following decades the central manifesto of Russian liberals. Belinskii deeply influenced Dostoevsky's thought. He considered the critic his soul mate, although he started to preach immediately about atheism to his deeply religious disciple. Dostoevsky returned to Belinskii in The Diary of a Writer (1876), in which he wrote that Belinskii was the most impatient man in Russia, a passionate, and happy person. He valued most of all reason, science, and realism. When Dostoevsky was in Siberia in a prison camp, the memory of Belinskii gave him comfort, although they had became estranged.

"The basis of religion is pietism, reverence, fear of God. Whereas the Russian man utters the name of Lord while scratching himself somewhere." (in 'Letter to Gogol')

Belinskii married in 1843 Mariia Vasil'evvna Orlova, they had one son, who died in 1847, and one daughter. Suffering from tuberculosis Belinskii went abroad from May to November in 1847. He wrote briefly for Sovremennik, and died of consumption in St. Petersburg on June 7, 1848.  Faithful to his mission, Belinskii did not stop prophesying the coming of the great era of Russian literature, but he did not witness its fulfilment in the works of Ivan Goncharov (Oblomov), Turgenev (Fathers and Sons), Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov), and Tolstoy (War and Peace, Anna Karenina). Of these writers, Goncharov spoke of his as the best man he had ever known; he had a considerable influence on Turgenev, but very little on Tolstoy. Regarded as the "conscience" of the 1840s intelligentsia, he was a role model for Bazarov, also the son of an army doctor, in Fathers and Sons.

As a critic Belinskii was not as systematic as his French or English colleagues, believing that true criticism starts with enthusiasm. He was a crusader for the arts and his dislike of Slavic folklore affected the Russian taste for an entire century, but also made him the target of Slavophiles, whom he associated with obscurantism and servitude. For Belinskii language was meant to communicate, the content was the most important thing in literature. He paid almost no attention to the style or use of language of the writers he was criticizing, but his instinct for works of importance was unfailing. Belinskii's own style was polemic, he aimed at effect and used many quotations. The educated people represented for Belinkii the best features of a nation, not the peasants. "The people feel the need of potatoes, but none whatever of a constitution - that is desired only by educated townspeople who are quite powerless," Belinskii said to his friends in 1846. Thus he viewed with suspicion Ukrainian national awakening and rejected the greatest romantic poet of the country, Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861), who wrote literary works in the Ukrainian language, which he labelled as a regional peasant dialect. Belinskii's attitude, marked by a sense of Russian superiority, had a long-lasting impact on Russian public opinion. The oppressive tsarist policy culminated in 1876 in the ban of printing in Ukrainian.

Isaiah Berlin has argued, that Belinskii was the father of the social criticism of literature, "not only in Russia but perhaps even in Europe". After the Revolution he gained huge importance in the Marxist-Leninist school of literary theory, which adhered to his belief that writers should serve the people, and regarded arts as a weapon in the ideological struggle . During his life Belinskii revised some of his most fundamental views, though commitment to the truth and reality remained his core convictions - and the truth must be served above everything else, whereas in Socialist realism, the truth became in practice subordinated to political ideology. Before his death Belinskii started to think that Russia was more in need of a bourgeoisie than socialism.

For further reading: Belinskij and Russian Literary Criticism by Victor Terras (1954); Vissarion Belinski, 1811-1848: A Study in the Origins of Social Criticism in Russia by Herbert E. Bowman (1954); Literary Reminiscences by Ivan Turgenev (1958, appeared in Russian in 1874); Studies in Rebellion by Evgeny Lampert (1957); Dostoevskij and the Belinskij School of Literary Criticism by Thelwall Proctor (1969); The Extraordinary Decade by P.V. Annenkov (1968); Russian Literary Criticism by R.H. Stacy (1974); Russian Thinkers by Isaiah Berlin (1978); Writers and Society During the Rise of Russian Realism by Joe Andrew (1980); On Psychological Prose by Lydia Ginzburg (1991) - Suom: Belinskilta on myös suomennettu artikkelikokoelma Kirjallisuudesta ja essevalikoima Valittua (1975).

Selected works:

• Literaturnyye Metshtaniya, 1834 [Literary Reviews]
• Osnovaniya Russkoi Grammatiki, 1839
• Stati O Pushkine, 1843-46
• Pismo K Gogolju, 1847
• Iz sochinenii V.G. Bielinskago, 1898
• Estetika V. G. Bielinskago, 1898
• Izbrannyia sochineniia 1898 (2 vols.)
• O vospitanii umstvennom i nravstvennom, 1898
• Sbornik istoriko-literaturnykh statei, 1898
• Sem' statei 1898
• Sochineniia, 1898 (2 vols.)
• V. G. Bielinskii dlia uchashchikhsiia, 1898
• Vissarion Grigor'evich Bielinskii ob A. S. Pushkinie, 1898
• Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 1900-48 (8 vols.)
• Sochineniia, 1901 (5 vols.)
• Pis'ma, 1914
• Izbrannye sochineniia, 1934 (2 vols.)
• Izbrennye filosofskie sochineniia, 1941
• Belinskiio drame i teatre, 1948
• Literaturnoe Nasledstvo, 55-57, 1948-51
• Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, 1953-59 (13 vols.)
• "Gamlet," drama Sheksprira, 1956
• Selected Philosophical Works, 1956
• Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, and Dobrolyubov: Selected Criticism, 1962 (ed. Ralph E. Matlaw)
• Izbrannye stat’i: Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol’, 1970
• O drame i teatre v dvukh tomakh, 1983 (2 vols.)