Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov (1812–1887)

Russian literary critic, publicist and writer.

Annenkov was born on June 30, 1812, in Moscow, into a landowner’s family. In the 1840s, he came into contact with Russian writers or critics such as Belinsky, Gogol, Herzen and Turgenev. Anenkov politically revered Western European liberalism and took part in the editorial work of the Russian journal Otechestvenniye Zapiski (Notes on the Fatherland). From 1846 to 1847, he met and corresponded with Marx. At the invitation of Marx, he attended the meeting of the Communist Correspondence Committee in Brussels on March 30, 1846, and later detailed in his memoirs the dispute between Marx and Wilhelm Weitling at the meeting. In terms of literary criticism, Annenkov advocated that literature must be deeply involved in its moral impact on society. Annenkov died in March 1887 in Dresden, Germany.

Annenkov’s representative works include The Works of Aleksandr Pushkin: The Extraordinary Decade: Literary Memoirs (1838–1848), Memoirs and Critical Sketches (Vol. 1–3), Literary Memoirs, etc. In addition to literary achievements, Annenkov was also actively involved in philosophy, politics, economics and other academic fields, and once wrote to Marx about his views on Proudhon’s book, The Philosophy of Poverty and asked for Marx’s opinions. In his reply to Annenkov, Marx further criticized Proudhon’s erroneous thought and further elucidated his materialist conception of history.