11 Facts About Stepan Skitalets

Stepan Gavrilovich Skitalets was a Russian and Soviet poet, writer of fiction and folk musician.

Stepan Skitalets's father taught him to play the gusli, and Stepan Skitalets was well known in later life for his skill with the instrument and for being a talented folk singer.

Stepan Skitalets came to Moscow with Gorky where he joined the Sreda, a literary group founded by the writer Nikolay Teleshov, which included many of Russia's most popular authors and artists, such as Leonid Andreyev, Ivan Bunin, Fyodor Chaliapin, Gorky and, when he was in town, Anton Chekhov.

Stepan Skitalets was the author of a popular folk song about Stepan Razin.

Stepan Skitalets's reading of this poem and several others caused an uproar of cheers and shouts, leading to the event being broken up by the police, and to the arrest of Leonid Andreyev, who'd been the event's organizer.

Stepan Skitalets was arrested for his revolutionary activities in 1888,1901,1902 and 1905.

Stepan Skitalets continued publishing his works separately and in collected editions through the years leading up to World War I and the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Stepan Skitalets lived abroad from 1922 to 1934 in Harbin China where he worked for several newspapers, and contributed works to Soviet journals.

Stepan Skitalets returned to Russia in July, 1934, renewed his friendship with Gorky and again took part in literary and social life.

Stepan Skitalets published the novels The House of the Chernovs in 1935 and Fetters in 1940.

Stepan Skitalets died in Moscow in 1941, and was buried in the Vvedenskoye Cemetery.