Grigori Machtet

Grigori Alexandrovich Machtet (Template:Lang-ru; Template:Lang-uk) (1852, Lutsk — 1901, Yalta) was a Russian-language writer, revolutionary, poet, and journalist. He is the author of the well-known song "Tormented by Grievous Bondage" (Замучен тяжёлой неволей Zamučen tjažóloj nevolej).

Grigori Machtet

Early life

The Machtet family originally came from England.

Grigori Alexandrovich Machtet was born in Lutsk, a city in Western Ukraine. In 1865, he was allegedly expelled from fourth grade at the Nemirov Gymnasium for showing sympathy towards the participants in the Polish uprising of 1863.

In 1870, he received permission to take an exam to become a teacher of history and geography in the district schools. He taught for two years at the schools in Mogilev and Kamianets-Podilskyi.

Political activities

In 1872 Machtet left Russia for the United States with the intention of organizing agricultural communes there.

Machtet returned to Russia in 1875 and settled in Saint Petersburg. In 1876 Machtet was imprisoned to the Peter and Paul Fortress where he spent a year in solitary confinement. He was then exiled to Siberia.

In 1900 he received permission to return to Saint Petersburg.

Personal life

In 1880, machtet married fellow political exile Yelena Petrovna Medvedeva, a participant in the infamous "Trial of the Fifty". Their son, Taras Machtet (1891-1938) became a poet and a member of the Luminist literary movement.

The family settled in Zaraysk and lived there until 1900. On December 3, 1961, a marble memorial plaque was installed on a house in Zaraysk with the inscription: “In this house in 1891-1895. lived and worked writer Grigory Aleksandrovich Machtet.

Works

Machtet wrote his most famous works, among which his novel "One Warrior In The Field", the story "His Hour Has Come", a series of Siberian stories, and some articles published in the "Native Stories" magazine.