“Experienced and Reconsidered” by Vasily Kelsiev: The Romanization of Confession and the Public Model of Return from Emigration

The life of Vasily I. Kelsiev (1835–1872) illustrates how Russian literature of the later nineteenth century developed the motif of return from emigration. Kelsiev began his career as a revolutionary activist in the 1860s and later adopted a Pan-Slavist position. After spending nine years abroad, he returned to Russia and explained his decision in two autobiographical works: “Ispoved” (“Confession,” 1867), written before his official pardon and addressed to the imperial authorities, and “Perezhitoe i peredumannoe” (“Experienced and Reconsidered,” 1868), intended for a broad readership. The two texts differ in their intended audience, purpose, and narrative design. The “Confession” presents a chronological account from the beginning of Kelsiev’s exile to his return. “Experienced and Reconsidered” opens with his return and reconstructs the events that preceded that point. Both texts show a tendency toward a novelistic form, but the memoir also contains an extended self-portrait that outlines Kelsiev’s upbringing, reading experience, and intellectual formation. This section functions as a narrative exposition and contributes to the formation of his public image. The figure of the “repentant émigré,” shaped through these writings, became a point of reference in the debates in the 1860–1870s. Contemporary readers such as A. I. Herzen, D. D. Minaev, A. N. Pypin, N. M. Mikhailovsky, and P. N. Tkachev interpreted Kelsiev’s memoirs as evidence of a broader crisis within the 1860s generation and at times treated them as material for psychological analysis. F. М. Dostoevsky responded differently. He viewed Kelsiev’s return sympathetically, drew on it in creating several of his emigre characters, and may have used Kelsiev’s review of Stebnitskii-Leskov’s “Zagadochnyi chelovек” (“An Enigmatic Man”) as a source for his essay “Odna iz sovremennykh fal’shei” (“One of Today’s Falsehoods”).