Nikolay Leykin

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Leikin was a Russian writer and journalist.

He was born into an old St. Petersburg merchant family and received his education at the St. Petersburg German Reformed School; he worked as a shop assistant and served in an insurance company, but soon abandoned commercial activity. After graduating in 1859 from the St. Petersburg German Reformed School, he began helping his father in trade matters. Soon his father became bankrupt, and Nikolai Aleksandrovich took a position as a shop assistant in the Gostiny Dvor, then served in an insurance company, but soon gave up his job. He began publishing in 1860. The main theme of his numerous stories, sketches, scenes, plays, novellas, and novels ("Stukni i Khrustalnikov," 1886; "Satir i Nimfa," 1888, and others) was the customs and manners of St. Petersburg merchants and officials. However, his comic exposure of petty-bourgeois life was superficial.

He was the author of many books, including the best known, Our Abroad (“Nashi za granitsei”)—a satirical account of a journey through Europe by a merchant couple from Moscow. Before the Revolution of 1917, this book went through 27 reprints.

It is interesting that tsarist censorship did not allow the book Our Abroad to be translated into Polish. The ban was justified by fears that the work would provoke ridicule among Poles, confirming them in their opinion of the backwardness and barbarity of Russians. In 1884, along with many other books, all of Leikin’s books were ordered removed from Warsaw libraries and public reading rooms, as well as from book collections belonging to various societies and clubs.

For the last 15 years of his life he took an active part in the St. Petersburg City Duma. An extremely prolific writer. Beginning with small humorous sketches and poems in "Russky Mir," "Iskra," and others, and publishing in journals attention-attracting sketches such as "Apraksintsy" ("Biblioteka dlya Chteniya," 1863), "Birzhevye artel'shchiki" ("Sovremennik," 1864),