[1] Yasinsky, who received a good home education, continued studying in the Chernigov gymnasium and in 1868 enrolled into the Kiev University, which he left in 1871, after marrying V.P.Ivanova.

[1] Yasinsky's first short novels (Natashka, 1881; The Sleeping Beauty, 1883) were lauded by the Russian leftist literary elite (Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin in particular) who hailed their author as "the new Garshin.

"[1] Several years later his major novels (Irinarkh Plutarkhov, 1886; The Old Friend, 1887; The Great Man, 1888, and later Under Satan's Cloak, 1909), fell under sharp criticism for allegedly ridiculing the "revolutionary movement."

Similarly Maxim Gorky, who treated Yasinsky's books as cheap anti-revolutionary pamphlets, once described their author as "dirty and spiteful old man".

[2] He worked for Proletkult, edited Soviet magazines (Krasny ogonyok, Plamya, 1918–1919), wrote science fiction for children and translated Friedrich Engels's poem "The Evening" in 1923, but still was unpopular with critics.