[1] His Ukrainian Cossack father, Poltava-born Galaktion Afanasyevich Korolenko (1810–1868), was a district judge who, "amongst the people of his profession looked like a Don Quixote with his defiant honesty and refusal to take bribes", as his son later remembered.

[4] After the sudden death of her husband in Rovno in 1866, Evelina Iosifovna, suffering enormous hardships, somehow managed to raise her five children, three sons and two daughters, on a meagre income.

He was expelled from it in 1876 for having signed a collective letter protesting against the arrest of a fellow student, and was exiled to the Vologda region, then Kronstadt, where the authorities agreed to transfer him, answering his mother's plea.

His impressions from his life in exile provided Korolenko with rich material for his writings, which he started to systematize upon arriving at Nizhny Novgorod, where in 1885 he was finally allowed to settle in.

[3] In Nizhny, Korolenko became the center of the local social activism, attracting radicals to fight all kinds of wrongdoing committed by the authorities, according to the biographer Semyon Vengerov.

[6][9] After visiting the Chicago exhibition during 1893 as a correspondent for Russkoye Bogatstvo, Korolenko wrote the novella "Bez yazyka" (Без языка, Without Language, 1895) telling the story of an uneducated Ukrainian peasant, struggling in America, unable to speak a word in English.

[11] In the autumn of 1905 he started working upon the extensive autobiography The History of my Contemporary (История моего современника), fashioned to some extent after Alexander Hertzen's My Past and Thoughts.

Considering himself 'only a part-time-writer', as he put it, he became famous as a publicist who, never restricting himself to mere journalistic work, was continually and most effectively engaged in the practical issues he saw as demanding immediate public attention.

[citation needed] In 1891-1892, when famine struck several regions of Central Russia, he went to work on the ground, taking part in the relief missions, collecting donations, supervising the process of delivering and distributing food, opening free canteens (forty five, in all), all the while sending to Moskovskiye Vedomosti regular reports which would be later compiled in the book V golodny god (В голодный год, In the Year of Famine, 1893) in which he provided the full account of the horrors that he witnessed, as well as the political analysis of the reasons of the crisis.

[13] In 1895-1896 he spent enormous amount of time supervising the court case of the group of the Udmurt peasants from Stary Multan village who were falsely accused of committing ritual murders.

Writing continuously for numerous Russian papers (and in 1896 summarizing his experiences in "The Multan Affair", Мултанское дело) Korolenko made sure the whole country became aware of the trial, exposed the fabrications, himself performed as barrister in court and almost single-handedly brought about the acquittal, thus "practically saving the whole little nation from the horrible stain which would have remained for years should the guilty verdict have been passed," according to the biographer.

[14] In 1913 he took strong public stand[1] against the anti-Semitic Beilis trial and wrote the powerful essay "Call to the Russian People in regard to the blood libel of the Jews" (1911–13).

[16] Vladimir Korolenko, who was a lifetime opponent of Tsarism and described himself as a "party-less Socialist", reservedly welcomed the Russian Revolution of 1917 which he considered to be a logical result of the whole historical course of things.

While trying to save from death the Bolsheviks arrested by the 'whites', he appealed for the 'reds' against reciprocating with terror, arguing (in his letters to Anatoly Lunacharsky) that the process of "moving towards Socialism should be based upon the better sides of the human nature.

"[2] Up until his dying day, suffering from a progressive heart disorder, he was busy collecting food packages for children in famine-stricken Moscow and Petrograd, took part in organizing orphanages and shelters for the homeless.

In his early life Yulian was interested in literature, wrote poetry and co-authored (with Vladimir) the translation of "L'Oiseau" by Jules Michelet, published in 1878 and signed, collectively, "Коr-о".

[17] Illarion Korolenko (21 October 1854 - 25 November 1915), also a Narodnik activist, was sent into exile in 1879 and spent five years in Glazov, Vyatka Governorate where he worked as a locksmith in a small workshop he co-owned with a friend.

Later, residing in Nizhny and working as an insurance company inspector, he travelled a lot and, having met in Astrakhan Nikolai Chernyshevsky, became instrumental in both authors' meeting.

[17] In January 1886 Vladimir Korolenko married Evdokiya Semyonovna Ivanovskaya (Евдокия Семёновна Ивановская, born 1855, Tula Governorate; 1940 in Poltava), a fellow Narodnik he first met years ago in Moscow.

[5] Mark Aldanov also saw Korolenko as belonging to the Polish school of literature, while owing a lot to the early Nikolai Gogol ("some of his stories would have fitted fine into the Dikanka Evenings cycle"), who all the while happened to be "totally untouched by" neither Lev Tolstoy, nor Chekhov.

In his 1922 tribute Lev Gumilevsky, lauding the writer's style for "striking simplicity which added to the power of his word," called him Russia's "social... and literary conscience.

"[16] The Soviet biographer F. Kuleshov praised Korolenko as "the defender of the oppressed" and a "truth-seeker, ardent and riotous, who with the fervency of a true revolutionary fought the centuries-long traditions of lawlessness.

"[24] According to this critic, the writer's unique persona united in itself "a brilliant story-teller..., astute psychologist, great publicist, energetic, tireless social activist, a true patriot and very simple, open and modest man with crystal clear, honest soul.

"[24] Maxim Gorky, while crediting Korolenko with being a "huge master and fine stylist," also opined that he did a lot to "awaken the sleeping social self-awareness of the majority of Russian nation".

[25] Semyon Vengerov called Korolenko "a humanist in the most straightforward sense of the word" whose sincerity was so overwhelming as to "win [people] over no matter which political camp they belonged."

"The high position Korolenko occupies in our contemporary literature is in equal degree the result of his fine, both humane and elegant literary gift, and the fact that he was "the 'knight of quill' in the best sense of the word," Vengerov wrote in 1911.

"[26] The early Soviet critic Pyotr Kogan argued that Korolenko was in a way contradicting himself by denouncing the revolutionary terror for it was him who had collected "the immense set of documents damning the Tsarist regime" which completely justified the cruelties of the Bolsheviks.

Mark Aldanov, for one, declared the excessive flow of official 'tributes', including the Lunacharsky's obituary, Demyan Bedny's poetic dedication and Grigory Zinoviev's speech a collective act of abuse, "desecrating his pure grave.

For all his shortcomings, though, Korolenko, according to Aykhenvald, "remains one of the most attractive figures in the contemporary Russian literature," quick to enchant the reader with "his touchingly soft romanticism and tender melancholy gently lightening a dim world where misguided, orphaned souls and charming images of children roam.