Who Can Be Happy and Free in Russia?

Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov was a Russian poet, writer, critic and publisher, whose deeply compassionate poems about peasant Russia made him the hero of liberal and radical circles of Russian intelligentsia. This image of social injustice during his childhood recollections was compounded by the behavior of his tyrannical father. Nekrasov's father stopped supporting him after he left the army and went to the university. Nekrasov lived in extreme conditions, briefly living in a homeless shelter. Who is Happy in Russia? (1873-76) is the story of a group who set out on a trip across Russia asking various people in the rural population if they are happy. The answer was never satisfactory.