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Nekrasov was born the son of a petty Russian officer and a Polish gentrywoman. He grew up on his father's estate, Greshnevo, near the banks of Volga river, where he observed the hard labor of the burlaki ("barge haulers"). This image of social injustice, so similar to Dostoevsky's childhood recollection of a beaten-upon courier, was compounded by the behavior of his tyranical father. The latter's drunken rages against both his peasants and his wife determined the subject matter of Nekrasov's major poems -- a verse portrayal of the plight of the Russian peasant, using his language and ideas.
The most important of these sentimental works is Кому на Руси жить хорошо?'\' (Who in Russia lives well?''), which no M.A Russian reading list is without. It tells the story of seven peasants who set out to ask various elements of the rural population if they are happy, to which the answer is never satisfactory. The poem is more a technical feat of rhyming peasant idioms, which, for the folklorist, is the surviving value of the poem today.