Ignaty Nikolayevich Potapenko (December 30, 1856 – May 17, 1929), was a Russian writer and playwright.Potapenko was born in the village of Fyodorovka, Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire (now Ukraine) where his father was a priest. Potapenko studied at Odessa University, and at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. His first works were tales of Ukrainian life. He's best known for his novel A Russian Priest (1890), published in Vestnik Evropy (Herald of Europe). His wor...

Translated by Michael R. KatzBetween 1890 and 1893, Ignaty Potapenko published a number of works in which he presented the Russian intelligentsia with a new role model, the “mediocre, but common-sensical man,” whose diligence and steady devotion to the improvement of society are depicted as being more productive than the reckless heroism of the regime’s most outspoken, and sometimes violent, intellectual opponents. Not a Hero introduces the twenty-first-ce...