Prince Vladimir Meschersky

Prince Vladimir Petrovich Meshchersky (11 January 1839[1] – 23 July 1914[2]) was a Russian journalist and novelist who, throughout his career, wielded significant political clout.[3]

He was the grandson of historian Nikolay Karamzin.[4]

A strong supporter of the role of the landed gentry in politics and administration, Meshchersky "turned politics into an industry with which he traded in the most shameless manner for the benefit of himself and his favourites" [5] – young men whose careers he advanced. A friend of composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, he acquired a reputation as a homosexual philanderer.[6] His patrons, the Tsars Alexander III and Nicholas II, protected him from public disgrace.[7]

He was the editor of Grazhdanin (The Citizen), a traditional conservative newspaper which received subsidies from the imperial authorities.[8] According to Leon Trotsky, "The sole paper which [Tsar] Nicholas read for years, and from which he derived his ideas, was a weekly published on state revenue by Prince Meshchersky, a vile, bribed journalist of the reactionary bureaucratic clique, despised even in his own circle."[9]

Meshchersky also contributed to the periodicals The Russian Messenger and Moskovskiye Vedomosti (Moscow News). He was the author of several novels and memoirs.

References

  1. ^ Ruvigny, Marquis of (1914) The Titled Nobility of Europe, London: Harrison and Sons, page 1008.
  2. ^ "Czar's Adviser, Mestchersky, dies", New York Times, 24 July 1914
  3. ^ W. E. Mosse, Imperial Favourite: V. P. Meshchersky and the Grazhdanin, The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Oct., 1981), pp. 529-547.
  4. ^ Richard Denis Charques (1965) The twilight of imperial Russia, Oxford University Press, p. 51
  5. ^ W. E. Mosse, Imperial Favourite: V. P. Meshchersky and the Grazhdanin, The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Oct., 1981), pp. 529-547.
  6. ^ Peter Stoneley (2007) A queer history of the ballet, Taylor and Francis, p. 53
  7. ^ Alexander Poznansky (1999) Tchaikovsky through others' eyes, Indiana University Press, p. 77
  8. ^ Richard Taruskin (2000) Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermeneutical Essays, Princeton University Press, p. 281
  9. ^ Trotsky, Leon, The History of the Russian Revolution: Volume One: The Overthrow of Tzarism, "The Tzar and the Tzarina"
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