Vladimir Meshchersky

Prince Vladimir Petrovich Meshchersky (11 January 1839[1] – 23 July 1914[2]) was a Russian journalist and novelist.

Prince Vladimir Meschersky

He was the grandson of historian Nikolay Karamzin.[3]

Meshchersky was editor of Grazhdanin (The Citizen), a traditional conservative newspaper which received subsidies from the imperial authorities.[4] 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."[5]

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

He was a friend of the composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and acquired a reputation as a homosexual philanderer.[6] His patrons, the Tsars Alexander III and Nicholas II, protected him from public disgrace.[7]

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. Richard Denis Charques (1965) The twilight of imperial Russia, Oxford University Press, p. 51
  4. Richard Taruskin (2000) Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermeneutical Essays, Princeton University Press, p. 281
  5. Trotsky, Leon, The History of the Russian Revolution: Volume One: The Overthrow of Tzarism, "The Tzar and the Tzarina"
  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
  • Out of My Past: The Memoirs of Count Kokovtsov Edited by H.H. Fisher and translated by Laura Matveev; Stanford University Press, 1935.


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