Faddei Bulgarin

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Tadeusz Bulharyn, known in Russia as Faddei Venediktovich Bulgarin (Фаддей Венедиктович Булгарин, 1789-1859), was a Polish-born Russian journalist whose self-imposed mission was to popularize the authoritative policies of Alexander I and Nicholas I.

Bulgarin was born into a noble Polish family near Minsk. His father, one of Kosciuszko's associates, was exiled to Siberia for having assassinated a Russian general. Bulgarin was educated in St Petersburg military school, took part in the Battle of Friedland but was arrested for theft soon thereafter. While his regiment was accommodated in Finland, Bulgarin deserted to Warsaw, where he joined the Grand Armée. He fought under Napoleon's banners in the Peninsular War and the 1812 Lithuanian campaign. In 1814 Bulgarin was taken prisoner in France and transported to Prussia. There is a 6-year lapse in his biography after that.

In 1820 Bulgarin arrived from Warsaw to St Petersburg, where he published a critical review of Polish literature and started editing The Northern Archive. He also made friends with the playwright Alexander Griboyedov and the philologist Nicholas Gretsch. The latter helped him to edit the newspaper Northern Bee (1825-39), the literary journal Fatherland's Son (1825-59), and other reactionary periodicals.

It has been no secret that Bulgarin and Gretsch were paid agents of tsarist police and used their periodicals to spread propaganda commissioned by the government. Bulgarin's unscrupulous manners made him the most odious journalist in Russia. Alexander Pushkin, in particular, ridiculed him in a number of epigrams, changing his name to Figlyarin (from the Russian word for "clown"). Bulgarin retorted by epigrams, in which Pushkin's name was rendered as Chushkin (from the Russian word for "nonsense").

Inspired by Sir Walter Scott, Bulgarin wrote Vyzhigin series of historical novels, which used to be popular in Russia and abroad. He followed these with two sententious novels about False Dmitry (1830) and Ivan Mazepa (1834). In 1837 he published under his own name a lengthy description of Imperial Russia, which was actually a work by Professor Ivanov.

Some of Bulgarin's stories are science fiction: Probable Tall-Tales is a far future story about the ХХIX century; Improbable Tall-Tales is a fantastic voyage into hollow Earth; Mitrofanushka's Adventures in the Moon is a satire.

After Nicholas I's death, Bulgarin retired from the department of stud farms, in which he had been serving for many years, and withdrew to his dacha in Karlino near Tartu.