Vladimir Meshchersky

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

He was the grandson of historian Nikolay Karamzin.

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

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. His patrons, the Tsars Alexander III and Nicholas II, protected him from public disgrace.

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