Vladimir Odoyevsky

Vladimir Odoyevsky
Portrait by Levitsky, 1856.
Born	(1803-08-13)13 August 1803 Moscow
Died	11 March 1869(1869-03-11) (aged 65) Moscow

Prince Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoyevsky (Russian: Владимир Фёдорович Одоевский; 13 August [O.S. 1 August] 1803 – 11 March [O.S. 27 February] 1869) was a prominent Russian philosopher, writer, music critic, philanthropist and pedagogue. He became known as the "Russian Hoffmann" on account of his keen interest in phantasmagoric tales and musical criticism.

The last of his family, Prince Odoevsky was genealogically the most senior member of the House of Rurik. Considered by his contemporaries as a typical Muscovite, he was educated at the Nobility School of the Moscow University in 1816-22. In the mid-1820s, Odoyevsky presided over the Lyubomudry Society, where he and his fellow students met to discuss the ideas of Friedrich Schelling and other German philosophers. At that period, he came to know many future Slavophiles and Westernizers, but refused to identify himself with any of these movements.

Since 1824, Odoyevsky was active as a literary critic and journalist. In 1824 he and Wilhelm Küchelbecker founded the short-lived Moscow literary magazine Mnemozina. Perhaps most famously, he co-edited the Sovremennik with Alexander Pushkin in the mid-1830s. In 1826, he moved to St Petersburg, where he joined the staff of the Imperial Public Library. Two decades later, he was put in charge of the Rumyantsev Museum. Odoyevsky finally returned to Moscow in 1861 but continued to serve as a senator until his death. He is buried in the Donskoy monastery necropolis.