Nikolay Ivanovich Gretsch (

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

: Николай Иванович Греч; 1787–1867) was a leading

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

n grammarian of the 19th century. Although he was primarily interested in

philology Philology () is the study of language in oral and writing, written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defin ...

, it is as a

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

that he is primarily remembered. Gretsch came from a noble

Baltic German Baltic Germans (german: Deutsch-Balten or , later ) were ethnic German inhabitants of the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, in what today are Estonia and Latvia. Since their coerced resettlement in 1939, Baltic Germans have markedly declined ...

family.

Peter Clodt von Jürgensburg Peter Jakob Freiherr Clodt von Jürgensburg, known in Russian as Pyotr Karlovich Klodt (russian: Пётр Карлович Клодт; 5 June 1805, Saint Petersburg – 25 November 1867, Klevenoye, Vyborg Governorate), was a favourite sculpto ...

was his wife's nephew. He attended the

Imperial School of Jurisprudence The Imperial School of Jurisprudence (Russian: Императорское училище правоведения) was, along with the Page Corps, a school for boys in Saint Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire. The school for would-be ...

and travelled widely in Europe, producing no less than five volumes of travel writings as well as several novels. He introduced the Lancasterian system of education into Russia (1820), organized several innovative schools for soldiers and penned a number of textbooks for them. His

memoirs A memoir (; , ) is any nonfiction narrative writing based in the author's personal memories. The assertions made in the work are thus understood to be factual. While memoir has historically been defined as a subcategory of biography or autobiog ...

were published in 1886. At the time of

Napoleon's invasion of Russia The French invasion of Russia, also known as the Russian campaign, the Second Polish War, the Army of Twenty nations, and the Patriotic War of 1812 was launched by Napoleon Bonaparte to force the Russian Empire back into the continental block ...

Gretsch started publishing '' The Son of the Fatherland'', a periodical that expressed liberal views that had much in common with those of the

Decembrists The Decembrist Revolt ( ru , Восстание декабристов, translit = Vosstaniye dekabristov , translation = Uprising of the Decembrists) took place in Russia on , during the interregnum following the sudden death of Emperor Ale ...

.Русские писатели. 1800—1917. Биографический словарь. Т. 2: Г — К. Москва: Большая российская энциклопедия, 1992. С. 18—21. During Nicholas I's reactionary reign he crossed over to the conservative camp and joined forces with

Faddei Bulgarin Thaddeus Venediktovich Bulgarin (russian: Фаддей Венедиктович Булгарин; Polish Jan Tadeusz Krzysztof Bułharyn, – ), was a Russian writer, journalist and publisher of Polish ancestry. In addition to his newspaper ...

in feuding with

Pushkin Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (; rus, links=no, Александр Сергеевич ПушкинIn pre-Revolutionary script, his name was written ., r=Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin, p=ɐlʲɪkˈsandr sʲɪrˈɡʲe(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ ˈpuʂkʲɪn, ...

's circle. Grech old russian censorship

Gretch and Bulgarin were the editors of ''

Northern Bee ''Northern Bee'' (russian: Северная пчела) was a semi-official Russian political and literary newspaper published in St. Petersburg from 1825 to 1864. It was an unofficial organ of Section Three (the Third Section of His Imperial Maje ...

'', a popular political and literary newspaper that championed the

Official Nationality Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality (russian: Правосла́вие, самодержа́вие, наро́дность, Pravoslávie, samoderzhávie, naródnost'), also known as Official Nationality,Riasanovsky, p. 132 was the dominant imper ...

theory. According to

Nicholas V. Riasanovsky Nicholas Valentine Riasanovsky (December 21, 1923 – May 14, 2011) was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of numerous books on Russian history and European intellectual history. Biography Nicolai Valentinovitch R ...

, the newspaper "strikes a modern reader as deficient in interpretation, weak intellectually, and devoted almost entirely to factual, quasi-official summaries of events".Quoted from: N. V. Riasanovsky. ''Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia, 1825-1855''. University of California Press, 1959. . Page 275.

References

External links

Works by N. I. Gretsch online

Detailed biography, in English
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gretsch, Nikolay Corresponding members of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences Russian newspaper publishers (people) Journalists from the Russian Empire Russian male journalists Male writers from the Russian Empire Russian philologists Russian memoirists 19th-century educators from the Russian Empire Baltic-German people 1787 births 1867 deaths 19th-century memoirists Privy Councillor (Russian Empire)