From Love to Hate: Andrey Kraevsky and Mikhail Katkov

The article examines the relations between Andrey Kraevsky and Mikhail Katkov - influential journalists and major publishers of Russian periodicals of the second half of the 19th century. The factors that contributed to their rapprochement in the late 1830s and early 1840s were identified: common spiritual needs, interest in German classical philosophy, and a conviction in the need to promote modern enlightenment. On the other hand, Katkov needed to earn money and was interested in cooperation with the liberal-westernized Otechestvennye Zapiski that Kraevsky published. The reasons for Katkov's refusal to participate in this magazine in the 1840s are indicated: a re-evaluation of his early philosophical views, enthusiasm for research and the preparation of a master's thesis, dissatisfaction with the remuneration for his works - Kraevsky constantly delayed payments. Based on the analysis of memoirs and letters of contemporaries, it is shown that the relations between Kraevsky and Katkov remained friendly until the early 1860s, despite the fact that Russkiy Vestnik that Katkov started publishing in 1856 quickly became one of the most authoritative Russian “thick” conservative monthly magazines and competed with the liberal Otechestvennye Zapiski. It is revealed that the relations of the former associates changed dramatically for the worse in 1863, when Katkov received a long-term lease of the newspaper Moskovskiye Vedomosti and the university printing house, thus becoming their sovereign owner, and Kraevsky founded the political and literary newspaper Golos in St. Petersburg. The article examines the acute controversy between these periodicals in the 1860s - early 1880s, in which both sides allowed mutual accusations of cooperation with the government, bias and prepossession, deliberate distortion of facts, etc. It is concluded that the fierce confrontation between the two leading sociopolitical newspapers of the Russian Empire not only was the result of significant differences in their publishers' views on the ongoing transformations in the country, primarily on the reform of secondary and higher schools, but also indicated increased competition in the market of newspaper and magazine periodicals.

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