Portrait of the journalist's wife: Sofya Petrovna Katkova

Based on memoir literature and previously unexplored archival sources, the article attempts to draw up a portrait of Sofia Petrovna Katkova (the youngest daughter of Prince Pyotr I. Shalikov, a famous journalist of the 1820s, and the wife of Mikhail N. Katkov, an influential journalist and publicist of the 1850s and 1880s, the publisher-editor of the newspaper Moskovskie Vedomosti) and identify her role in his personal life and professional activities. Understanding the uniqueness of her personality and the nature of the Katkov family relationships will allow correlating Katkov's professional qualities with his personal and moral characteristics and introduce new features into his image of the "Moscow thunderer" and "tribune of Strastnoy Boulevard", as contemporaries often called the leading publicist of Moskovskie Vedomosti, that has developed in the research literature. Unlike A.G. Dostoevskaya, A.Ya. Panaeva, O.S. Chernyshevskaya, S.A. Tolstaya and others, the personality of Sofia Katkova has never been the subject of researchers' attention. In the memoirs of contemporaries, her name occurs only sporadically, in historical and biographical works dedicated to Katkov and Shalikov, Katkova is only mentioned. The scientific novelty of the research consists in the introduction into scientific sixcourse of new, previously unexplored material, in particular, the memoirs of E.A. Drashusova, N.E. Komarovsky, the diaries of N.P. Shalikova, letters of M.N. Katkov and S.P. Katkova, and other documents from the archives of the Department of Manuscripts of the Russian State Library, the Department of Manuscript Collections of the State Museum of the History of Russian Literature named after V.I. Dahl, the Department of Manuscripts of the L.N. Tolstoy Museum. On the basis of these documents, possible reasons are considered that prompted M.N. Katkov to propose to the younger Princess Shalikova and sealed the family union of these people, so different in character, level of education and social status. It is suggested that for Katkov Sofia embodied the ideal of a wife, spouse, mother of the family, keeper of the hearth. It is concluded that the journalist's wife had a very good understanding of his activities, was well acquainted with many of his associates and those who made up his close circle. Connections in government circles and hopes for the patronage of Katkov's high-ranking supporters after his death predetermined her active intervention in the struggle to preserve the right to publish Moskovskie Vedomosti for her family. The significant role of the publicist's widow in the preservation of his journalistic heritage and the publication of his collected works is revealed. Largely due to her efforts, in 1897-1898, a 25-volume collection of Katkov's works was published, including about seventeen thousand leading articles published in 1863-1887 in the newspaper Moskovskie Vedomosti. The collection is still considered the most complete edition of his journalistic works. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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