Mikhailovskii-Danilevskii, Aleksandr Ivanovich

Born Aug. 26 (Sept. 6), 1790 or 1789; died Sept. 9 (21), 1848, in St. Petersburg. Russian military historian; lieutenant general (1835); member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1841).

Mikhailovskii-Danilevskii studied at the University of Göttingen from 1807 to 1811. In 1812 he enlisted in the St. Petersburg Militia (levy en masse) and was appointed M. I. Kutuzov’s adjutant; he was wounded at Tarutino. During the foreign campaigns of 1813–14 he was an aide to Chief of Staff P. M. Volkonskii and kept a diary of the combat actions of the Russian Army in 1812 and 1813–14. He became aide-de-camp to Alexander I in 1816. Mikhailovskii-Danilevskii held command positions from 1823 and participated in the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–29 and in the suppression of the Polish Uprising of 1830–31. He served as senator and chairman of the Committee on Military Censorship from 1835 and as a member of the War Council from 1839.

From 1845, Mikhailovskii-Danilevskii was editor in chief and the author of many biographical sketches in Military Gallery of the Winter Palace (vols. 1–6, 1845–49). He wrote several works on the history of Russia’s wars with France, Turkey, and Sweden in the early 19th century. He drew from vast documentary and memoir materials, but he used them uncritically and limited himself to the description of military actions without any analysis of the art of war. All his works are written in a monarchist spirit. He wrote Memoirs of Current Events (published in part in Istoricheskii vestnik, 1890, vol. 42; Russkaia starina, 1897, vols. 90, 92; 1898, vol. 93; 1899, vol. 98; Pamiatniki novoi russkoi istorii, vol. 3, 1873; and elsewhere).