Severnaia Pchela

(The Northern Bee), a political and literary newspaper published in St. Petersburg from 1825 to 1864. It was founded by F. V. Bulgarin, who published it jointly with N. I. Grech between 1831 and 1859. It came out three times a week between 1825 and 1831 and daily thereafter.

Until the Decembrist uprising of 1825, the newspaper followed a liberal line, publishing works by K. F. Ryleev, A. S. Pushkin, and F. N. Glinka. Later it became a reactionary, unscrupulous publication and a mouthpiece for monarchists. It was aimed at moderately well-to-do readers, including noble military officers, provincial landlords, civil servants, merchants, and meshchane. Bulgarin carried on bitter polemics with Pushkin’s and A. A. Del’vig’s Literaturnaia gazeta (Literary Gazette), with Moskovskii nabliudatel’ (Moscow Observer) and Teleskop (The Telescope), and with Otechestvennye zapiski (Notes of the Fatherland), a newspaper on which V. G. Belin-skii worked. Severnaia pchela published negative criticism of the realistic school of literature of the 1840’s.

In the 1860’s, when P. S. Usov was publisher, the newspaper adopted a new position and published works by such democratic writers as V. A. Sleptsov, F. M. Reshetnikov, and M. Vovchok and articles on N. A. Nekrasov and M. E. Salty-kov-Shchedrin.