Petr Dolgorukov

Born Dec. 27, 1816 (Jan. 8, 1817), in Moscow; died Aug. 6 (18), 1868, in Bern. Prince. Russian historian and publicist. Figure in the Free Russian Press.

Dolgorukov graduated from the Corps of Pages in 1831. He studied genealogy and published The Story of the Family of the Princes Dolgorukov (1840), the Russian GenealogicalCollection (books 1-4, 1840-41), and the Russian Genealogical Book (parts 1-4, 1854-57). In 1843, writing in French under the pseudonym Count Almagro, Dolgorukov published in Paris the Notes on the Main Families of Russia, in which he disclosed a number of historical facts discrediting the autocracy and aristocracy. He was summoned from abroad and banished to Viatka in 1843. (After a year he was freed.) In 1859 he secretly went abroad, and in Paris he published the book The Truth About Russia (in French, 1860; in Russian, two parts, 1861), which contained a sharp criticism of the government and the program of liberal constitutional reforms. He refused an official summons to return and was sentenced by the Senate to be deprived of his princely title and property rights and to be exiled for life (1861).

In cooperation with German publishers, Dolgorukov published two Russian-language newspapers with a constitutionalist orientation—Budushchnost’ (nos. 1-25, 1860-61, Paris, Leipzig) and Pravdivyi (nos. 1-6, 1862, Leipzig). He published the French-language monthly Le Veridique (The Upright One, nos. 1-5, 1862-63, Brussels-London), and through his own press he issued the newspaper Listok (nos. 1-22, 1862-64, Brussels-London). Dolgorukov also published a number of books and pamphlets in French and Russian. In 1863 he published the Notes of General A. S. Ermolov and the poet and partisan D. V. Davydov. Dolgorukov contributed to Kolokol, although he differed ideologically in many respects with A. I. Herzen, who valued primarily his exposes: “Like a tireless toreador, he unceasingly teased the bullish Russian government and made the camarilla of the Winter Palace tremble” (Sobr. soch., vol. 20, book 1, 1960, p. 378).

In 1867, he published in Geneva the first volume of the Mémoires du Prince Pierre Dolgoroukoff, a collection of stories about prominent figures and events of the first half of the 18th century. After Dolgorukov’s death, the tsarist government acquired his archives under false pretenses. A very small portion of his documents on the second half of the 18th century was published in Geneva-Basel at the expense of the Third Section in the guise of the second volume of his Memoires (1871). Despite the anecdotal nature of much of Dolgorukov’s information, his essays and memoirs are an important historical source.