Nikolay Polevoy and the Third Section

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to summarize already known information about N.A. Polevoy’s contacts with the Third Section, to introduce into scientific circulation a number of new documents on the subject, including the correspondence of Polevoy and the chief of the Third Section A.Kh. Benckendorff, and on this basis to characterize the writer’s contacts with the political police. The Third Section was mainly concerned with monitoring the behavior and attitude of various society sectors to the authorities and its policies, as well as the formation of “public opinion”. For this purpose, it sought to take control of journalists. As the author of the article shows, in N.A. Polevoy’s case the Third Section successfully solved its task: the leaders of the Section personally (verbally and in writing) pointed out his deviations from the “true” views, and encouraged him morally and financially (through regular cash payments). As a result, while at the beginning of his activity as a critic Polevoy combined individual criticisms and calls for reform with praise of the monarch and Russia (more likely not of its past and present, but of the future), later he refused of criticism and wrote mainly texts useful to the regime — panegyric monarchical articles and historical monarchical-patriotic books and plays. Moreover, he was grateful to the Tsar and the Third Section for support. The facts presented in the article make important clarifications in the history of the relationship between journalism and government in the first half of the 19th century.

Keywords

• third section
• nikolay polevoy
• alexander benckendorff
• leonty dubelt
• literature and authorities