person
Mikhail Nikiforovich Katkov
Katkov
also: Катков
Powerful conservative editor and publisher of the Moskovskiye Vedomosti and Russky Vestnik, named here as the patron paying Boleslav Markevich a lavish salary for his gossip-laden novels.
Reading notes
- To Ya. A. Korneyev, 1887. Moscow. §2 Katkov's death
Mikhail Nikiforovich Katkov, the powerful conservative editor of the Moskovskiye Vedomosti and Russky Vestnik, had died on 20 July 1887 (N.S. 1 August), a couple of months before this letter. Chekhov mentions the death only in passing, as color explaining why Suvorin's paper is especially prickly toward the Moskovskiye Vedomosti just now -- Katkov had been a dominant, controversial figure in Russian conservative journalism for decades, and his death left the paper's rivalries with other outlets, including Novoye Vremya, in an unsettled state. this is ordinary publishing-world gossip.
- To A. S. Suvorin, 30 December 1888. Moscow. §5 Katkov was often right
Mikhail Katkov, the powerful conservative editor of Moskovskiye Vedomosti and Russky Vestnik (d. 1887, so already deceased by the time of this letter), invoked here as a line of dialogue Chekhov attributes to Ivanov's prematurely tired, conservatively drifting voice -- illustrating the type's slide from youthful liberal enthusiasm toward weary concession to a conservative figure, not a substantive political statement by Chekhov himself.