person
Osip Notovich
Notovich
also: Нотович, O. K. Notovich
Osip Konstantinovich Notovich (1849-1914), Russian journalist and editor-publisher of the newspaper Novosti (News), known for a reputation of opportunism and self-promotion in the 1880s Petersburg press.
Reading notes
- Two Newspapermen §14 they made Notovich a privy councillor
Osip Notovich, editor-publisher of the newspaper Novosti, whose reputation for opportunism made his elevation to a high court rank (privy councillor, an actual Table of Ranks civil grade) a joke about the absurd and the corrupt trading places.
- To K. S. Barantsevich, 14 April 1888. Moscow. §13 your little Jewish editor -- Notovich himself
Osip Notovich, editor-publisher of the newspaper "Novosti," here the target of a sarcastic aside from Barantsevich's letter that Chekhov repeats and glosses. The source uses a period Russian diminutive-ethnic slur ("еврейчик") characteristic of casual antisemitic idiom in educated 1880s correspondence; it is rendered here in translation rather than softened or omitted, per this corpus's practice of preserving such language as historical evidence rather than sanitizing it, while flagging it plainly for the reader. Chekhov's own assessment -- "a first-rate charlatan" -- targets Notovich's professional conduct, not his ethnicity.
- To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 4 October 1888. Moscow. §4 секретари консисторий, так и Нотович с Градовским
This is a pointed period literary-political opinion -- an editorial judgment about contemporaries Chekhov disliked for perceived opportunism and dishonesty in the press -- and should be categorized as polemic, not as a slur; translated faithfully without softening, consistent with the corpus's no-softening policy for period material.