№ 2239. 225th birth anniversary of Pyotr Vyazemsky (1792–1878), poet, historian, first Chairman of the Imperial Russian Historical Society

 

Pyotr Andreevich Vyazemsky (1792–1878) was a poet, historian, first Chairman of the Imperial Russian Historical Society. He was born in Moscow on July 23, 1792. During the Patriotic War of 1812, Pyotr Vyazemsky joined the militia and participated in the Battle of Borodino; he was appointed an official for foreign correspondence in Warsaw in 1817. He became Minister for National Education in 1855. He headed the General Directorate of Censorship and supervised the preparation of the censorship reform in 1856–1858. He became the Hofmeister of the Court of His Imperial Majesty in 1861, and he became a member of the State Council and the Cup-bearer of the Court of His Imperial Majesty in 1866.

Pyotr Vyazemsky became one of the founders and the first Chairman of the Russian Historical Society in 1866. His memoir articles and documents were published in the Russkiy Arkhiv (“Russian Archive”). He engaged in historical and literary work contrasting the formal and aesthetic analysis of a writer’s works with its historical, cultural and biographical study. In his Old Notebook, Pyotr Vyazemsky collected interesting recollections relating to the persons and events of the high society of the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries, and also left a number of small monographs devoted to the people most dear to him. The Old Notebook by Pyotr Vyazemsky is a comprehensive chronicle of Russian and foreign life. It was published in 3 volumes after his death and reprinted in 2003.

The postage stamp depicts a portrait of Pyotr Vyazemsky against the background of one of his manuscripts.