Mikhail Katkov

After the Crimean War (1856) and the Polish insurrection of 1863, Katkov abandoned his liberal Anglophile views and rejected the early reforms of Tsar Alexander II.

His literary magazine Russkii Vestnik ("The Russian Messenger") and newspaper Moskovskie Vedomosti ("Moscow News") were successful and influential media for promoting his views.

[3] During the 1877-1878 Trial of the 193 in which universities students were charged with treason for protesting in favour of a national constitution, Katkov sided with Konstantin Pobedonostsev in urging on Alexander III to heavier punishments and more a reactionary and conservative tone.

[4] Though generally temperate in his views, he was extremely incisive and often violent in his modes of expressing them so he made many enemies and sometimes incurred the displeasure of the press censure and the ministers against which he was more than once protected by Alexander III in consideration of Katkov's able advocacy of national interests.

He is remembered chiefly as an energetic opponent of Polish national aspirations, liberalism, the system of public instruction based on natural science and German political influence.