Education
Moscow State University.
Moscow State University.
His main works are two satirical comedies which mock contemporary Russian gentry. Born in Moscow, of a family of gentry of Livonian-German descent, he received a good education at the University of Moscow and very early began writing and translating. He entered the civil service, becoming secretary to Count Nikita Panin, one of the great noblemen of Catherine the Great"s reign.
Because of Panin"s protection, was able to write critical plays without fear of being arrested, and, in the late 1760s, he brought out the first of his two famous comedies, The Brigadier-General.
A man of means, he was always a dilettante rather than a professional author, though he became prominent in literary and intellectual circles. In 1777-1778 he traveled abroad, the principal aim of his journey being the medical faculty of Montpellier.
In 1782 appeared "s second and best comedy The Minor, which definitely classed him as the foremost of Russian playwrights. His last years were passed in constant suffering and traveling abroad for his health.
He died in Saint St. Petersburg in 1792.
He described his voyage in his Letters from France — one of the most elegant specimens of the prose of the period, and the most striking document of that anti-French nationalism which in the Russian elite of the time of Catherine went hand in hand with a complete dependence on French literary taste.