Background
Thaddeus Venediktovich Bulgarin was born July 5, 1789, in Uzda, Belarus into a noble Polish family. His father, one of Kosciuszko"s associates, was exiled to Siberia for having assassinated a Russian general.
Bulgarin's tomb in Tartu
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Thaddeus Venediktovich Bulgarin was born July 5, 1789, in Uzda, Belarus into a noble Polish family. His father, one of Kosciuszko"s associates, was exiled to Siberia for having assassinated a Russian general.
Thaddeus Venediktovich was educated in a Saint Petersburg military school, took part in the Battle of Friedland but was arrested for theft soon afterwards. While his regiment was stationed in Finland, he deserted to Warsaw, but on the way was drafted to the Grande Armée. He fought under Napoleon's banners in the Peninsular War and the 1812 Lithuanian campaign. In 1812 Thaddeus Venediktovich was taken prisoner in Battle of Berezina and transported to Prussia.
n 1820, Thaddeus Venediktovich travelled from Warsaw to Saint Petersburg, where he published a critical review of Polish literature and started editing The Northern Archive. He also made friends with the playwright Alexander Griboyedov and the philologist Nicholas Gretsch. The latter helped him to edit the newspaper Northern Bee (1825-1839), the literary journal Fatherland's Son (1825-1859), and other reactionary periodicals.
Inspired by Sir Walter Scott, Thaddeus Venediktovich wrote the Vejeeghen (Vyzhigin) series of historical novels, which used to be popular in Russia and abroad. He followed these with two sententious novels Dmitry the Pretender (1830), about the False Dmitry, and Mazepa (1834) about Ivan Mazepa. In 1837 he published under his own name a lengthy description of Imperial Russia, although much of the work was actually by Nikolai Alexeyevich Ivanov, then a Doctor of Philosophy student at Dorpat University.
After Nicholas I's death, Thaddeus Venediktovich retired from the department of stud farms, in which he had been serving for many years, and withdrew to his manor in Karlova a suburb of Tartu at the time, but now incorporated within the city.