about it, but it was otherwise still in the Sumarokov style.

Fonvizin’s life in fashionable St. Petersburg at this time gave him a world of observation that eventually found its way into his plays. His own upbringing had made Fonvizin dislike pretense, and he disliked the French-speaking Petersburg fops, with their blind adulation of French language and fashion and their contempt for anything Russian. Fonvizin, on the contrary, found much to admire in Russian life—for example, the intellectuals Mikhail V. Lamonosov and V. N. Titishchev. His father’s influence gave him a strong sense of duty to his country. Encouraged by the theatrical interests of his superior, Yelagin, he decided to satirize these fops in a comedy. He would add figures that had not yet appeared on any Russian stage, the crude and petty nobility who lived in small towns and on their own estates, people of little education who had served mindlessly in the rigidly disciplined military until they retired with perhaps the rank of brigadier. Their wives were a match for them, barely literate, not knowing anything beyond household management. Fonvizin would add judicial bribe-takers to the satire, of whom he knew much from his father’s experience as an honest judge among the dishonest. The comedy The Brigadier was the result. Fonvizin read the play at Yelagin’s house, and then in June, 1769, at Peterhof for the empress, who enjoyed the play. The twenty-four-year-old Fonvizin impressed everyone with the authenticity of his Russians on the stage.

It was at Peterhof that Fonvizin met Count Nikita I. Panin, head of Catherine’s foreign office and the man entrusted with the education of Paul, Catherine’s son, the heir apparent. Panin took this work with deep seriousness, hoping to mold the next tsar into an enlightened autocrat. He saw the relation of education to good government, and Fonvizin, in his work with Panin, added to his own already enthusiastic views on the importance of education. Panin chose Fonvizin as secretary, and the young man quickly became a close and valued associate.

One of the most powerful influences at Catherine’s court, Panin was, however, already past the time of his greatest power when Fonvizin joined him. Panin’s views on government coincided with and developed those that the young Fonvizin had been formulating, and the relationship with Panin colors all of Fonvizin’s political views thereafter. Panin thought, for example, that the power of an autocratic ruler should be limited by law and by the advice of the most notable courtiers. Fonvizin served with Panin for fourteen years.

With the outbreak of war with Turkey in 1768, Panin’s policies had come into doubt. As a result, Fonvizin, on beginning work with Panin, had no time for literature. The early 1770’s involved peace negotiations with Turkey and the partition of Poland. Paul, the tsar-to-be, fell ill in 1772; on his recovery Fonvizin wrote a discourse on his recovery, asserting that all Russia rejoiced. In 1773, year of the Pugachev Rebellion so ruthlessly put down by Catherine, Panin lost his position as tutor to Paul, now legally of age and married. Catherine, as exit honors, gave Panin many gifts, and Panin shared her largesse with his assistants. Fonvizin received an estate in Byelorussia with 1,180 serfs, making him financially secure for many years. He never apparently became an ideal estate owner, however, and the estate was woefully mismanaged for Fonvizin as absentee landlord. The Pugachev Rebellion nevertheless had a big effect on Fonvizin’s later work, influencing his darkest satire of the cruelty of landowners against peasants.

In 1774, Fonvizin married Ekaterina Ivanovna Khlopova, a former neighbor of the Fonvizins in Moscow. The couple lived well in St. Petersburg, began to collect art, and traveled abroad (1777-1778) for her health. They went to Germany and France, being entertained at Russian embassies but making a great effort to observe the local customs. In letters home, Fonvizin gave vivid accounts of his impressions. The letters provide, with real literary merit, his views on Europe. He was no blind admirer; he saw suffering and stupidity there as at home. His patriotism is apparent even when he is most impressed with the cultural achievements of the West.

Influenced by Panin, Fonvizin’s other writing of this period directed itself more toward politics than literature. Pokhvalnoye slovo Marku (eulogy of Marcus Aurelius) in 1777, for example, his translation of a work by Antoine Thomas on how a ruler should rule, anticipates ideas that Pravdin uses in The Minor.

In the fall of 1778, Fonvizin, home briefly in Moscow, began to write The Minor. Russian theater had developed richly in the years since the writer had seen his first play; there were now two theaters in St. Petersburg and a permanent theater with a Russian troupe in Moscow. Sentimental dramas were becoming popular, and they required a more natural acting style than had been used in the declamatory work of Sumarokov’s day. Comic operas, light musical plays with dancing such as those of Mikhail Matinskii, held the interest of the court audience with satiric images of merchants and others in everyday life—though no images of the nobility. Peasants onstage were ordinarily idealized; no one had as yet shown the crudity and cruelty of the provincial landowners.

The values Fonvizin had developed in Panin’s service gave him more ideas and characterizations for his play. In 1779 the playwright translated Ta-Gio (Ta-Hsueh: Or, That Great Learning Which Comprises Higher Chinese Philosophy, 1966), a Chinese Confucian classic. (Fonvizin used a translation into French as the basis for his own work.) Ta-Hsueh argues that virtue is the root of all good and that there is no difference between a sovereign and the most humble of his subjects in the pursuit of virtue. The theme is that promulgated by Starodum in the play, which Fonvizin finished in 1782, having retired from government service. He read the play aloud in St. Petersburg noble houses, and Dmitrevskii, the longtime actor friend of the playwright, staged it and acted the role of Starodum. The performance took place in a private theater and was very successful with the audience; nevertheless, a production in Moscow was delayed by the Moscow censor until May, 1783.

Panin died in 1783. His former student, Paul, on taking the throne, seemed a real despot, ignoring Panin’s enlightened instruction. Before his death, Panin, with Fonvizin’s help, wrote but did not finish a statement of the changes he thought needed to be made in Russia. Fonvizin hid the manuscript, and this rassuzhdeniye (discourse) or zaveshchaniye (testament) circulated from hand to hand for many years and was printed only after the Revolution of 1905. Fonvizin retired in the spring of 1783, three weeks after Panin’s death.

Ready to turn again to literature, Fonvizin began to contribute to the literary phenomenon of satiric literary journals, which began to appear in Moscow at this time. One was sponsored by Catherine herself; another, by N. I. Novikov, had already suffered censorship in 1770. A new journal, Sobesednik lyubitel’yei rossiiskogo slova (interlocutor of lovers of the Russian word), appeared. Fonvizin wrote for it witty Russian synonym studies with satiric thrusts. Catherine contributed to this journal anonymously. Aware of the imperial participation, Fonvizin had the idea to address a series of bold questions to the anonymous columnist. Catherine, as an enlightened despot, did not censor the questions but answered them in such a way as to preclude such questions in the future. Fonvizin wrote other satiric literary and linguistic papers during this period, including a bitter satire of flattery at the court, “Vseobshchaya pridvornaya grammatika” (1783-1784; “Universal Courtiers’s Grammar,” 1947). He also wrote an appreciative Sokrashchennoye opisaniye zhitiya grafa N. I. Panina (1784; a brief description of the life of Count N. I. Panin). The praise of his fallen hero was published anonymously, first in French in London and two years later in Russian.

The Fonvizins took a second trip abroad, this time to Italy, hoping to improve his health; he had long suffered from severe headaches. He needed money and planned to buy paintings and sell them on his return. This plan did not work out, and these years were full of financial as well as other troubles. His letters home again contained close observation of both the beauties and the deficiencies of Europe. He suffered a severe illness in Rome, recovered sufficiently to make the return trip, but in Moscow had a stroke that paralyzed his arm and leg and affected his speech. He never fully recovered. He made two further trips abroad for his health (1786-1787 and 1789). He attempted to start a new journal in 1788, but the police forbade its publication and it never appeared. He attempted a collection of his works, but that, too, was never realized. The Choice of a Tutor, another partially finished comedy, had little of his former strength. Aware that he was dying, he began a frank memoir, Chistoserdechnoye priznaniye v delakh moikh i pomyshleniyakh (1790-1792; a candid confession of my deeds and thoughts), but as he wrote, the work became a simple and vivid account of events and people who had meant much to him in his youth. The manuscript remained uncompleted, and Fonvizin died, only forty-seven years old, at the house of the poet G. R. Derzhavin on December 1, 1792.