In December 1904, during the war with Japan, the newspaper Russkoe Slovo reported a sensation: its correspondent secretly visited an enemy country and brought back valuable information. However, just a few months after the publication of the reports, the pervasive reporter, who became known throughout the world, was quietly fired from the newspaper and later disappeared without a trace. Vlast columnist Evgeny Zhirnov looked into this mysterious story.

"False Petersburg Scriptures"

A prominent Russian journalist and head of the Russian Word, Vlas Mikhailovich Doroshevich, wrote many reports, stories, reviews and feuilletons during his long creative life. But in addition to masterfully written newspaper articles, he was also famous as a writer of fairy tales. Therefore, it is logical and quite legitimate to begin the story about the most sensational event in the history of the Russian pre-revolutionary press, where he was one of the main characters, with the words “once upon a time.”

So, there lived in the Russian Empire a boy named Vlasiy. His life was difficult and difficult, since he was illegitimate, which in those days meant a significant infringement of rights and served as a terrible stigma that a person could not get rid of for the rest of his life. True, if he does not become so famous that this shameful circumstance will be eclipsed by the rays of glory. To her, the desired one, Vlasiy, who shortened his name to Vlas, began to make his way from a very young age.

Doroshevich chose the literary field for himself and began in it in the same way as many writers in the 1880s - by transforming the works of masters recognized by readers and publishers into his own works. Although this business was not considered very honorable, it brought some income, and at times even some fame.

Ivan Volkov, who worked a lot before the revolution in the provincial and metropolitan press, including the Russian Word, in his memoirs published in 1925, gave examples of such literary activity:

Since the 1880s, stingy publishers have made significant fortunes from the curiosity of undemanding readers.
Photo: RGAKFD/Rosinform

“Many people probably remember Heinze’s criminal novels, published in the Petrograd newspaper Svet, or hooligan and predatory “chronicle novels” like “Yashka the Gypsy,” published in Petersburg Listok in 1890-1910. They say that the writer Heinze, working at Svet, received a meager payment of 1 kopeck per line for his waste paper and, in order not to starve, he did not write his novels, but simply “remade” them from foreign ones, turning Heinrichs and Alfonsos into Petrovs and Ivanovs. In this way, Heinze redrew up to 200 novels, for which he received the title of “Great Plagiarist.”

In contrast to Heinze, Vlas Doroshevich - either from a love of Russian literature or from lack of confidence in foreign languages - preferred his native classics and, as the owner of the Russian Word, Ivan Sytin, recalled, he reworked Gogol's stories for unscrupulous publishers.

The next step in the career of the 16-year-old boy was the publication of reports and humorous jokes in the newspaper “Moskovsky Listok”, which in those years was published by very undemanding publishers for completely undemanding readers. So there was complete freedom in the publication from the correspondence of published information to real facts.

“The newspaper “Moskovsky Listok,” recalled Volkov, “specialized in crime novels and criminal chronicles, filling its pages every day from top to bottom with such criminal stuff. “Moskovsky Listok” was read passionately by an audience not sophisticated in literature: butchers, janitors, maids, cooks, footmen , regulars at taverns and Moscow swindlers."

True, publications of this kind, as a rule, poorly paid novice authors, and besides, they did not at all strive to create a name for them in the newspaper world. For example, articles by Vlas Doroshevich in Moskovsky Listok were published without a signature. Apparently, this is why Vlas preferred to collaborate with humorous magazines, where, as connoisseurs of his work believed, he acquired his own style and a certain fame. So, during his second coming to the Moskovsky Listok in 1889, he was already published as one of the newspaper’s prominent authors.

At the same time, however, Doroshevich used the experience of stylization and mystification gained in previous years with considerable skill on occasion. So, in the same 1889, he was invited to write for the newly appeared newspaper - “News of the Day” by Abram Lipskerov, famous for his ebullient energy. True, the publicist Alexander Amfiteatrov, no less famous and popular in the pre-revolutionary years than Doroshevich, wrote that “Abram Yakovlevich is a man without a trace of any education.” Apparently, this is why he incorrectly compiled the publication program submitted to the authorities.

“The situation around the News of the Day newspaper,” wrote Doroshevich’s most authoritative biographer Semyon Bukchin, “from the very beginning was comic-dramatic. The fact is that, when drawing up a program and indicating in it court reports, correspondence, a chronicle, a feuilleton novel, department "Mixture", Lipskerov, due to illiteracy, did not think about the need to include the words "articles" and "sport". And so it turned out that no articles could be published in the newspaper, but feuilletons and sports news were published as correspondence. the program was monitored by censorship, whose actions brought a lot of trouble to the newspaper... The absence in the program of the Moscow feuilleton, which was supposed to be the main trump card of the newspaper, Vlas decided to compensate through the authorized department “Own correspondence from St. Petersburg”, which, fortunately, Lipskerov for some reason inserted into the program. And so, while in Moscow, he began carefully writing correspondence supposedly from the northern capital under the signature “Petersburg Everyman.”

“Of course,” recalled Amfitheatrov, “Doroshevich was wary of very slippery topics: walking on a tightrope requires great dexterity and the ability to control balance, and his pseudo-Petersburg writings invite precisely this tightrope comparison... Their Moscow origin did not remain a secret for long and very soon it became true.” an open secret" both in the public and in the censorship."

The secret plan for the penetration of Vladimir Kraevsky (pictured) into Japan was built taking into account the obvious sympathy of the Japanese for the Americans
Photo: RGAKFD/Rosinform

"The newspaper did not spare gold"

Doroshevich became truly famous after he moved to Odessa in 1893, where he was offered a position as a feuilletonist in the liberal Odessa List. His very first publication about the local mayor caused such a scandal that the author even had to leave the city for several months. However, his reports on distant travels made him much more famous. One of the most important Russian ports provided ample opportunities for travel, which Doroshevich did not fail to take advantage of. The public, deprived for the most part of the opportunity to travel not only abroad, but also within the empire, devoured his reports and essays about European states and their inhabitants. And thanks to the then widespread practice of borrowing articles among newspapers, the name of Doroshevich became known throughout the country.

But true fame came to him when in 1897, together with a party of convicts sentenced to hard labor, he set off on a steamer from Odessa to Sakhalin. Along the way he visited the Middle East, India and China. And his reports about the life of convicts on Sakhalin were read throughout Russia as unprecedented revelations (and so harsh that when Doroshevich decided to combine the essays and publish them in a separate edition, the book was removed from libraries and from sale). During the same Far Eastern trip, the reporter also looked into Japan, and again his reports from a country unfamiliar to Russian people aroused great interest among readers.

He even had followers and imitators. In the Odessa List, for example, a young employee of the newspaper office, Vladimir Kraevsky, followed Doroshevich and decided to go to the Far East. Moreover, he announced to his colleagues that he was leaving with only a few rubles in his pocket, having hired himself as a simple sailor on an English steamship.

So now Doroshevich had both name and fame, but lacked the corresponding position in society and fortune. But these problems were soon resolved. The famous Russian publisher Ivan Sytin had been trying for several years to get his Moscow newspaper Russkoye Slovo, which he owned, back on its feet, and Doroshevich, as it seemed to the owner of the publication, could completely cope with this task. Formally, Doroshevich did not receive the post of editor-in-chief, but acquired almost unlimited powers.

“Running the Sytin newspaper,” Volkov recalled, “Doroshevich received an unprecedented fee: 40 thousand rubles a year salary plus line-by-line wages. He ruled the Sytin newspaper like a real dictator. The newspaper employees were in awe of Doroshevich, and the owner of the newspaper, Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin, even avoided meet with his “chief employee.” Occasionally looking into the editorial office, Sytin first of all inquired: “Is Vlas Mikhailovich here?” And if he found out that Doroshevich was in the editorial office, he hurried to retreat, since Doroshevich did not like the publisher to look where he was. they don’t ask, that is, to the editorial office. In such cases, he usually told Sytin: “Your business is the office and the printing house, go there, but don’t bother us here. We can handle it without you..." Doroshevich behaved even harsher with the newspaper employees and, when he was dissatisfied with their work, and he measured this work by the yardstick of his enormous talent, not embarrassed by the rank and title of the employees, he shouted at them and scolded them very indecently."

Doroshevich decided to choose a special path for promoting the publication: to make the Russian Word the highest quality publication in the Russian Empire. A newspaper that gets and publishes news first.

“The Russian Word owed its extraordinary popularity,” wrote Volkov, to the information perfectly presented in it... Vast Russia was entangled in a dense network of the Russian Word’s own correspondents, who were stationed not only in all the provincial cities of the country, but also in such bearish corners as Kologriv or the unknown Malmyzh... These “own correspondents” of the “Russian Word” soon nullified the significance of the telegraph agency “PTA”.

The owner of "Russian Word" Ivan Sytin (on the right) decided to visit the editorial office only during the absence of its main and extremely decisive author
Photo: RGAKFD/Rosinform

Considerable money, as the same author recalled, was spent on traveling reporters:

“The newspaper did not spare gold on its correspondents and employees. In an effort to set a record for the best presentation of information, “Russian Word” did not skimp on expenses during visits to Moscow by the “highest persons”: the Tsar or Tsarina. In such cases, a particularly efficient person was assigned to provide information and a polished reporter; at the expense of the editors, he was dressed in the best dress from head to toe; he was given the most luxurious car at his disposal; he was supplied with dozens of all kinds of passes, and where there was not enough pass, he had to use his dexterity.”

However, despite all this, there were constantly not enough qualified people, and Doroshevich squeezed everything possible out of everyone, forcing employees to work 15-17 hours a day. And when the right people still weren’t there, he resorted to all sorts of tricks. The network of European correspondents did not appear immediately. So Doroshevich wrote to his colleague F. Blagov about the most talented of the foreign employees of the Russian Word, E. Belov (Brut):

“Brutus, you know, is a capable man. He will write correspondence to us from everywhere. Living in Paris, this is easy. The local newspapers have whole articles by telegraph from all over the world. And we will have a decent and interesting foreign department.”

As a result, Belov “wrote” from Berlin, Dresden, London, Madrid, Munich, Geneva, Belgrade, Bucharest and New York.

"Pashas with German and English faces"

But still, the main reserve of Doroshevich the editor remained Doroshevich the journalist. He wrote tirelessly about events in Russia and equally tirelessly traveled around the country and abroad. At the beginning of 1904, he went to the Middle East and Asia, and was caught in Turkey by the declaration of the Russo-Japanese War.

On the territory of a country that was regularly at war with Russia and by no means a friendly country, he felt like he was on enemy soil, which he wrote about in his essays. At the same time, sensing the mood of the Russian public, in particular the sharp increase in patriotic and chauvinistic sentiments, he described the enemies of the Russian Empire with a considerable amount of sarcasm. About the Turks, dreaming of revenge for previous defeats and the return of Batum, he wrote:

The secret plan for the penetration of Vladimir Kraevsky into Japan was built taking into account the obvious sympathy of the Japanese for the Americans
Photo: RGAKFD/Rosinform

“I was in Constantinople and admired the selamlik ceremony. With the face of the Terrible, the Sultan was returning from the Hamidiye Mosque up the mountain, to Ildiz-Kiosk, in a semi-carriage, driving his two “favorites,” dazzling white Arabian horses. A crowd of pashas, covered in gold, hung with orders , dressed in ribbons, skipped behind the carriage, and everyone squeezed in to help the Sultan’s beloved horses carry the carriage up the mountain, to push the old men, lame, with sticks, desperately making their way through the crowd of ministers, generals, princes, eunuchs in blue embroidered uniforms, snow-white. Albanians, afraid that they won’t be able to even touch the stroller with a finger. Tomorrow a rumor will spread: “He’s dangerous. He did not support the carriages." And the freethinker will have to tremble for the old skin, often striped and holed in battles. Among this running crowd, drenched in gold and showered with honors, there were honored generals, subtle, skillful diplomats - I think that Turkish diplomats are the most skillful in the whole world, otherwise there would have been no Turkey long ago. The pashas with typical German and English faces were especially interesting... Among this crowd, which holds on to the existence of Turkey, of course, no one thinks about Batum or about the “second war, which he cannot.” Exhausted Russia can withstand."

And describing the relationship between the Japanese and their British allies, Doroshevich wrote about the experience gained during a trip to Japan:

“In Japan, I saw a lot of Englishmen. If you ask an Englishman there: “Are the Japanese people civilized?” An Englishman who deals only with the business cities of Japan, with the “European” Yokohama, Tokyo, Kobe, Nagasaki, who does not know, does not want to know , who is not interested in the rest of Japan, will answer you - not without hesitation, not without a grimace, you have to say: “Y-yes!” But he won’t put a Japanese next to him in the crew.”

The words of a high-ranking Chinese official, with whom Doroshevich described a conversation, should have had an encouraging effect on the Russian reader:

“He spoke to me without pleasantries, mistaking me for a German, and this had a special meaning in his words... I asked him about the mood in Japan. Kang-Yu-Wei smiled: “In Japan, everyone is confident of victory. But you can still have a very fun lunch at the moment when the roof collapses above your head. Will people be eating lunch when it collapses?" This is the opinion of the "greatest of Chinese" and, in his words, of China."

"Deceive even Japanese vigilance"

Doroshevich’s essays were a huge success, but the situation in the war at sea and on land was getting worse and worse for the Russian Empire. At the same time, the defeat was inflicted by a country that, just a few years ago, was almost not taken into account in Russia. So the blow to national pride was almost more severe than to the army and navy. The public longed for retribution, and suddenly, unexpectedly for everyone, it came.

On December 22, 1904, “Russian Word” published a telegram from its correspondent Kraevsky, who secretly visited Japan and examined everything. It turned out that the Japanese could be easily fooled. They beat us at the front, but we easily bypassed them from the rear! The newspaper also published details of how Vladimir Kraevsky was sent to an enemy country in order, as it said, to “re-Japanese the Japanese”:

Against the backdrop of heavy losses, the ideas expressed by Russkiy Slovo about the inevitability of defeat easily found a favorable response from the public
Photo: RGAKFD/Rosinform

“A man, having only 30 years on his shoulders, not only traveled all over Europe - he lived in Shanghai, in Singapore, in Harbin, in Mukden, in Port Arthur. “A century with the British, everything is an English fold” - he can rather be accepted for a young Englishman, for an American, than for a Russian. By his demeanor, by his habits, by his imperturbable calm. He speaks English as well as Russian. This was his second “native language.” to deceive even Japanese vigilance... He calls being mistaken for a spy and hanged "some" danger... In New York, Mr. Kraevsky... dressed himself in everything American, surrounded himself exclusively with American things, all his European clothes, linen, the papers were packed in European suitcases, taken to the transport office and deposited. The worst enemies of everyone who embarks on some mysterious adventures are servants in hotels... She may remark: “Hey! Yes, this American has things that are not American." Through them, the police first collect information... On the day the ship sailed to Yokohama, V. E. Kraevsky left the Palace Hotel and disappeared from the face of the earth. Mr. Percy Palmer entered the ship China, like two Drops of water similar to V. E. Kraevsky. P. "... If Mr. Palmer, who is curious in the world, a tourist who needs to see everything, ask about everything, know everything, sent someone to ask among the conversations:" Do you have close people in America? " would: "We, Palmer, from Pennsylvania. My brother James has such a factory there. "And if they were requested by the telegraph of James Palmer, Esquire, the manufacturer in one of the cities of Pennsylvania, he would have answered completely conscientiously:" I have a brother of Persia, I know that he often travels to the east but in the correspondence with him I do not consume "".

The editors reported that in the new one, 1905, Kraevsky’s feuilletons about Japan would begin to publish. However, the already published was enough to make it clear: something sensational. Success really turned out to be complete. They wrote about him, albeit not in the first lane, the world's largest newspapers of that time. Even provincial newspapers in New Zealand published messages about the Voyage of Kraevsky. What else could we talk about? But the domestic press for some reason reacted rather restrained. Perhaps the reason for this behavior was elementary envy. In anticipation of the articles of the Kraevsky, the audience literally tore the "Russian word" from the hands of the Gazetchchiki pedigns, and the circulation of the newspaper grew many times.

"The gendarmes went to me"

When the publication of Kraevsky notes began, as well as his interviews, any unbiased observer could not have a feeling of a certain oddity of the description. For example, it was somehow slurred about the documents of the imaginary Mr. Palmer. Against the background of detailed stories about the thorough preparation of clothes and baggage, the question of the passport remained a hidden veil. Somewhere, for example, a phrase flashed about the English documents of the American Persie Palmer. However, for some reason, the Japanese did not pay any attention to this circumstance.

Moreover, Kraevsky’s notes said that the Japanese received a telegram from San Francisco, warning of the arrival of the Russian spy on the China steamer. However, instead of arranging all passengers, including Palmer, a total check, he was allowed into the country even without questions and inspection of baggage. And during numerous trips around the country, an imaginary American, according to the author of reports, only once checked the documents. And in a very strange way:

"This was one of the most unpleasant minutes in Japan. The train approached Shimonoki. Two gendarmes appeared at the door of the car. I sat the closest to the door. The gendarmes went to me." Can you present evidence of your personality? "I took out the proof of the personality! Several accredites in Nagasaki, in Tokyo, in Iokogam: “Here!” This is the best characteristic of the personality Having examined the documents, he handed them to me with a respectful smile and a bow: “Thank you, sir!”

Perhaps in Japan then everything was exactly so. But in the texts of reports there was another alarming circumstance. Was it worth the risk of life to go to an enemy country, then to inform readers that the wrestlers of the Babi’s smudding figures and faces of old satires? Or that children trained in martial arts are able to move with animal speed and dexterity?

Many other details contained in the reports turned out to be approximately the same quality. For example, readers reported that in Japan the color of mourning is white and there are a lot of women in white clothes on the streets. Or it was said that reports of Russian newspapers about the numerous bankruptcy of Japanese firms, as it turned out, have no reason. Newspapers give three or four names of companies, so there were no more. To make sure of this, it was quite enough to regularly read the British publications and not make risky voyages.

The same can be said about those given in the reports of the Kraevsky stories about Russian prisoners in Japan. He saw them from the side, he described the camps for them, but did not talk to them. Obviously, if desired, the same descriptions can be found in French or American newspapers of those years.

But the story of the military maneuvers, to which, among the other foreigners, Persia Palmer, probably, will probably helpfully coincide with the fact that the Italian correspondent of Cesario Krypy, who, as said in the publications of the Russian Word, was present at this event.

But probably, their style and orientation were the most remarkable in Kraevsky’s publications. The farther, the more clearly it became that the text belonged to Peru Doroshevich. There was nothing surprising about this. Evalists have their own style often rule the author’s works until the initial text is completely disappeared. However, Japan was present in these descriptions of Japan. As in the essays of Doroshevich about a trip to the east of 1904, an idea was carried out there, to prove the fidelity of which everything was written. But if the previous publication emphasized that all the enemies of Russia are evil and we will win, then in the texts about Japan the idea that Russia was faced with a very strong opponent, which was not so shame to lose.

Putting the newspaper on the concent of the newspaper, Vlas Doroshevich (left) with the help of bluff finally won the battle for the reader and advertiser
Photo: RGAKFD/Rosinform

"The fucked type of former people"

The publication of such Japanese reports turned out to be an accurate hit in the mood of Russian society, and the popularity of the newspaper to envy competitors increased to an unprecedented level.

“Other metropolitan newspapers,” Ivan Volkov recalled, “burst with envy, seeing how the“ Russian Word ”diverges with a topical sensation, and tried to imitate him, but less successfully. However, in this sensation of the“ Russian word ”the most successful beginning was only the beginning - Clever and talentedly conceived advertising.

It would seem that such an all -pervasive reporter as Vladimir Kraevsky was supposed to gain a foothold in the elite of Russian journalism, grow professionally and look for more and more sensational topics. But nothing of the kind happened. They soon forgot about Kraevsky and remembered only in April of the next, 1906, when newspapers wrote about him again. It was reported that the two gentlemen scandalized in the restaurant of the Big Moscow hotel, and in the police one of them presented a magazine where his photograph was in, and called his own correspondent of the Russian Word Kraevsky. The "Russian word" immediately disowned from Kraevsky and reported that since October 1905 this gentleman was not listed in their staff. His further history was restored by the researcher of Russian newspapers Sergey Sokurenko:

"Deliver to the police station, he could not resist and released several strong expressions to the emperor’s sovereign that he immediately transferred his acts into a more serious category, and the son of the court adviser Vladimir Eduardovich Kraevsky was under trial on an insulting the highest name. The case was almost reaching for the case On October 30, 1908, the Moscow District Court sentenced the defendant to the court, and the police received the order to find him throughout the Russian Empire. The verdict was reduced to 1 month.

In the future, his traces were lost. However, the question remained: how could the editors part with such a valuable employee? The answer was found in the memoirs of Ivan Volkov:

"The whole story with a trip to the country of enemies was invented by Doroshevich for the purpose of advertising. To carry out this venture, he was fed somewhere, almost on Khitrovka, some kind of stooped type of former people who really made a trip to Japan. This one “Traveler”, straining his memory, made sketches of travel essays, and Doroshevich processed them, supplementing the fact that he himself knew about the “Land of the Rising Sun”. It disappeared from the pages of the newspaper.

Indeed, the most significant and loud mystification in the history of domestic journalism brought the writer of such fairy tales Doroshevich and publisher Sytin the expected result.

“Doroshevich,” Volkov recalled, “put the newspaper: from a miserable street sheet with an insignificant circulation, he turned it into an organ that diverged in hundreds of thousands of copies and which even ministers read” ... You can judge at least the enormous income of the Sytinsky newspaper by the income of the income of the Sytin The fact that some announcements gave Sytin in 1910-1913 to 1800 thousand rubles per year of income. "

"Re-Japanese the Japanese"