Kaisarov, Andrey Sergeevich

He descended from an old but rather poor family of nobles from the Tambov province Kaysarovs . In 1795 he entered the Moscow university noble board , but in 1796 he was forced to leave the teaching and enter, like his brother Paisius, in military service — Andrei was enrolled in the Semenov Life Guards Regiment Corporal; his brother Paisy - in the Transfiguration of the Life Guards Regiment .

In the winter of 1798/1799, he was transferred to Moscow, where he became close to Andrei Turgenev and his circle ( V. A. Zhukovsky , A. F. Merzlyakov , A. F. Voeikov , Alexander I. Turgenev ). Under their influence, he left the service, surrendering to self-education and literature. Together with his brother Mikhail was an active participant in the friendly literary society formed in 1801. Critical of sentimentalism , advocating political civic poetry.

From 1802 he studied at the University of Gottingen ; traveled the Slavic lands, where he was engaged in the collection of Slavic manuscripts and books; attended medical sciences courses at the University of Edinburgh , where he received a doctorate in medicine. In England, Kaisarov was also engaged in collecting materials for Russian history. In 1806, he defended his thesis "On the liberation of serfs in Russia" in Gottingen, written in Latin: "De manu mittendis per Russiam servis".

In 1807–1810 he was in Saratov , where he worked on the “Dictionary of the Old Russian Language” and wrote a number of poems (they were not published during his lifetime). In the autumn of 1811, he was elected Professor of Russian Language and Literature at the University of Dorpat .

In 1812, Kaisarov again entered military service. He served in the marching printing house at the main apartment of the army, which produced leaflets and appeals to the local population and soldiers of Napoleon’s army, the newspaper Rossiyanin in Russian and German, orders, “The singer in the camp of Russian soldiers” V. A. Zhukovsky (whom Kaisarov met when retreat from Moscow and attracted cooperation), fables by I. A. Krylov . The printing house, in the organization and activities of which Kaisarov played an important role, became one of the centers of journalism in 1812.

After the death of M.I. Kutuzov , who served at the headquarters of the commander-in-chief on duty general Paisiy Kaysarov headed one of the partisan "parties". Andrei Kaisarov followed his brother and died on May 13, 1813 "in the case of Gainau, in the explosion of a powder box".

Among other historical figures, Andrei Kaisarov was launched in L. N. Tolstoy's “ War and Peace ”.

In his Versuch einer Slavischen Mythologie (Göttingen, 1804; Russian translation: Mythology Slavic and Russian , Moscow, 1807 and 1810) Kaisarov made one of the first attempts to put the study of Slavic antiquity on scientific ground, taking advantage of almost everything that was presented at that time. book sources. Some familiarity with the demands of scientific criticism, gathered from Schlozer , puts Kaisarov above his predecessors in this field.

Kaisarov’s doctoral dissertation, On the Liberation of Serfs in Russia ( Dissertatio inauguralis philosophico-politica de manumittendis per Russiam servis , Göttingen, 1806), devoted to Emperor Alexander I , to whom it was presented by I. A. Turgenev through Novosiltsev, is of great historical interest. Grouping various arguments against serfdom , Kaisarov notes that they are not new, but not enough known in Russia. He argues that serfdom inhibits the success of agriculture and prevents the increase in population, and this, in view of the insignificance of the needs of the serf population, in turn retards the development of factory industry and trade; further, serfdom impedes proper monetary circulation and suppresses the mental development of the people. Having denied, then, the objections of the feudalists (as if, for example, the serfs themselves do not want freedom, etc.) and with praise mentioning the peasant reform of 1804 in Livonia , Kaisarov said that it would be great madness to immediately release 20 million slaves, but in at the same time, he hopes that if God grants Emperor Alexander a long and prosperous life, then he will succeed in destroying serfdom. Kaisarov also published The Talk of Love for the Fatherland (Dorpat, 1811; German translation, ibid, 1811).

For the history of Russian literature, the satire "Description of the marriage of Karamzin" (1801) is a parody of sentimentalism; keynote speeches at the meetings of the Friendly Literary Society ; poems.

• Kaysarov, Andrei Sergeevich // Russian biographical dictionary : in 25 volumes. - SPb. - M. , 1896-1918.
• Kaisarov, Andrei Sergeevich // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : 86 tons (82 tons and 4 extras). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
• Kaisarov, Andrei Sergeevich // Military Encyclopedia : [in 18 t.] / Ed. VF Novitsky [et al.]. - SPb. ; [ M. ]: Type. t-islands I. D. Sytin , 1911-1915.
• Lotman Yu. M. Kaysarov Andrei Sergeevich // Russian writers 1800-1917. Biographical dictionary. - Moscow: 1992. - ISBN 5-85270-064-9 . - p. 440-441 ( ibid bibliography )
• Bazhenov, A.I. , A.S. Kaisarov, the Forgotten Hero of the Early Pushush Epoch . - Saratov: Satellite, 2004. - 320 p. - ISBN 5-901459-28-8 .

• Slavic and Russian mythology / Op. Kaysarova. Moscow: In the printing house of Dubrovin and Merzlyakov, 1810
• Andreae Kaisarov De manumittendis servis dissertatio (Kaisarov’s dissertation on the liberation of serfs)