Bibikov, Peter Alekseevich

He was educated in Odessa Lyceum Richelieu . Took part in the hostilities of 1854-1855 in the Asian theater of operations; after the war, with the rank of lieutenant, he entered the Nikolaev Military Academy and in 1858 successfully completed the course. Having made a short trip to Europe, he entered the service of the General Staff. Simultaneously with the service, in 1859-1864, he acted as an external correspondent in the periodical press. Cooperated in Sovremennik , in the newspaper Sovremennaya Slovo, Dmitry Ivanovich Pisarev , in Iskra, in Russky Slovo (1861–1864), in Military Collection (1861), in the magazine Vremya (1861–63 ), in the Library for Reading (1864) and in the Book Journal (1864–1865) ^[3] .

In 1863, Bibikov had a choice: to pursue a military career, but in the provinces, or retire. Bibikov retired, intending to devote himself to journalism. However, after a couple of years, desperately in need of money, and having lost faith in his ability to achieve anything significant as a publicist, Bibikov devoted himself entirely to translating books for the “Library of classical writers” series. The series includes works of prominent European thinkers of the XVIII — XIX centuries. “By honestly commenting on the authors ... as a translator, Bibikov showed outstanding talent out of the ordinary, because no one translated scholarly books with us in such clear, correct and accurate language,” his contemporaries wrote about Bibikov ^[3] .

In the spring of 1874, P. Bibikov began to show signs of mental illness from heightened mental work in cramped material conditions. His condition only worsened, and after a year and a half he died in the House of the Mystery of the Mentally Sick, in Udelnaya , near St. Petersburg ^[3] .

• 1862 in St. Petersburg publishes a separate edition of a brochure on the literary activity of Nikolai Aleksandrovich Dobrolyubov .
• Since 1865, it publishes in its own translation classical European writers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries , with critical biographical essays and notes compiled by it. For 8 years they have been published:

• “Physiological studies on life and death” by Bish;
• “Relations between the physical and moral nature of man” Kabanis;
• “ Study on the nature and causes of the wealth of nations ” by Adam Smith ;
• “ The Theory of Moral Sentiments ”, his own, with letters to Condorcet “On sympathy”;
• The Essay on the Law of Population by Thomas Malthus ;
• “The History of Political Economy” by Adolf Blanca ;
• "Collected Works" by Francis Bacon .

• 1865 Publishes “Critical Etudes”, previously unpublished in journals - about Fourier's theory, about Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky ’s comedy “Sin and misfortune for no one lives”, about Nikolai Chernyshevsky ’s novel “ What to do? "About the" Logic "of John Stuart Mill , about the Lomonosov Jubilee, etc. For this book a lawsuit was filed against Bibikov, ending with the author being sentenced to arrest for seven days" for harmful thinking "; although the circulation of his “etudes” was not even withdrawn from circulation: “because of the weak merit of the work, it does not pose a danger” ^[3] . The Bibikov case was the first literary process in Russia.
• 1870 Dmitry Grigorievich Glinka publishes a translation from the French Science of Human Society.

The meaning of Bibikov's seriously executed translations is much higher than the meaning of his own writings, which are neither distinguished by originality of thought nor talent of presentation and represent a combination of ideas of positivism and socialism with aestheticism .

• Vengerov S. A. Critical-biographical dictionary, vol. II.
• Week, 1875, No. 47 and 48; “Journal of the Ministry of Justice”, vol. XXVII.
• “SPb. Vedomosti, 1866, No. 34.
• Lyubarsky . Russian criminal trials of the XIX century. Part I. Bor. Prince

• Bibikov Peter Alekseevich // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : 86 t. (82 t. And 4 extra.). - SPb. , 1890-1907.