Alexander Griboyedov in works by Arseniy Markevich

Alexander Griboyedov is a classic of Russian literature. His comedy Woe from Wit (1824) was a manifesto of freethinkers, and many of his friends took part in the Decembrist revolt (1825). In the USSR, Griboyedov was studied with a special interest - Soviet authors described him as a man who struggled for reformation of Russia like a Bolshevik. At the same time, comments concerning his biography and works were accompanied by ignoring and distortion of numerous facts which proved he was not a revolutionary. Nowadays, Griboyedov studies still depend on the hypotheses of the USSR times. That is why the revaluation of works published before 1992 is of particular importance - without taking a critical look at those it is impossible to cease mythologization of Griboyedov. The present article deals with the works of Arseniy Markevich, a historian and corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The subject of the study is the scholar’s view on Griboyedov’s Crimean journey of 1825. The report In Memory of A. S. Griboyedov... prepared by Markevich and presented in 1925 is one of the firsts works that focus on the writer’s visit to the peninsula. However, this material was not published. The article establishes a link between Markevich’s unpublished and consequently lost report and his essay Decembrists in Crimea that was translated into Ukrainian and published in 1930 under the title From the Cultural Past of Crimea. This translation is used to reconstruct the author’s conclusions concerning Griboyedov. It is analyzed in the light of the literature about the diplomat and writer known in the 1920s; its conformity to facts is determined based on the sources that may have been available to Markevich. The study establishes the historian’s attitude to revolution and, based on that, reconstructs the ideological orientation of the 1925 report. It also deals with the problem of place where the original essay Decembrists... was kept. Information indicating the main university of Crimea as such a location in the early 1990s is checked based on the analysis of the information source and evidence obtained from employees of the Scientific Library of the Taurida Academy of V. I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University.