From Russian emigrants' press history. L.P.Blummer's "The European" magazine

The paper deals with events from the history of the Russian émigré press on the example of L.P. Blummer. Leonid Petrovich Blummer (1840-1888) was born in the Crimea, in the town of Yenikale, near Kerch. His father was an officer in the army in the Caucasus and came from the nobility of the Tambov Province. The ancestors of the Blummer family came to Russia from Switzerland. The family also had a younger sister Antonina, later known in the democratic circles of St. Petersburg for her salon. L.P. Blummer entered Moscow University in 1857, graduating in 1861 with a degree in law. In the autumn of 1861, Leonid Blummer went abroad, where from the beginning of 1862 he began to publish the “Free Word” journal in Berlin, being himself the editor-in-chief. The nature and direction of the journal were indicated by its subtitle "Russian Political Organ". The author of the paper wonders: how could a relatively little-known and still very young man become the head of a propaganda publication that positioned its publications as the political position of Russian constitutionalists? The archive of the III branch of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery, whose task was to monitor political and social moods in Russia, has file No. 110, entitled: "On the candidate of rights of Moscow UniversityL. Blummer, who is supposed to be the publisher in Berlin of the “Free Word” journal". It gives the following characterization of L.P. Blummer: “In 1862 he began to publish the Free Word journal, whose articles were directed against the autocracy and our government, sought to overthrow the existing order in Russia.” L.P. Blummer’s patrons and the sources of funding for his journal are still unknown. When considering the case ofL.P. Blummer, gendarmerie officers reported to their superiors that a foreign passport for L. Blummer with a five-year stay abroad was procured by the St. Petersburg military governor-general A.A. Suvorov. Connections of Prince A.A. Suvorov with circles of Russian society that demanded reforms can be traced both in the correspondence of radical people and in the reports of the headquarters officers of the gendarmerie corps. As for the funds for the publication of the magazine, then, according to the gendarmes of the III department, L.P. Blummer received them from Russia. The report on the search of AntoninaBlummer's apartment says: “... the apartment is a gathering place for all those people who could be more or less suspected of spreading revolutionary ideas; Blummer’s brother, having retired to Berlin, publishes the well-known newspaper Free Word there, receives money from Russia for this. Proceedings were instituted against Blummer by the St. Petersburg Criminal Court, where four issues of his new printed edition "The European" were delivered. The judicial authorities asked from the III branch for characteristics of the "The European" magazine. The answer contained the following characteristics: "The European" magazine is of the same criminal trend as his "Free Word" journal. According to the author, all the above statements of the royal gendarmes are exhaustive in order to clarify the role and place of L.P. Blummer in the Russian liberation movement of the early 1860s.