Pyotr Schebalsky

Pyotr Karlovich Schebalsky (Пётр Карлович Щебальский, 1810-March 20, 1886) was a Russian author, historian, publicist and journalist, author of comprehensive studies on history of Russian literature, later editor of the Varshavsky dnevnik magazine.

Biography
Pyotr Schebalsky was born in 1810 in a noble Pskovian family. He started his career as a military man. In 1829 he joined the Artillery college, in 1830 became a junker in 1834 has been left at the college in the rank of praporshchik. In 1836-1842 he served in the Guards artillery, then on July 17, 1842, for taking part in a duel has been lowered in ran to a cannoneer and got transferred to the field artillery unit of the Caucasian grenadiers' brigade. Schebalsky took part in several major operations in Chechnya and Dagestan and was rewarded the soldier's St.George. After six years of the service in the Caucasus he's got reinstated in ranks and in January 1848 was returned to the Guards to join in December of the same year the Emperor's battery of His Majesty Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich. At the same time he took the posts of the head of the Division's school of artillery and the special class of Don's uryadniks' tutor.

In 1954 for financial reasons Schebalsky had to retire from the military service and become the chief of Moscow police. In 1858, now the Ministry of Education official, Schebalsky started his career as a critic and literary historian. As the Ministry's special envoy in the course of 4 years he was compiling the comprehensive Russian press reviews for the Tsar. At the same time, by the then Minister of Education's request, he wrote his major treatise, The History of Censorship in Russia. In those four years time Schebalsky also wrote the series of essays that were published under the title Readings from the Russian History from the XVII Century. All the while his works on the history of Russian literature were being published in Zarya, Russky arkhiv, but mostly in The Russian Messenger which he's been an active contributor to.

The last 15 years of his life Scebalsky spent in Poland, first as a head of educational directories - first of Suwałki (from 1871), then of Warsaw (from 1875). After retirement he became the editor of Varshavsky dnevnik (The Warsaw Diary), the only Russian newspaper in Poland which during years of his leadership became a prominent publication, both allies and opponents praising Schebalsky’s objectivity and literary talent. Pyotr Schebalsky died in Warsaw on March 20, 1886.