Description

Alexander Sergeyevich Griboyedov (1795–1829) proved himself as a man of many talents: he was an insightful Russian diplomat, an endowed playwright and a composer. Griboyedov is often referred to as homo unius libri, a writer of one book, who won his laurels for the brilliant verse comedy “Woe from Wit,” still very timely and one of the most frequently staged plays in Russia. “Woe from Wit” takes precedence over the finest modern satires, like Nikolay Gogol’s “Dead Souls,” which lampoons the bureaucracy of Imperial Russia, and Mikhail Bulgakov's satiric short stories of “The Soviet State.”

He was Russia's ambassador to Qajar Persia, where he and all the embassy staff were massacred by an angry mob as a result of the rampant anti-Russian sentiment that existed through Russia's imposing of the Treaty of Gulistan (1813) and Treaty of Turkmenchay (1828), which had forcefully ratified for Persia's ceding of its northern territories comprising Transcaucasia and parts of the North Caucasus. Griboyedov had played a pivotal role in the ratification of the latter treaty. In a move to compensate Russia for the attack and the death of its ambassador, the Shah sent his grandson Khosrow Mirza to St Petersburg to avoid another war with Tsar Nicholas I and also gifted to him the Shah Diamond.

Date of issue: 10.01.1995