{{Short description|Russian grammarian (1787–1867)}} thumb|Nikolay Gretsch, 1856
'''Nikolay Ivanovich Gretsch''' or '''Grech''' ({{langx|ru|Николай Иванович Греч}}; 1787–1867) was a Russian grammarian. Although he was primarily interested in philology, it is as a journalist that he is primarily remembered.
==Life== thumb|A 19th-century edition of Gretch's memoirs: the censored text is replaced by dots Gretsch came from a noble Baltic German family. Peter Clodt von Jürgensburg was his wife's nephew. He attended the Imperial School of Jurisprudence and travelled widely in Europe, producing no less than five volumes of travel writings as well as several novels. He introduced the Lancasterian system of education into Russia (1820), organized several innovative schools for soldiers and penned a number of textbooks for them.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://bigenc.ru/domestic_history/text/2378744|title = ГРЕЧ • Большая российская энциклопедия - электронная версия}}</ref> His memoirs were published in 1886.
At the time of Napoleon's invasion of Russia Gretsch started publishing ''The Son of the Fatherland'', a periodical that expressed liberal views that had much in common with those of the Decembrists.<ref name="enc">Русские писатели. 1800—1917. Биографический словарь. Т. 2: Г — К. Москва: Большая российская энциклопедия, 1992. С. 18—21.</ref> During Nicholas I's reactionary reign he crossed over to the conservative camp and joined forces with Faddei Bulgarin in feuding with Pushkin's circle.<ref name="enc"/>
Gretch and Bulgarin were the editors of ''Northern Bee'', a popular political and literary newspaper that championed the Official Nationality theory. According to Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, the newspaper "strikes a modern reader as deficient in interpretation, weak intellectually, and devoted almost entirely to factual, quasi-official summaries of events".<ref>Quoted from: N. V. Riasanovsky. ''Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia, 1825-1855''. University of California Press, 1959. {{ISBN|978-0-520-01065-9}}. Page 275.</ref>
== References == {{reflist}}
==Sources== * {{cite Efron|Греч, Николай Иванович}}
== External links == * [http://az.lib.ru/g/grech_n_i/ Works by N. I. Gretsch online] * [https://books.google.com/books?id=0MNPAAAAMAAJ&dq=pchela+gretsch&pg=RA1-PA173 Detailed biography, in English]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Gretsch, Nikolay}} Category:Corresponding members of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences Category:Newspaper publishers (people) from the Russian Empire Category:19th-century journalists from the Russian Empire Category:Russian people of German descent Category:Male writers from the Russian Empire Category:Philologists from the Russian Empire Category:19th-century educators from the Russian Empire Category:Baltic-German people from the Russian Empire Category:1787 births Category:1867 deaths Category:19th-century memoirists from the Russian Empire Category:Privy Councillor (Russian Empire)