Stasov, Dmitrii Vasilevich

Stasov, Dmitrii Vasil’evich 

Born Jan. 20 (Feb. 1), 1828, in St. Petersburg; died there Apr. 28,1918. Russian public figure; lawyer.

Stasov was the son of the architect V. P. Stasov and the brother of V. V. Stasov and N. V. Stasov. He graduated from the School of Jurisprudence in St. Petersburg in 1847 and served in the Senate until 1861. In 1858 he organized a legal circle, some of whose members were prominent in the Judicial Reform of 1864. He was also one of the sponsors and directors of the Russian Society of Music, founded in 1859. During the revolutionary situation of 1859–61, Stasov was friendly with the revolutionary democrats, and in 1859 he helped arrange the meeting in London between N. G. Chernyshevskii and A. I. Herzen.

Stasov practiced law from 1866 and was the first chairman of the St. Petersburg Council of Trial Attorneys. He was defense counsel at the political trials of the Ishutin Circle, the Nechaev group, and I. M. Koval’skii, as well as the Trial of the 193 and the Trial of the 17. Stasov was under secret police surveillance and was arrested in 1861 and in 1879. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries he abetted the revolutionary activity of his daughter E. D. Stasova. In June and July 1917, V. I. Lenin hid in his apartment.

Stasov wrote “Musical Memoirs” (Russkaia muzykal’naiagazeta, 1909, nos. 11–15) and notes on the Karakozov trial (Byloe, 1906, no. 4).

I. N. SABOVA