Correspondent of the St. Petersburg (Petrograd) Telegraph Agency A. I. Markov

Section: History of Journalism

The article is devoted to the life and work of A.I. Markov, a journalist, economist, resident correspondent of the St. Petersburg (Petrograd) Telegraph Agency in Berlin. Information about him is fragmentary, even the dates of his life have not yet been established. The article is also aimed at an in-depth study of the PTA correspondent network in Europe on the eve and during the First World War. The study involved PTA documents of 1906–1917 and new archival materials to Markov’s biography. After graduating from the University of T bingen in 1888, he published several books in German, including self-study guides and translations of works of famous Russian writers. Markov’s good knowledge of Germany was the main reason for his appointment as the Agency’s Berlin correspondent. However, a different scale of tasks and level of responsibility awaited him there. Although Markov was a talented observer, he did not possess the most important qualities for a correspondent – speed of action, brevity and capacity of messages. He often sent insignificant, wordy and expensive messages to St. Petersburg and constantly lagged behind competitors from Russian newspapers. His move to Stockholm was not a very good idea, since a more convenient point for transmitting telegrams from Europe was Copenhagen. Despite criticism from the Agency’s management, Markov worked in Berlin and Stockholm for more than ten years, as for the Foreign Ministry he was a valuable observer in Germany and Sweden. Only the revolution of 1917 was a sufficient condition for his dismissal.

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