Novikov, Mikhail

Novikov, Mikhail (Новиков, Михаил) b 1777, d ca 1822–5. Participant in the Decembrist movement. After a career of military service he became (1816) chancery director for the governor-general of Little Russia, Nikolai Repnin, in Poltava. He helped to establish a regional branch of the Union of Salvation and later headed its successor body, the Union of Welfare. He was the author of the first republican-minded constitution of the Decembrist movement. Novikov also established the Love of Truth Masonic lodge in Poltava in 1818.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]