Roman Maksimovich Tsebrikov

He was born and brought up in Kharkov. Around 1778 he moved to St. Petersburg to complete his education. He studied theology, philosophy, Greek, Latin and Hebrew at Leipzig University (1779). He was an interpreter of the Collegium of Foreign Affairs (1785). He was the assistant of the chief of the Third branch of the Legislative commission (1810). The beginning of his literary activity falls within the period when he was in Leipzig. There are a number of his works dated by that time: “Chto est filosofiia sveta” ("What is the philosophy of light"), “Nereshitel’nyi otvet chemu uchus’” ("An indecisive answer to the question about what I am learning") and others. Being attached to the marching chancellery of prince Potemkin, in the camp near Bendery, he worked on a translation from French of the political treatise of Ange Goudar, published under the title "Mir Evropy ne mozhet inache vosstanovitsia, kak tolko po prodolzhitel’nom peremirii, ili Proekt vseobshchego zamireniia" ("The Peace of Europe Cannot be Restored Otherwise Than by a Long Truce, Or a Project of Universal Peacemaking") (1789).