REPNIN, NIKOLAI VASILIEVICH, PRINCE 0734 1800, Russian statesman and general, grandson of the preceding, served during the Rhenish campaign of 1748 and subsequently studied in Germany. Peter III. sent him as ambassador in 1763 to Berlin. The same year Catherine transferred him to Warsaw, with instructions to form a Russian party in Poland from among the dissidents, who were to receive equal rights with the Catholics. Repnin convinced himself that the dissidents were too poor and insignificant to be of any real support to Russia, and that the whole agitation in their favour was factitious. At last, indeed, the dissidents themselves even petitioned the empress to leave them alone. The attempt had failed, and Repnin went to fight the Turks. At the head of an independent command in Moldavia and Walachia, he prevented a large Turkish army from crossing the Pruth (177o) ; distinguished himself at the actions of Larga and Kagula ; and captured Izmail and Kilia. In 1771 he re ceived the supreme command in Walachia and routed the Turks at Bucharest. A quarrel with the commander-in-chief, Rumyant sev, then induced him to send in his resignation, but in 1774 he participated in the capture of Silistria and in the negotiations which led to the peace of Kuchuk-Kainarji. In 1775-76 he was ambassador at the Porte. On the outbreak of the war of the Bavarian Succession he led 30,00o men to Breslau, and at the subsequent congress of Teschen, where he was Russian pleni potentiary, compelled Austria to make peace with Prussia. Dur
ing the second Turkish war (1787-92) Repnin was, after Suvarov, the most successful of the Russian commanders. He defeated the Turks at Salcha, captured the whole camp of the seraskier, Hassan Pasha, shut him up in Izmail, and was preparing to reduce the place when he was forbidden to do so by Potemkin (1789).
On the retirement of Potemkin (q.v.) in 1791, Repnin succeeded him as commander-in-chief, and immediately routed the grand vizier at Machin, a victory which compelled the Turks to accept the truce of Galatz (July 31, 1791). In 1794 he was made governor-general of the newly acquired Lithuanian provinces. The emperor Paul raised him to the rank of field-marshal (1796), and, in 1798, sent him on a diplomatic mission to Berlin and Vienna in order to detach Prussia from France and unite both Austria and Prussia against the Jacobins. He was unsuccessful, and on his return was dismissed from the service.
See A. Kraushar, Prince Repnin in Poland, (Pol.) (Warsaw, 190o) ; "Correspondence with Frederick the Great and others" (Rus. and Fr.), in Russky Arkhiv (1865, 1869, 1874, Petersburg) ; M. Longinov, True Anecdotes of Prince Repnin (Rus.) (St. Petersburg, 1865).