Nikolai Gubsky was the nephew of the Stoletov brothers and the son of their sister Anna Grigoryevna and Porfiry Ivanovich Gubsky. Porfiry Gubsky served as the Gorokhovets District Military Chief and from 1863 as a commander of rifle companies in the 12th Velikiye Luki Infantry Regiment based in Vladimir. In 1871, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel and from 1871 to 1873, he served as a temporary member of the Vladimir Military District Court. At that time, as a mature man, he wished to have a family and married Anna Stoletova. In September 1874, Porfiry Gubsky was appointed District Military Commander in the city of Gorokhovets, where his son Nikolai was born on September 12, 1877.
In 1896, Nikolai completed his studies at the Vladimir Provincial Men’s Gymnasium and received a silver medal. He then decided to study history at the Historical and Philological Faculty of Moscow University. However, due to his involvement in student protests in February 1899, he was expelled from the university and sent to Vladimir. Prince Sergei Nikolaevich Trubetskoy played a significant role in the life of the disgraced student. Trubetskoy read a philosophy course at the university and supervised a student group at the Faculty of History and Philology. It is believed that he was well-acquainted with the student in question, Gubsky, as well.
In the spring of 1902, Nikolai Gubsky successfully completed his examinations as a correspondence student and was awarded with a first-degree diploma. From 1904 onwards, he served in the statistical department of the Vladimir Provincial Zemstvo and collaborated with the newspapers “Klyazma” and “Zemskaya Weekly Newspaper”. In 1906, he became the editor-in-chief of the newspaper “Vladimirets”. He was an active member of the Constitutional Democratic Party, advocating for political and civil freedoms.
From 1908 onwards, he resided in Moscow and worked as a full-time contributor to the “Russian Vedomosti”. Initially, he reviewed foreign magazines, but later became involved in the foreign affairs department, specializing in the history and politics of France. He translated numerous articles and books from the French language.
In the 1920s, Nikolai Gubsky served as an editor of the Small and Great Soviet Encyclopedias, and authored several articles on the history of the world. His name can also be found among the contributors to the first volume of the Diplomatic Dictionary, which was published in 1948. Towards the end of his life, Nikolai Gubsky collected and documented family traditions and recollections related to Alexander Grigoryevich Stoletov, and a copy of this material can be found in the archive of the Museum-Reserve.
