A. N. Shvartz served briefly as Minister of Education, under Prime Minister Peter Stolypin, 1908-1910, dismissed from such liberal policies as wanting to open universities to women and increase the quota of Jewish students; he also wanted to close all student organizations, Left and Right, in hopes of depoliticizing them. As an educator, he had curated the educational districts of Moscow, Warsaw, and Riga. His academic specialty was Greek literature and epigraphy. In a side note, he had his colleague I. V. Tsvetaev dismissed from the Rumiantsev Museum over a false accusation of theft.
Theme: Classical Antiquity
Nikolai Pokrovskii pioneered in church architecture as a field in archeology. His Master’s on “The Origin of the Ancient Christian Basilica” established the basis for what would become a major archeological question, that is, how did church art and architecutre relate to liturgy. His interest in Orthodoxy meant that he also became a Byzantinist. Moreover, he was a founding member of the monarchist political party “The Russian Assembly” in 1900.
Pomialovskii became one of the heavyweights, who began his training in classical languages, primarily Latin, and ended up serving on many educational committees and a member of every number of Archeological committees, including American ones.
Nikitskii was yet another priest’s son who received his education in the seminary, but was sent to St. Petersburg to train for a career as a teacher. His talents at Greek would have been wasted at a gymnasium, and he became a respected scholar of Greek epigraphy. He also taught at the St. Petersburg Women’s Pedagogical Institute. At the Odessa Congress, he argued that Novgorod had already opened a Window on the West via trade through the Neva, so Muscovite conquest was detrimental.
Nikolskii applied his seminary education to Assyriology and was one of the most active members of the Eastern Commission of the IMAO. He worked with Praskovia on her multi-volume “Archeology of the Caucasus.”
The son of an ambitious merchant, Oreshnikov loved only the coin aspect of trade and became an extraordinary numismatist, earning both the Uvarov Prize and and a gold medal from the IRAO. Family wealth gave him the opportunity to live as the first generation of noble numismatists had, including the Uvarovs. He left behind diaries of his postrevolutionary life.
The son of a classical philologist, Mikhail Ivanovich followed and exceeded by becoming a scholar of international repute, interlacing the cultural influences in the southern region of the Russian empire. A student of Scythia, Hellenism, and Rome antiquity, his “Iranians and Greeks in South Russia” (1922) remains a canonical work on ancient history. Prolific even before his emigration to the United States after the Bolshevik Revolution, he began shaping the field from Russia. Although he wrote also in German and was a member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, his anti-German stance during the Great War prevented his acceptance there. He served as president of the American Historical Association in 1935.
Murzakevich recalled from childhood when Napoleon’s army captured Smolensk, and he and many others took shelter in his father’s church. The precocious lad ended up at Moscow University, but without money or social connections. A friend with both got Murzakevich to Odessa, first at the customs office and then at the Richelieu Lyceum. Murzakevich became one of those who Russianized the school, but he also became fascinated with the archeology in New Russia and Crimea and he became an influential member of the Odessa Society of the History of Antiquities. Moreover, the Governor General of New Russia Mikhail Vorontsov recognized his talents and supported his work, even employing him to sort out his library.
The son of a village priest in Novgorod Province, Modestov trained initially at the Petersburg Pedagogical Institute to become a teacher. Instead, he became one of the leading figures in the history of Rome, beginning with the Neolithic Age in Italy. After retiring from New Russia University, he moved to Rome. Perhaps surprisingly for a leading classicist scholar, he opposed the reforms of Minister of Education Dmitrii Tolstoi, who in the 1870s returned the university curriculum to emphasize the ancient languages over history or philosophy. He also translated Tacitus into Russian.
A Catholic born on the border between Belarus and Lithuania, Kostsiushko-Valiuzhinich moved his family to Sevastopol in 1881 and fell in love with Crimea. Also a banker and newspaper editor in the city, his passion for Khersones overwhelmed all other interests. He joined the Odessa Society of the History of Antiquities, and despite fights with Count Bobrinskii over authority over the digs, the latter appointed this fanatic to the Archeological Commission. Kostsiushko-Valiuzhinich turned the Warehouse of Local Antiquities into the Khersones Museum, circa 1888.