Ilovaiskii, D. I.

As early as the Second Congress, Ilovaiskii began his intellectual rampage against the calling of the Varangians. A fascinating character from Riazan, his teachers noticed his intelligence and persuaded his parents to allow him a classical education. He studied in Moscow with the great historians of the 1840s and ’50s. When in the 1860s Moscow University limited him to teaching general rather than Russian history, he resigned his post. He supported himself writing history and sparking controveries relevant to Great Russian nationalism. This might explain how one of his textbooks enjoyed reprinted 44 editions. His daughter Varvara married another prominent archeologist, Ivan Tsvetaev, who remarried after Varvara’s premature death from tuberculosis. His second wife gave birth to the poetess Marina. Ilovaiskii moved from moderate to radical conservatism after the 1905 Revolution, joining the Union of Russian People.