A founding member of the IRAO, Savelev was one of Imperial Russia’s premier numismatists. An inattentive student in the classroom, he developed a love for coins that moved well beyond simply collecting them. His forte was Muslim coins, and he pioneered in analyzing them to chart historical movements and interactions. He published a survey even of Georgian antiquities in ZhMNP, vol. 16 (1837): 531-44.
Associated Region: Central Asia
His biographer recorded that his charitable works deflected his interest from his academic activities, and therefore he produced less than what could be expected from someone with his knowledge and capabilities, but one wonders what more could he have done? He began by studying church history under M. V. Nikolskii, and worked for the Synodal Typography while he also tutored the children of Prince Volkonskii. A member of several other societies, at the IMAO he served as secretary of the Eastern Secion. Then he edited the multi-volume publications coming from the 7th through the 11th archeological congresses. He presented numerous papers, several on inscriptions from Turkestan, although he does not appear to have traveled there himself.
Born and educated in Germany, Vasilii (b. Friedrich) Radlov came to St. Petersburg in 1858 to study at the Asian Museum. In Russia, he had many opportunities to study Turkic languages, and he moved to the Altai region where he pioneered in Turkology. His work also took him to the Steppes and to Central Asia; a linguist in an era when that was considered a branch of archeology, he also excavated in these area. In 1872 he was appointed to curate the Kazan educational district, where he remained until 1884. Upon his return to Petersburg, he was appointed director of the Asian Museum in 1890, which he invigorated and made into a major international museum. He studied the language of the Crimean Tatars and the Karaites who had emigrated to the NW Region, thereby covering almost all of the Russian empire.
The German-born Lerkh studied Eastern langugages, participated in the diplomatic missions to Khiva and Bukhara, 1858, and later turned his archeological attention to the Russian north.
One of the foremost Orientalists in all of Europe in the 19th century, Grigorev helped to organize the 3rd Congress of Orientalists in St. Petersburg in 1876. Working in Odessa, Orenburg, and Petersburg, he had antagonistic relations with a number of scholars. But a high profile figure, he pioneered in the study of Turkestan. Such a background also made him useful to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Of German heritage, the Russian-born Bartold was one of the empire’s foremost Orientalists, a specialist in Islam.
From an Orthodox noble family that had fled the Poland-Lithuania Commonwealth to Sloboda Ukraine and registered with the Zaporozhian Cossacks, Evarnitskii became their most committed historian. After studying with Sumtsov at Kharkov University, he began excavating in the region of the Dnepr rapids when he wasn’t traveling to lecture on Cossacks. He taught briefly at Kharkov University where in 1885 he stood accused of advocating south Russian separatism. Moving to St. Petersburg to teach at the pedagogical institute, he made friends with renowned artist Ilya Repin, who used Evarnitskii as the model for the scribe in his painting “Cossacks write a letter to the Turkish Sultan” (pictured here). He landed a position at St. Petersburg University, from which he was expelled in 1891 for his Ukrainophilism, sent to Central Asia where he excavated for three years. In 1895 he began lecturing at the University of Warsaw, moving quickly to Moscow University. In 1902 the Ekaterinoslav zemstvo invited him to curate the archeological museum left to them by philanthropist-merchant A. N. Pol’, the driving force behind the iron industry in the area. Following the Bolshevik Revolution he organized a Department of Ukrainian Studies at the newly opened university in Ekaterinoslav. Today the museum is named for him. NB: He changed the spelling of his name to Iavor- when he discovered that his family had fled from that region.
An Orientalist, Anichkov was a specialist in Kyrgyz culture and Chairman of the Novgorod Society of Lovers of Antiquity. He was also associated with the Tashkent Museum, the Orenburg Academic Archive Commission, and Turkestan in general.