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.
Associated Region: Classical Antiquity
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.