Baron V. G. Tizengauzen, a Baltic German (Ernst Woldemar von Tiesenhausen), became an important Orientalist after years of petty bureaucratic jobs, necessary to earn his living. When the IAK was formed in 1859, he attained a clerkship there, and ultimately elevated himself to Associate Director, through his scholarship. The Commission dispatched him to excavate in New Russia and Crimea; he was also a numismatist. Although a member of IMAO from 1865, he resigned from it in 1889 over a dispute between Uvarova’s Society and Bobrinskii’s Commission over which one enjoyed propriety over the official assignation of permissions to excavate.
Congress Attended: 1st
Appointed to a professorship in the department of political economy and statistics at Kharkov University, Sreznevskii became one of the premier Slavisists in the world. Deeply immersed in the culture of Ukraine, he collected stories, folklore, and traditions throughout the region. Kharkov, though, was not big enough for him, and he transferred to St. Petersburg where he worked at both the university and the Academy of Sciences. He continued his travels throughout the Slavic lands in western Russia and those in the Ottoman Empire. His linguistic work was groundbreaking, but he argued that Ukrainian was a dialect, but although it should be studied, it did not form the basis of a separate culture. One of this three sons, Viacheslav, become one of tsarist Russia’s most important photographers, noted for his technical innovations.
Minister of Education Sergei Uvarov invited the Leipzig-educated Stefani to head the department of classical philology at Dorpat University in 1846. Trained in Greek epigraphy, Stefani moved to St. Petersburg four years later, to the Hermitage, where he studied artefacts sent from the Black Sea littoral. His methodology of not interpreting beyond what was in his hand influenced his students to be scrupulous and careful about what claims they could make.
Count M. V. Tolstoi, educated as a physician at Moscow University, preferred instead the lectures he attended at the Moscow Spiritual Academy. Deciding that medicine did not fit his character, he evolved into an archeologist of Orthodoxy, and fittingly, he lies buried at the Troitse-Sergeeva Monastery. He was also deeply involved with local charities. His cousin, Dmitrii Tolstoi, was one of the most influential of the conservative statemen, serving as both Ober-prokurator of the Holy Synod and Minister of Education, 1865-1880, and then President of the Academy of Sciences.
The “father of Russian archeology,” Alexei Sergeevich was being educated by his father, the Minister of Education and President of the Academy of Sciences, for a diplomatic posting. Scions of the Razumovskii family, a favorite of Tsaritsa Elizabeth I, the Uvarovs had all the necessary social connections. All Alexei needed was one visit to Pompeii, and he switched careers immediately. An avid numismatist, he wanted to collect more artefacts than just the coins. A founding member of the Russian Archeological Association in St. Petersburg, following a break with Sergei Stroganov of the IAK, he moved to Moscow and formed a rival society. It was Uvarov’s Moscow-based Society that organized the 15 successful archeological congresses, the only sustained academic symposia in Imperial Russia.
A gifted linguist, while still at the Alexandrovskii Lyceum V. V. learned Hebrew, Persian, and Arabic, and became one of the empire’s premier Orientalists. Posted to the Asiatic Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he was sent to Orenburg, where he picked up Turkic dialects. Who could better study the Golden Horde? With this set of languages, he analyzed manuscripts and coins relevant to the Crimean, Kasimov, and Kokand Khanates and was appointed to the Academy of Sciences. In 1859 he was elected secretary of the Eastern Branch of the Russian Archaeological Society , then from 1861 to 1872 he served the society as secretary. Disaster struck when Uvarov appointed him to head the organizing committee for the 2nd Congress, in Petersburg to celebrate the society’s 25th anniversary in 1871. He suffered a nervous breakdown from the work load, and never published again. In 1888 Dmitrii Tolstoi got him back on the government payroll, as chairman of the Commission to study ancient documents in the Little Russian provinces.
Son of a governor of Orel and Voronezh provinces and leader in the provincial nobility, Dmitrii was educated in the Corps of Pages and served as General Ivan Paskevich’s adjutant in putting down the Polish (1830) and Hungarian (1848) rebellions. He retired from public life after then serving Moscow Governor General A. G. Shcherbatov, Praskovia’s grandfather, and with her husband founded the IMAO. He was a quintessential numismatist, and donated his collection to the Rumiantsev Museum.
Very little is known about this Rumiantsev, which suggests that he was not related to the noble branch who established the museum in their name. His primary focus was on various aspects of medieval Muscovy, including Rostov as well as Moscow; his most valued work in archeology seems to have been as the longtime secretary of the IMAO. He was one who considered archives central to the discipline, and he received the Uvarov Prize for work on the early Synodal typography.
Nevostruev was one of the first archeologists to come from Viatka, just as he was also among the first trained in theology to develop church archeology as a branch of the science. His primary contribution was the cataloging of Slavic manuscripts in the Synodal Library, which won him the Lomonosov Prize, but he also excavated in the Ananinskii Mogilnik.
The first director of the St. Petersburg Archeological Institute, Kalachov was first and foremost an archivist who directed the archive of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Empire for decades. Having served on several provincial archeographical commissions, most notably, he also served on two of Alexander II’s commissions that wrote the Great Reforms: that for the emancipation of the serfs, and also for the judicial reforms. Beyond this, he also participated in the Commission for Study of Popular Juridical Practices under Geographic Society, and several Provincial Archival Commissions. A stalwart at the archeological congresses when alive, he kept attention forcused on the need for professional maintenance of them.