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: 5th
A public figure, litterateur, art and music critic extraordinaire, and active in establishing and curating museums, Stasov’s presence at the IMAO from 1866 reflects the importance of the society to the number of pursuits that grouped under the rubric “archeology.” Although he did not excavate, he wrote on everything from “Russian folk instruments” to “The throne of the khans of Khiva” and “Armenian Manuscripts.” More the intellectual gadfly than the serious scholar of archeology, he is impossible to locate. By the same token, it is equally impossible to exclude him.
Nikolai Vladimirovich came from a line who had been ennobled in 1674. His father abandoned the family in childhood, and he fell under the influence of his uncle, architect N. P. Miliukov, father to Paul. After graduating from the construction department of the Institute of Civil Engineers, he made a chance acquaintance with Count S. D. Sheremetov, which resulted in his designing the restorations of the estates for some of Russia’s most prominent families. As an archeologist, he was deeply interested in religious architecture, especially Byzantine and the so-called “False Russian.” Both are evident in his best known work, the Cathedral of Peter and Paul that he designed in 1892 at Peterhof. He also taught architectural history and published a textbook on it. His wife Ekaterina Pavlovna published short stories in “thick” journals and the couple, and their one son, entertained the spectrum of Russian literati. Interestingly, his cousin Paul enjoyed the company of Sultanov’s estranged father. Sutanov deprecated his cousin’s politics, but the two were on good terms.
Although his daughter Marina is far better known to posterity than he, Ivan Vladimirovich probably inspired some of her Silver-Age poetic sensibilities with his interest in philology and antiquities. The family lived for several years in Italy, where Ivan studied Latin epigraphy. He was instrumental in the building of the Museum of Fine Arts named for Alexander III (renamed now for Alexander Pushkin), and served as its first director when it opened in 1912. At his inspiration, the museum included artefacts from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages. His brother Dmitrii was deeply involved with the culture of medieval Rus’ at the Moscow Archeological Institute and the Archive of the Ministry of Justice.
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.
Born in Moscow into a petty noble family and educated at the university there, Shpilevskii’s first posting sent him to Kazan in 1860. He blossomed into a champion of the historical archeology of the region, organized the KOAIE, and proved instrumental in getting the 4th Archeological Congress there. His magnum opus, “Ancient Cities and Other Bulgaro-Tatar Monuments in the Province of Kazan” won numerous academic honors. In 1885, he was transferred to the Demidov legal lyceum in Iaroslavl, where he formed other academic societies and worked on the provincial statistical committee.
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.
Educated as a zoologist, Poliakov, whose mother was Buriat, specialized in the Stone Age of Olonetskii Province, the far norther, which includes Arkhangelsk.
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.
From a noble princely family, Putiatin served in the Finnish Guards Regiment and after the emancipation of the serfs he served as both the Chairman of the Noble Assembly and a Justice of the Peace in his native Vyshnevolotskii district of Tver Province. An amateur archeologist, he showed keen interest in the Stone Age and participated actively in the congresses. He also published in French.