Хведiр Вовк in Ukrainian, Fedor Volkov was a major political figure. When forced to leave in 1879, he ended up studying the anthropology of Cossacks and other Ukrainians, under the tutalege of Gabriel de Mortillet; he received his doctorate from the Sorbonne and was awarded the prestigious Paul Broca medal in paleontology. Still enjoying a reputation among Russian archeologists, especially those who included anthropology in the discipline, Anuchin presented his work at the 11th Congress. Volkov returned to work in St. Petersburg in 1905, and died in 1918, after sending his materials to Kyiv to begin to realize his dream of an independent Ukraine.
Institution: St_Petersburg_University
Trained in classical philology at St. Petersburg University, Sergei then took a position there, rising to the positions of Secretary of the Faculty, 1905-1909 and rector, 1911-1912. A specialist in Greece, he taught everything from its history to epigraphy. From 1894-1905 he taught ancient Greek art in the Academy of Arts. He also headed the classical section of the IRAO. He also translated and edited a number of classical Greek authors. After 1917 he remained and assumed a position of leadership at the former IAK, now the Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He was a victim of the Siege of Leningrad during the Second World War.
Spitsyn embodied the success story that scientific scholarship made possible. From Viatka Province, he began a dissertation on Viatka that contradicted what the great historian Nikolai Karamzin had written, so he was forced to abandon it. He returned to his native land, teaching at a women’s gymnasium while excavating throughout the region. In 1892 the Archeological Commission began paying attention to his findings, and brought him to St. Petersburg where he developed into one of the major theoreticians and technicians of the profession. In 1909 he taught the first course in archeology at a Russian university. He continued after 1917, corresponding with colleagues who had emigrated.
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.
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.
Born in Minsk and educated first in Vilna, Boris Turaev pioneered in Egyptology in Imperial Russia. He worked in the museums of all the European capitals before returning to St. Petersburg University to begin lecturing on “The Ancient East,” which also included the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Persia. He also traveled to Russian regional museums to study the Egyptian artefacts each had on display. Curator of the Egyptian section of the Museum of Fine Arts name for Alexander III, he also, with Nikolai Marr, began the journal “Christian East” in 1912.
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.
A Baltic German, Baron Rozen was one of Russia’s most important Orientalists; a specialist in Arabic and in archeology, he studied Arab travelers writing about Rus. From 1885 he headed the Eastern Branch of the IRAO.
Smirnov’s most notable role was as the curator of the medieval section of the Hermitage, 1897-1918. His most remarkable find was the reproductions of the series of drawings of Kiev drawn by Dutch artist Abraham Van Westerfeld for the Lithuanian Hetman Janusz Radziwill in 1651, during the uprising launched by Bogdan Khmelnytskii, Hetman of the Zaporozhian Cossacks. Smirnov presented on this at the 13th congress in Ekaterinoslav. In 1918, he died of starvation, which M. I. Rostovtsev said made him the first victim of the Bolsheviks from this circle.
One of Imperial Russia’s and the USSR’s most complext academics, Marr had a Georgian mother, a Scottish father, and a brilliant mind that was as unconventional as his background. A linguist, he found himself dispatched to Armenia in 1891 by the Archeological Commission because he was one of the few educated Russians who could speak the langugage, and foreign archeologists were digging around there. Transforming himself into a formidable archeologist, he directed the reconstruction of Ani and excavated other sites in the Caucasus. After the revolution he returne to linguists, and developed a crackpot theory about the unity of Japhetic languages that, when Stalin embraced it, destroyed the discipline for decades.