Ivan Egorevich’s father died when he was 7, and the impoverished lad later very fortuitously found a job at the Moscow Armoury. Stroev and others there inspited his love for antiquity; he was always engaged in the professioanlization of archeology. His doctorate from St. Vladimir’s is honorary. D. I. Bagalei of Kharkov University named him the founder of “historical archeology.” He designated his daughter Maria and The Historical Museum as his only heirs, to receive his collections.
Society: IROID
Vasilii Zlatarskii embodies a political-archeological nexus that pits an acceptable nationalism against imperialism when the empire under assailment is the Ottoman. Son of a Bulgarian activist, Nikola Zlartarcheto, Vasilii was sent to Petersburg for his education, and then to Berlin to train in archeology. He returned to Sophia where he helped to turn the higher school into the university in 1904, and establishing a Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in 1911. An historian, he used archeology to establish a Bulgarian identity independent of the Ottoman Muslims, returning it, as it were, to its Slavic and Byzantine heritage. During the Great War, when Bulgaria allied with the Central Powers, he joined the troops in Macedonia for purposes of excavating. Widely published and respected, he was a member of the Russian Archaeological Institute in Constantinople, the Moscow Archaeological Society, the Finno-Ugric Commonwealth in Helsingfors, a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts, the School of Slavonic Studies at the University of London, and the Seminarium Kondakovianum in Prague. He also received an honorary degree in Slavic Philology from Kharkov University in 1907.
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.
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.
The son of a priest from Vologda Province, Pavel Ivanovich finished his Master’s in 1837 at the St. Petersburg Spiritual Academy, on Ancient Jewish Synogogues. Discovered by historian Mikhail Pogodin, Savvaitov enjoyed a splendid career as a teacher of Russian libterature in both military and commercial schools. His most famous work was a hermeneutical study of the Bible, and his best known contribution to archeology was Description of ancient royal utensils, clothes, weapons, military armor, based on the collection in the Moscow Armoury. He also wrote Travels of the Novgorod Archbishop Anthony to Constantinople at the end of the 12th century and published copiously on the monasteries of his native Vologda. He also published on Finno-Ugric (Zyrian) linguistics.