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.
Where Associated: Moscow University
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.
A lightning rod for many issues, Samokvasov levied his influence at a number of the archeological congresses. He combined his positions as director of the Archive of the Moscow Ministry of Justice with that of law professor at the University of Warsaw, and one of the most creative archeologists of the Stone Age. A devoted monarchist, he belonged to the ultra-conservative Union of Russian People after 1905.
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.
Nikolskii applied his seminary education to Assyriology and was one of the most active members of the Eastern Commission of the IMAO. He worked with Praskovia on her multi-volume “Archeology of the Caucasus.”
Liaskoronskii was important especially as a cartographer of archeological sites in the south. A Ukrainian, after the revolution he was a member of the All-Ukrainian Archeological Committee and the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. He was also associated with Nezhinsk Historical-Philological Institute.
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.
Best known as one of the founders of the Kadet Party in post-1905 Russia, and very briefly the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the first Provisional Government after Nicholas II’s abdication, Miliukov became an archeologist for a few years by happenstance. Twice exiled from Moscow in the 1890s because of his participation in political protests at the university, where he had studied and then taught history, Miliukov went to Riazan for two years, where he worked on the local Archival Commission, and then later as a history professor at the University of Sophia. In both places he joined with locals and participated in excavations, and presented his findings at three archeological congresses. He attended as a representative of the Riazan Archival Commission and a history professor from Sophia.
Miller’s specialty lay in eastern languages and linguistics, but he was also engaged with byliny, Russia’s epic poetry. He replaced his teacher Buslaev at Moscow University.
Wealthy and well-educated, a history professor who lectured at Oxford and numerous other Western universities, Kovalevskii worked primarily on the history of Western Europe. An archive rat, his membership in the IMAO bespeaks the importance of that society, because he was not an active archeologist. Elected to the First State Duma after 1905 as a member of the Progressist Party, and he was also appointed to the State Council. In 1912, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.