Nikolay Likhachyov

A scion of an old noble family, Likhachev was born in Chistopol, a town in the Kazan Governorate. Among his paternal uncles, Ivan Likhachyov was an admiral and Andrey Likhachyov was an avid antiquarian whose collections formed the core of the Kazan City Museum. Nikolay Likhachyov graduated from the Kazan University in 1884 and joined the staff of the Saint Petersburg Archaeological Institute in 1892. His early work shed light on the hierarchy of 16th-century Muscovite clerks, or diaks. He developed an early interest in medieval icon painting and produced several pioneering studies on the subject, including Materials for a History of Russian Icon Painting (1906, vol. 1-2), ''Andrei Rublev's Style of Painting (1907), and Historical Meaning of Italo-Greek Icon Painting'' (1911). The latter was awarded a Gold Uvarov Prize by the Academy of Sciences. He died at Leningrad in 1936. == Likhachyov collections ==

Likachyov's political views were decidedly nationalistic. In 1911 he joined Aleksey Suvorin and Nikodim Kondakov in founding the Russian Assembly, the country's first monarchist party which later became associated with the Black Hundreds. Likhachyov's proximity to the right wing of the tsarist government, as well as his own considerable fortune and unfailing taste, helped him to amass one of the largest collections of antiquities in the Russian Empire. It encompassed 15,000 old coins and 1,500 icons, as wells as some 80,000 books, including a selection of manuscripts and incunabulae. In an attempt to save the remaining collections from dispersal in the days of the Russian Revolution, Likhachev conveyed them to the Academy of Sciences, It was in 1930 that Likhachyov, Sergey Platonov, Yevgeny Tarle and several other prominent historians were arrested in connection with the Industrial Party Trial. The Likhachev collection of cuneiform tablets from Ur and Lagash, for instance, is currently divided between the Pushkin Museum and the Hermitage Museum. ==References==