page_title: Nikolay Likhachyov
section_title: Likhachyov collections
hierarchical_section_title: Nikolay Likhachyov / Likhachyov collections
caption_attribution_description: Русский: СВЯТЫЕ БОРИС И ГЛЕБ. Середина XIV в. Москва Из коллекции Н. П. Лихачева ДРЖ-2117. Русский Музей English: SS. BORIS AND GLEB. An early 14th-century icon from Mstera. Passed to the Russian Museum from the en:Nikolay Likhachyov Collection
context_page_description: Nikolay Petrovich Likhachyov, alternatively transliterated as Likhachev was the first and foremost Russian sigillographer who also contributed significantly to an array of auxiliary historical disciplines, including palaeography, epigraphy, diplomatics, genealogy, and numismatics. He was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1925 and was put in charge of the Archaeographic Commission in 1929.
context_section_description: 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. His collection of Byzantine and early Russian seals was by far the largest in the world.
  The fate of Likhachyov's collections was variable. In 1913, Nicholas II bought his holdings of icons on behalf of the Alexander III Museum. 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, which allowed them to be set up as the Palaeography Museum, of which Likhachev served as director in 1925-1930. His own mansion was given over to the Archaeographic Commission and currently houses its successor, the Russian History Institute.
  It was in 1930 that Likhachyov, Sergey Platonov, Yevgeny Tarle and several other prominent historians were arrested in connection with the Industrial Party Trial. Likhachev was thrown out of the academy and exiled to Astrakhan, while his remaining personal collections were nationalized. The Likhachev collection of cuneiform tablets from Ur and Lagash, for instance, is currently divided between the Pushkin Museum and the Hermitage Museum.
caption: Likhachyov's collection included the oldest icon of Sts. Boris and Gleb
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