Revoliutsionnoe vremia v Russkom Muzee i v Ermitazhe (Vospominaniia grafa D. I. Tolstogo (The revolutionary period in the Russian Museum and the Hermitage)
St. Petersburg: Herm, 2017. Saddle-stitched. The memoirs published here were written in France in the 1930s by the person who was in charge of the Alexander III Russian Museum and the Hermitage Museum at the time of the Russian revolutions of February and October 1917. After being chosen to direct the work of the newly formed Russian Museum in 1901, Dmitrii Tolstoi worked directly with the best contemporary artists (e.g., Repin, Benois, Roerich, Nesterov, Serov, Dobuzhinskii, and Bilibin) to build the museum's collections. In 1909 he was asked to administer the Hermitage's collections. In these positions he worked to preserve what he perceived as the country's most valuable cultural heritage through the revolutionary period. In late 1918 when the situation became dangerous for those of the old school ("starogo zakala"), Tolstoi left Petrograd for his wife's house in Kiev. Hearing there about the execution of Grand Prince Georgii Mikhailovich, he resolved not to return to Petrograd and not to collaborate with the Soviet regime and managed in September to get a British ship out of Yalta to Constantinople. In the preface to his memoir he stipulates that it not be published until a change of regime lest those mentioned be persecuted by the Bolsheviks. 54 p., 21 cm, 10 b/w illus., Rus. Item #2591
ISBN: 9785935727482
Price: $21.00