Author: Timur Saitov

Editor: Anastasia Shteinert

In late April, we welcomed Timur Saitov to the Russian History Museum team as a part-time Processing Archivist. Timur brings extensive experience in history and archival work having earned his Ph.D. in History from Binghamton University in 2025 with a dissertation on Russian Civil War refugees in post-Wold War I Constantinople.

Although he has been with us for less than two months, Timur has already made a remarkable impact. He has processed four archival collections donated to the museum over the past three years, uncovering fascinating stories and making these materials accessible to researchers for the first time. 

Archival processing involves far more than creating an inventory. It requires careful examination, historical research, and the rehousing of materials in archival-quality enclosures to ensure their long-term preservation. Once a collection is processed, a digital finding aid is published online and opened to scholars and the public alike.

We invited Timur to share some of the discoveries he has made while working with these collections. We hope you enjoy this glimpse into the remarkable stories revealed in our archives.

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The archive at the Russian History Museum is Upstate New York’s hidden gem for research on Imperial Russia, Russian emigration, and the Russian diaspora in the United States. Its greatest strength lies in its enduring and trusted connection with the living community of Americans who preserve Russian cultural traditions in their broadest sense.

The archival documents donated to the Russian History Museum do something truly remarkable: they bring together individual family histories and  key milestones in Russian history, reflecting both institutional development and the experiences of ordinary people.

Over the past few weeks, we have processed several important collections, making these materials more accessible to researchers and the public. And these collections are only a fraction of what the archive holds!

The Olfer’ev Family: Centuries-Long History

The old noble Olfer’ev Family is represented in the Olfer’ev Family Records by five generations, spanning from the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century. The collection traces the family’s ascent during this period, as well as its members’ changing places of residence and service. Originating in Penza Governorate, the family later relocated to Kiev and other places in the Empire and beyond.

Captain Aleksei Markovich Alfer’ev (b. 1720), was promoted in 1763, by a decree personally signed by Catherine II, to the rank of sekund-major, a mid-level officer rank. His grandson, Pavel Vasil’evich Olfer’ev (1788-1864), began his military career by participating in several campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) and thereafter dedicated his life to military service, taking part in major Russia’s military campaigns of the nineteenth century. A decree in the collection documents his promotion to the rank of lieutenant general. By the end of his career, he had risen to the rank of General of the Cavalry, the second-highest rank in the Russian Army.

Vasilii Vasil’evich Olfer’ev (1874–1944), a member of the fifth generation represented in the collection, was born in Geneva. He pursued a successful military career, serving as adjutant to the Governor-General of Vilna, Kovno, and Grodno, the Commander of the Turkestan Military District, and the Commander of the 2nd Manchurian Army, and participating in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). Later in life, however, he entered the service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1912, holding the rank of Collegiate Assessor, he served as secretary of the Russian Consulate in Königsberg, as documented by several items in the collection. He subsequently held other diplomatic posts before and during the First World War. The collection also contains a certificate of Vasilii Vasil’evich’s marriage to Anna Feodorovna Kerenskaia (1879-1946), the sister of the Prime Minister of the Russian Provisional Government in 1917.

Meet the Olfer’ev family through newly restored portraits in our collection. This noble lineage traces back to the age of Ivan the Terrible and even has ties to Alexander Kerensky, the head of Russia’s Provisional Government in 1917.

Decree of the Emir of Bukhara on awarding the Gold Star of Bukhara to Vasilii Vasil’evich Olfer’ev (printed original, and Russian translation), Sept. 23, 1903.

The Davydovskii Family: Military Tradition

The military service of several generations of the Davydovskii family, represented in the Davydovskii Documents within the Michael Ryl Papers, provides valuable insights into Russian military history. Vasilii Iakovlevich, a second lieutenant in the Belarusian Jaeger Corps, participated in the 1789 battles of Maximeni, Galați, and Focșani—present-day Moldova and Romania—during the Russo-Turkish War of 1787–92. His son, Dmitrii Vasil’evich, a lieutenant colonel in the 12th Artillery Brigade, took part in the capture of Warsaw during the Polish-Russian War of 1830–1831.

Ksenia Orestovna Gootan (née Kmita): A Time of Changes

The Ksenia Orestovna Gootan (née Kmita) Papers, spanning the years 1895 to 2021, captures two major transitions in Russian history: the shift from the Imperial to the Soviet period and the experience of emigration from Russia. One document in the collection, for instance, quite literally illustrates how the new was built upon the old—a Soviet real estate letterhead overprinted on stamped paper bearing imperial-era watermarks.

Born in the late 1800s into the family of an accomplished naval captain living in the suburbs of St. Petersburg, Ksenia Orestovna witnessed the Revolution and the profound changes it brought. Her first husband, Valentin Mikhailovich Vetrov, was murdered amid the social upheaval of the post-revolutionary period in 1918.  The family endured severe hardships, including shortages of food and employment. Ksenia Orestovna’s eldest daughter, Kira, died as a result of harsh living conditions and poor health. Her second husband, Ivan Adamovich Gootan, was arrested and executed in 1937–1938. Her second daughter, Xenia, died during the Siege of Leningrad in 1942. Meanwhile, Ksenia Orestovna, her son Adam Ivanovich, and daughter-in-law Anna Ivanovna Isakova, were forced to live under German occupation and later driven to Belgium with the retreating German forces. Adding to these sorrows, members of Ksenia Orestovna’s extended family who remained in Russia severed ties with her under Soviet ideological pressure, maintaining that separation until the political changes of the late 1980s. 

Among many photographs in this collection, one image captures a happier moment from the family’s earlier life, before the upheavals that would soon follow—a carefree family enjoying watermelon on a summer day at their country estate.

George Seversky: The “Singing Pilot”

Among the many stories of emigration preserved in the archives is that of George (Georgii Nikolaevich) Seversky, a member of a pioneering aviation family. Photographs preserved in Seversky’s collection, part of the Michael Ryl Papers, offer a fascinating glimpse into the earliest days of aviation in Russia. Many of these images document life at the Gatchina Aviation School, where aspiring pilots learned to fly and tested experimental aircraft designs in an era when aviation was still in its infancy, when crashes and tragic accidents were an ever-present risk.  

One such accident involved George Seversky. On August 5, 1915, while performing a routine flight, his Type XXII N4 airplane lost speed during a turn and crashed into the ground with its engine still running. With multiple injuries and fractures in both legs, Seversky was admitted to a hospital in St. Petersburg. There, unexpectedly, he met his brother Alexander in the same conditions. This situation is described in A.I. Kuprin’s short story Sashka and Yashka. After recovering from his injuries, Seversky returned to active flight service.

His path to emigration led through the Georgian Republic, Constantinople, France, and ultimately the United States. Documents from this period include travel papers such as a passport issued by the Consular Section of the Russian Diplomatic Mission and a Nansen passport issued in France.

Throughout his life, both in Russia and in emigration, Seversky was never without his guitar. He composed and performed songs in small gatherings and on larger stages. In this, George carried on the legacy of his father, Nikolai Prokof’ev, who was also a pilot and a singer performing under the stage name Seversky. Thus, the Prokof’ev family acquired its second surname, and in some of George’s documents, we see the double family name Prokof’ev-Seversky.

For more information about the Seversky family, check our post on Facebook.

Alexandra Stepanovna Markoff Correspondence: Letters from the Cossack Capital

The history of the Cossacks in Russia and in emigration is strongly represented in the Russian History Museum’s archival holdings. The Alexandra Stepanovna Markoff Correspondence, covering the years 1914 to 1929, reveals details of daily Cossack life in the Novocherkassk region, the official capital of the Don Cossacks. The letters include concerns related to horse breeding and wartime experiences. Alexandra Stepanovna’s correspondence with family friends Alexander Tolstoy and General Andrei Vasil’evich Esimontovskii also highlights the emotional dimension of everyday life, with the letters miraculously finding the addressees in constantly changing locations in Russia and abroad.

Evgenii Sergeevich Nagibin’s Diaries: Routes of Emigration

The diaries of the Cossack Evgenii Sergeevich Nagibin, preserved in the Michael Ryl Papers, provide a detailed account of his experiences and those of his fellow Cossacks in exile in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia during the early 1920s, following the Russian Civil War. Initially housed in Cossack military camps in Pančevo, Niš, and other locations, the Cossacks were later employed as border guards on the Yugoslav–Hungarian border. 

When their services were no longer needed due to changing geopolitical circumstances, they were settled in a labor colony at Gorniak Monastery under poor living and working conditions. These records link individual life stories to the broader history of post-World War I Europe.

In this translated diary entry, Nagibin vividly describes both the physical realities of daily life in the labor colony and his personal reflections on the hardships of exile.

18/31 December, 1922, Sunday.

Gorniak Monastery; Petrovac Požarevački

It has been a long time since I last committed my thoughts and feelings to these pages. Today marks the end—according to the New Style calendar—of 1922, a year for which I had held so many hopes and expectations. But not everything came true… May the will of the Almighty be done… And now here we are—the entire Guards Cossack Brigade—stuck in a hole, in this godforsaken monastery, where we work chopping wood.

But let me tell it in order, however briefly.

All expectations that we would be stationed at the border proved unfounded. On October 12th, the quartermasters departed, and on November 2nd, we all did. The entire D.-Lendava colony came out to see us off. We had set out hoping for a better life, only to end up in what we jokingly call “slavery”—our current situation. Fortunately, I did not end up at the monastery—our work site—immediately; General Khripunov had sent me on a special assignment from the town of Zemun (short of Belgrade) to Pančevo to escort M-me. Turoverova. In Pančevo, I collected four field kitchens, tents, and uniforms for our entire brigade and, overcoming great obstacles, delivered them to our destination: the town of Petrovac, 18 kilometers from the Gornjak Monastery. I arrived only on November 16. Upon arrival, I was horrified… The brigade—or rather, the remnants of it, since many Cossacks had scattered in all directions when we left the border for this work—was quartered in a dilapidated monastery building that had previously housed pigs; the overcrowding was hellish, and there was filth everywhere. I admit that, for all my anticipation, I had never imagined a situation like this. Although the surrounding nature is truly wondrous and majestic, it seems to underscore our nightmarish plight.

Amid the collection’s many traces of hardship, a dried leaf—preserved against all odds and signed by a child named Niuta Nagibin, most likely Evgenii’s relative—reminds us that life persists even in the harshest of times.

More Stories Await 

These collections demonstrate the vital role that archival materials play in preserving and deepening our understanding of Russian history. Through recent processing efforts, these resources are now more accessible to researchers, students, and the broader public, ensuring that the stories they contain can continue to inform and inspire. As we continue processing archival collections, preserving them for future generations, and uncovering new stories within them, we look forward to sharing those discoveries with you.

We are deeply grateful to the donors who entrusted the Russian History Museum with the care of these important collections: Anna Olferiev and Alexander Gontscharow, Alla Ryl, Nonna Marincioni, and Michael Markoff George. We also extend our sincere thanks to our supporters, whose generosity makes this work possible.