Readings to Mark the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of I.G. Spassky (1904-1990)

On 11-12 March 2004 public readings were held and an exhibition entitled ‘Curator of the Hermitage’ was opened to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Russian (Soviet) scholar and researcher in numismatics, doctor of history Ivan Georgievich Spassky (1904-1990). The exhibition was jointly organized with the Mint.

Over the course of the second half of the 20th century his impressive and talented works did much to determine the course of the development in our country of an entire branch of scholarship – the systematic study of historical sources. For more than 50 years his intense scholarly and curatorial activity were bound up with the State Hermitage.

The Director of the State Hermitage Mikhail B. Piotrovsky delivered the introductory speech to those attending the readings. Among the participants in the conference were specialists from the Hermitage and also scholars from Moscow, Novosibirsk, Kiev (the Ukraine), and Minsk (Belarus). Their reports dealt with such subjects as the study of medals honoring Spassky; works on the history of the Sign of the Order of the Garter which is kept in the Moscow Kremlin; and the early recipients of the Order of St Andrew , as well as medals and orders which were given out to participants in the Russo-Turkish wars in the 19th century, among others.

I.G. Spassky was born in the Ukraine. In Leningrad University he brilliantly defended his diploma work on Ukrainian folk decorations in the form of coins or ducats. He began his career in the Hermitage as chief of the section on medals. During the 1930’s he was sorely tried: he was arrested on false charges and subsequently spent time in prison camps and exile. He was spared a second arrest by the onset of the war which he spent from beginning to end as a rank-and-file soldier on the Karelian front.

After the war I.G. Spassky returned to the museum where he became the chief curator of the Numismatics Department. In the difficult conditions of the post-war period, when the main task of the Hermitage staff was to re-establish the exhibits and systematic collections of the museum, he found time for scholarly work as well. In 1947 he defended his Candidate’s dissertation and in 1962 his Doctoral dissertation. He was the author of more than a hundred scholarly works.

I.G. Spassky always worked with intense concentration. Acting in his capacity of curator of the department, he personally looked after a huge array of monuments which included not only Russian coins but orders, badges, medals, materials from sphragistics and heraldry. During the 1950 and 1960’s he created a major exhibition of orders and badges and also a display of Russian coins in circulation.

The works of Ivan Georgievich Spassky continue to serve his followers as models of weighty information, originality of scholarly investigation, and brilliant forms of exposition.

Medal in honor of the 70th birthday of I.G. Spassky. Work by N.A. Sokolov, 1974

M.B. Piotrovsky, Director of the Hermitage, opens the exhibition

At the exhibition

The conference at the Hermitage Theater