During 22-23 November the State Hermitage’s Menshikov Palace division provided the venue for the latest annual conference on “Personalities of Peter the Great’s Age.”

Among the conference participants were speakers from St Petersburg, Moscow and other cities around the Russian Federation: staff from the State Hermitage, the St Petersburg Institute of History (Russian Academy of Sciences), St Petersburg University, the Institute of the History of Material Culture (Russian Academy of Sciences), the Russian State Archive of Ancient Documents (Moscow), the Research Institute of the Theory and History of the Arts (Moscow), the S.I. Vavilov Institute of the History of Natural Science and Technology (Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow), the A.M. Gorky Urals State University (Yekaterinburg), and the State Museum of the Karelian Region (Petrozavodsk).

The main topic of the conference was the life and work of A.D. Menshikov. E.A. Andreeva shed light on Menshikov’s role in the creation of the Ingermanland Province. T.A. Lapteva and M.V. Nikolaeva reported on new archival materials concerning the possessions of A.D. Menshikov in Moscow and the Moscow administrative district (uezd). P.A. Krotov devoted his report to the image of Menshikov in the Tales of Peter the Great which were compiled by the son of a turner in Peter’s service, A.A. Nartov. Several of the reports dealt with the history of Menshikov’s homes in St Petersburg and Kronstadt. À.Å. Gunich introduced new information about the history of the planning and construction of Menshikov’s palace in Kronstadt. O.S. Andreeva and I.V. Saverkina devoted their reports to the history of Menshikov’s palace on Vasilievsky Island following the exile of the illustrious prince. V.V. Meshcheryakov described the present-day work of the Menshikov Palace division of the Hermitage and the creation of a collection of ovens for interior heating and oven ceramics.

Other reports at the conference dealt with the architect N.F. Gerbel (A.A. Morozova), the palace of Tsarevich Alexei (O.G. Ageeva), the triumphs (E.A. Tyukhmeneva), city fires (T.A. Bazarova), and Petersburg burial places (P.E. Sorokin).

M.V. Babich, E.V. Gusareva, and M.Yu. Dankova devoted their reports to A.P. Gannibal and other participants of the Petrine reforms.

The texts of the reports have been published in a volume entitled Personalities of Peter the Great’s Age. Materials of a Scholarly Conference, St Petersburg, Publishing House of the State Hermitage, 2005.