Исповедь коллекционера (К биографии Ф. Т. Васильева)

The article offers the first publication of the memoirs, now in a private collection, of a well-known numismatist from the city of Kazan F. Vasiliev. A merchant and old-believer, Vasiliev was a thoughtful and devout antiquary who not only accumulated the artifacts but did his best to open them to the academic study: he published the collected manuscripts, studied icon-painting on the materials from his collection, maintained vast scholarly correspondence etc.

Particularly famous among the contemporaries was his numismatic collection. Vasiliev himself wrote several articles related to its best pieces.

Vasiliev was in the foreground of the cultural life of pre-revolutionary Kazan: he developed a long-standing friendship with many of University professors, took part in the activities of scientific societies, donated generously to the University.

The memoirs published in the article, apart from portraying Vasiliev himself, vividly render the very atmosphere in the Russian collectors community in the first half of the 19th – the beginning of the 20th century. The remarkably earnest character of the memoirs makes them an interesting psychological self-study of a collector from the milieu of old-believers revealing his personality, his passions and feelings, his attempts to reconcile his religious views with his enthusiasm of an antiquary.