Personal correspondence of Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich Romanov available on Presidential Library's portal

The electronic collection of the Presidential Library has been enriched with the correspondence of Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich Romanov (1859–1919), historian, entomologist, public figure, and honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. He was also the chairman of the Imperial Russian Historical Society, the Imperial Geographical Society, and the Society for the Protection and Preservation of Monuments of Art and Antiquity. This year marks the 165th anniversary of his birth.

Like the last emperor of Russia, Grand Duke Nikolai belonged to the House of Romanov. He was the grandson of Emperor Nicholas I through his fourth son.

Nikolai Mikhailovich was born in Tsarskoye Selo in 1859. According to family tradition, he became a military man and distinguished himself in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, where he was awarded for his bravery. Later, he graduated from the Nikolaev Academy of General Staff and rose to the rank of General of Infantry. In 1903, he was appointed Adjutant General to Nicholas II's entourage and resigned the same year.

The Grand Duke was passionate about entomology and had one of the largest private collections of butterflies. His work on the history of Russia during the first quarter of the 19th century, during the reign of Emperor Alexander I, gained him great fame, especially for his focus on the growth of Russian society's self-awareness.

Nikolai Mikhailovich played a significant role as one of the organizers of the 1905 exhibition of Russian portraits in St. Petersburg, where the exhibits were mainly sourced from private collections. One of his letters, preserved in the Presidential Library's collection, is closely linked to this event.

The letter is addressed to Alexandra Alekseevna Chicherina. Nikolai Mikhailovich writes that in the future, 1905, a historical and artistic exhibition of Russian portraits (from 1705 to 1905) will be organized in favor of the widows and orphans of soldiers who fell in battle, and in this regard, he requests that you kindly send four portraits by Borovikovsky to the exhibition. The author of the letter further informs that the exhibition will be open from February to April 1905 in St. Petersburg, in the halls of the Tauride Palace, and promises: "After the exhibition closes, the portraits will be immediately delivered back to you."

Nikolai Mikhailovich's active social engagement can be gauged by a letter dated May 25, 1916, written to him by Elena Vasilyevna Ponomareva. She was the author of a report titled Labor Exchange, published in St. Petersburg in 1907. In the letter, she requests that the Grand Duke appeal to city dumas and provincial zemstvos to create bureaus or exchanges for labor supply and demand in Russia.

The letter states that after the abolition of serfdom, masses of people rushed across the Russian countryside in search of work. They traveled for hundreds of miles only to find that there was no work available or that it had already been taken by others.

More information about Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich Romanov, a man with a tragic fate who loved Russia deeply, is available in the collection House of Romanov. The Zemsky Sobor of 1613. In this collection, the section on Nikolai Mikhailovich (1859-1919) includes biographical information, details about his membership in various organizations, his roles as a trustee and patron of institutions, as well as his essays.