Sergei Belokurov

Born Sept. 1 (13), 1862; died Dec. 3, 1918. Russian historian and student of early texts. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences (1903).

From 1886 through 1918, Belokurov worked in the Moscow Main Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and he studied primarily the history of Russian social and cultural life during the 16th and 17th centuries. He was an active member of the Moscow Society of History and Russian Antiquities. He was the author of the monographs Arsenii Sukhanov (parts 1–2, 1891–93) and About the Library of the Muscovite Rulers in the 16th Century (1898); in the latter work Belokurov denied the possibility of the existence of a library belonging to Ivan IV the Terrible, hidden somewhere in the caches of the Kremlin. In his books Materials for a History of Russia (1888) and The Spiritual Life of 17th-Century Moscow Society (1902) and in the collection The Relations of Russia with the Caucasus, 1578–1613 (vol. 1, 1889), Belokurov published valuable manuscript remains of the 16th and 17th centuries.