Chechulin, Nikolai Dmitrievich

Born Nov. 3 (15), 1863, in Cherepovets; died Feb. 14,1927, in the village of Boriso-glebsk, Cherepovets District, Novgorod Province. Soviet Russian historian. Corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1921).

In 1885, Chechulin graduated from the faculty of history and philology of the University of St. Petersburg. Between 1896 and 1915 he was on the staff of the Imperial Public Library; in 1906 he became head of the library’s fine arts department.

Chechulin’s most important works deal with the domestic and foreign policy, social thought, and culture of 18th-century Russia. On the basis of 16th-century pistsovye knigi (systematic com-pendiums of documents pertaining to economic matters), he wrote in 1889 “The Cities of the Muscovite State in the 16th Century”; in 1894 he published Pistsovye Knigi of the Muscovite State. A collection of Old Russian manuscripts assembled by Chechulin is now housed in the Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public Library in Leningrad.