Knyazhetskaya, Ekaterina Andreevna

Ekaterina Andreevna Knyazhetskaya (nee Baumgart) was born in 1900, in the town of Rossiena of the Coven province (now the city of Raseiniai , Lithuania ). She lived in St. Petersburg (Petrograd). Her father, Andrei Nikolaevich Baumgart (1861-1921), served as a clerk in the Peasant Bank .

After the February and October revolutions of 1917 , and especially with the outbreak of the Civil War, life in Petrograd was associated with great hardships. In 1918, Knyazhetskaya graduated from high school and entered the historical and literary department of the Pedagogical Institute, but was soon forced to leave classes. After the death of Uncle Mikhail Nikolaevich Baumgart (1865-1918), she alone had to support her sick father, mother and younger sister. Since 1918 she worked as a statistician in the card bureau of the Food Administration in Petrograd. In 1921, after her marriage and the birth of her son Sergei, as well as the death of her father that followed that same year, she left her job.

Her husband, Mikhail Nikolaevich Knyazhetsky (1880-1932), was fond of reading and bookwork from childhood, had his own collection of books, manuscripts, documents, prints, which he managed to save during his many travels, wars and social upheavals, having lost all other property . In 1925-1930 he worked at the Public Library. He died after a long illness with acute form of tuberculosis ^[1] .

In 1928, Knyazhetskaya entered the Higher Courses of Library Studies at the State Public Library . After completing the Courses in 1930, she was appointed head of the library of the Financial Academy, but in the same year she moved to work as a senior librarian at the Leningrad Engineering Institute . In 1931 she entered part-time head of the library of the Leningrad Hydrotechnical Institute . After the Engineering and Hydrotechnical Institutes joined the Leningrad Industrial Institute in 1934, Knyazhetskaya began working there as the head of the library of the Hydrotechnical Faculty (until 1936).

In September 1934, Knyazhetskaya got a part-time job at the Library of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (BAS) - the head of the library of the Physicotechnical Institute , where she worked until August 1943. In this position, Knyazhetskaya showed excellent organizational and administrative abilities, persistence in achieving her goal, which was noted in its characteristic, signed by academician A.F. Ioffe .

After the outbreak of World War II , during the ensuing blockade of Leningrad , Knyazhetskaya remained in the besieged city. Since September 2, 1943 she began working as chief librarian in the II branch of the Public Library, where she began to participate in the creation of the collection "Leningrad in the Great Patriotic War". In the spring of 1944, her son Sergei, who fought at the front, was seriously wounded, and in April 1944 the library management provided her with a business trip to Kineshma , where he was being treated in an evacuation hospital . In August 1944, she with great difficulty managed to bring her son, who became an invalid, to Leningrad. In October 1944, she returned to work as chief librarian at the BAS, head of the library of the Physicotechnical Institute, and resigned from the Public Library on December 7, 1944.

From 1936 to 1941 and from 1945 to 1951, a monthly bibliography of the latest Russian and foreign special literature was published monthly in the Journal of Technical Physics under the editorship of Knyazhetskaya. In 1951 she moved to work as a senior editor in the Scientific and Bibliographic Department of the BAS. Here she was involved in organizing acquisition and processing of books for libraries along the construction route of the Turkmen canal . In the future, after the collapse of the economic system of the Gulag , this construction was discontinued.

In the process of this multifaceted work, Knyazhetskaya became interested in geographical literature and prepared a unique bibliographic index “Western Uzboy ” (published in 1956). When working on the index, she made several important discoveries that have been recognized by professional geographic scientists.

In October 1954, Knyazhetskaya was elected a full member of the All-Union Geographical Society . She has always been an indispensable participant in meetings and conferences organized by society, and has authored numerous historical and geographical articles in Izvestia VGO. The main topic of her research interests were Russian geographical discoveries of the XVIII century , mainly the Petrine era , cartography of this period.

Simultaneously with active scientific activity in the Geographical Society, Knyazhetskaya worked in her main profile in various libraries of the BAS network. In 1956 she went to work in the library of the Leningrad House of Scientists , in 1963 - in the library of the Institute of Physiology named after I.P. Pavlov . There, she worked as a senior editor until retiring in March 1967.

She died in Leningrad in February 1986. She was buried at the Nikolsky cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra , in the family fence of the Baumgartov and Knyazhetsky. A granite cross is installed on the pedestal above the graves ^[2] .

• Shafranovsky K.I. , Knyazhetskaya E.A. Maps of the Caspian and Aral Seas compiled as a result of the expedition of Alexander Bekovich-Cherkassky in 1715 // Izvestiya VGO. 1952. No. 6.
• Shafranovsky K.I., Knyazhetskaya E.A. On maps of Kara-Bugaz-Gol Bay in the first half of the 18th century // Izvestiya AN SSSR. Geographical series. 1955. No. 4.
• Knyazhetskaya E. A. Literature on the Western Uzboy , 1714-1950: Bibliogr. Index / Ed. K. I. Shafranovsky ; Acad. Sciences Turkmen. SSR. B-ka Acad. sciences of the USSR. - Ashgabat: Acad. Sciences Turkmen. SSR, 1956. - 136 p. - 1,000 copies.
• About the reasons for the election of Peter I as a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences // Izvestiya VGO. 1960. No. 2.
• Knyazhetskaya E. A. The fate of one card (about the geographer A. Bekovich-Cherkassky ) / E. A. Knyazhetskaya; Foreword Dr. geogr. Sciences B.A. Fedorovich ; Artist A. E. Skorodumov . - M .: Thought , 1964 .-- 120 p. - (Geographical Series). - 25,000 copies. (region)
• The first Russian shootings of Western Siberia // Izvestiya VGO. 1966. No. 4.
• A drawing of the path of the Cossack Fedor Skibin from Tobolsk to the Cossack Horde, 1697 // Izvestiya VGO. 1969. No. 2.
• When Ust-Kamenogorsk was founded // News of VGO. 1969. No. 1.
• New on the map of the Caspian Sea by K.P. Verden and F.I.Soymonov // News of VGO. 1970. No. 3.
• The beginning of Russian-French scientific relations // French Yearbook. 1972 . - M .: Nauka, 1974.- 352 p.
• Knyazhetskaya E. A. Peter I - organizer of research on the Caspian Sea // Questions of the geography of the Petrine time: Collection of articles / Ed. M. I. Belova ; Geographical Society of the USSR. - L .: Gidrometeoizdat , 1975 .-- 80 p.

• Borodaev V. B. Russian military expeditions to the origins of the Irtysh in 1715-1720 and creating a map of the Upper Irtysh region // Socio-economic and ethnocultural processes in the Upper Irtysh region in the XVII-XX centuries: Collection of materials of an international scientific conference. - Novosibirsk: Parallel, 2011 .-- S. 12-17.

• NLR employees - workers of science and culture: Knyazhetskaya Ekaterina Andreevna
• Alexander Nevsky Lavra - Necropolis: Knyazhetskaya Ekaterina Andreevna