Egunov, Alexander Nikolaevich

Born in the family of the judge of the Khotinsky Zemsky court Nikolai Andreevich Egunov. Because of his unfriendly disposition, his father was unlucky in public service, often moved and ended his career as the Yassky Zemsky Chief, never rising above the rank of provincial secretary . Mother, Julia Antonovna Viranovskaya came from a noble family. She took on the home education of her son, not entrusting this delicate matter to her father.

In 1841 he graduated with honors from the Chisinau Men's Gymnasium. At the end of the gymnasium, he entered the Richelieu Lyceum , from where he transferred to the law faculty of the Imperial Moscow University - for the entire duration of the training course, the Bessarabian nobility granted him a scholarship ^[1] .

In 1848 he graduated from a course at Moscow University with a degree of candidate rights. According to the situation then, Egunov had to return to Bessarabia in order to work out a scholarship in the local government offices. But in July of the same year, the director of the Moscow Main Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Prince M. A. Obolensky, appealed to the leader of the Bessarabian nobility, Ivan Mikhailovich Sturdze, to allow Yegunov to serve six years instead of the Novorossiysk Territory in Moscow . Permission was obtained and he remained in Moscow.

Already in the 8th and 9th issues of the Sovremennik magazine for 1848, Egunov published his first scientific work, “A Look at the Trade of Ancient Rus” - about the history of the Varangian trade route to Constantinople through the settlements of the southwestern tribes of Uglich and Tiverts - in which he expressed doubts about the flowering state of old Russian trade. Soon after the appearance of the article, Egunov was already invited to St. Petersburg . The head of the city departments of the Economic Department’s Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, N. A. Milyutin, had a long conversation with him and persuaded him to do analytical reviews of the statistics coming to the department from the province - “A review of the actions of the Department of Agriculture for 5 years, from 1844 to 1849” was published in 1850 year. At the same time, the “Most Authentic Report of the Minister of the Interior for the First 25th Anniversary of the Reign of Emperor Nicholas I” appeared - Egunov was one of its leading performers.

During these years, Egunov collaborated with N. A. Nekrasov , preparing bibliographic reviews for the Sovremennik and editing texts.

In 1861, with the aim of reforming the Bessarabian Statistical Committee, established in 1835, he was sent to Chisinau . At the first meeting of the committee on February 5, 1862, Egunov was elected manager of committee affairs. The Committee issued three volumes of " Notes of the Bessarabian Regional Statistical Committee " (1864, 1867 and 1868). They represented a valuable source of factual materials characterizing the state of industry and agriculture in Bessarabia during the post-reform period, published statistical information about the monastery, patrimony and peasant lands, about the Bulgarian and German colonies in Bessarabia, about state peasants, etc.

From the position of manager of the Bessarabian Statistical Committee, Egunov was dismissed, at his own request, on May 6, 1880.

After moving to St. Petersburg , he took the position of official of special assignments in the Ministry of State Property and Agriculture . He studied the handicraft industry of the Caucasus region, the peasant farms of the Perm and Vyatka provinces, the oil-producing cooperatives of the Tobolsk, Vladimir and Vologda provinces.

In 1888, he was elected fellow chairman of the department of political economy and agricultural statistics of the Imperial Free Economic Society .

Died on March 15 ( 27 ), 1897 after a short illness (flu and pneumonia). He was buried at the Nikolsky cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra (together with his wife Julia Osipovna, who died on March 27, 1892) ^[2] .

• Egunov, Alexander Nikolaevich // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron : 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
• Alexander Nikolaevich Egunov (neopr.) . Genealogical site of Bessarabia.ru . Date of treatment December 30, 2017.
• Obituary A.N. Egunova // Historical Gazette . - 1897. - T. LXVIII (May).