Mikluha, Nikolay Ilyich

Nikolai Ilyich Mikluha was a grandson of the Cossack Stepan Mikluha, who received the hereditary nobility and the rank of cornet for his feat during the capture of the Turkish fortress Ochakov .

Born in 1818 in Starodub . In 1835, he graduated from the Nezhinsky Lyceum and, having left for St. Petersburg, entered the Institute of the Corps of Railway Engineers , which he graduated brilliantly in 1840 (second on the list).

One of the first works of the young engineer was a project to connect the Volga and the Moscow River .

Nikolaev Railway

The crown of his career and the main life of N.I. Miklukhi was the construction of the first main railway in Russia . The engineer worked on the Novgorod sections of the route, they were considered the most difficult. He coped with the work brilliantly, ahead of the pace of his colleagues. Perhaps this was facilitated by the humanism and democracy of Mikluha in relations with the oppressed “working people” .

In 1844, he married Ekaterina Semenovna Becker. Unlike his fellow engineers, Nikolai Ilyich lived at the construction site (sometimes even in tents) with his family.

Since 1851, Nikolai Ilyich Mikluha, then a rank of engineer-captain, was appointed to the responsible post of chief of the main station in the empire of Nikolaev (now Moscow) station in St. Petersburg. He received this position, having proved himself an outstanding organizing engineer during the construction of the road. In this position, he participated in the opening of the road by sending the August train, in which Nicholas I and his servant, the chief of the railways, Count P. A. Kleinmichel, went from St. Petersburg to Moscow .

He lived at the station - his apartment was in the station building, also there were offices of station employees, the railway department, apartment buildings for employees, and imperial premises ^[2] .

He did not live long in St. Petersburg: in 1856 he was dismissed from his post and almost arrested because, in order to ease the fate of Taras Shevchenko , he sent him 150 rubles of exile ^[3] . After that, Nikolai Ilyich did not live long: he undermined his health on the laying of a steel highway through the swamps of the Novgorod region, in January 1858, at the age of forty, he fell ill with consumption and died.

The wife of the deceased, E.S. Becker, managed to give all five children a higher education.

There is a legend that there was a moment when he was on the verge of starvation, and he was saved by a chance meeting with A. K. Tolstoy , who was a fellow countryman of Miklukh and helped him survive ^[3] .

Father: Cossack Ilya Stepanovich Mikluha participated in the war of 1812 , being an officer in the Nizov regiment, and rose to the rank of prime minister , was seriously wounded in the battle of Berezin , and then resigned ^[3] . His family had three sons, of whom Nikolai was the youngest and most gifted.

Wife: Ekaterina Semenovna Becker - daughter of the hero of the Patriotic War of 1812, Colonel Semyon Becker . Their kids:

• Sergei Mikluha (1845–1895) was a lawyer , in 1886–1894 he was a district magistrate (3rd district, the city of Malin , Radomysl Uyezd , Kiev province ), had the rank of civil (civil) college secretary .
• Nikolay Miklouho-Maclay (1846-1888) - ethnographer , traveler.
• Olga Mikluha (1849-1881) - was engaged in porcelain art painting. She was in a civil marriage with George Fedorovich Shtendman. She died at the birth of her son Mikhail (nicknamed Michael the Younger), who was subsequently adopted by her grandmother Ekaterina Semenovna. ^[4] Mikhail was married to Nadezhda Mikhailovna Tarnovskaya .
• Vladimir Mikluha (1853-1905) - naval officer , heroically died in the Tsushima naval battle .
• Mikhail Mikluha (1856-1927) - geologist , Narodovolets .

Surname history

The distant ancestors of Miklukh were from Zaporizhzhya Cossacks. When Bogdan Khmelnitsky raised Ukraine to war with the Poles in 1648, Miklukh was one of the first to stand under the banner of the hetman. They fought bravely next to Bogdan, and in the famous battle of the Yellow Waters , a Cossack distinguished himself from the Starodub regiment by the name of Miklukh, whose name was Gritsko.

As the old family tradition says, Miklukho-Maklaev, which has survived to this day, Gritsko captured the Scottish nobleman Michael Maclay, who, by poverty, had hired the Polish army. MacLai took root in the Miklouh family and later became related with them, marrying his sister Gritsko Gann. In order to get married, Michael had to convert to Orthodoxy. From the combination of the two surnames a new one arose - Miklouho-Maklai. But the Cossacks continued to be called simply Miklukhs and only in the second half of the 19th century Nikolai Nikolayevich Mikluha (the son of the head of the station), as a student abroad, returned the surname to the full spelling - Miklouho-Maclay.

Despite the fact that they became related to the Scottish knight, Miklukhs remained rank-and-file Cossacks in the 18th century . At the end of the century, one of Miklukh, Stepan, participated in the Russo-Turkish war of 1787-1792 . He distinguished himself in the capture of troops under the leadership of A.V. Suvorov, the strongest Turkish fortress Ochakov . Stepan was the first to climb the wall and put up a banner there, and for his feat he received the rank of cornet , and was soon granted by P.S. Potemkin by the nobility and the material and legal situation somewhat changed. True, the nobility did not add much wealth to the Miklukh family, they still remained not rich, only they acquired a new farm near Starodub.

However, the "Scottish legend" is not confirmed by any official documents. Nikolai Nikolayevich himself signed the double surname Miklucho-Maclay for the first time in the fall of 1867 under an article in the “Sulakhia Swim Bladder Rudiment” in the Jena Journal of Medicine and Natural History. The word “Maclay” comes, possibly, from “Makhlai” - a surname worn by one of the ancestors of the Miklukho clan. “Makhlai” can be a modified form of the word “ malakhai ” ( treuh , hat with ear flaps). This makes it possible to more broadly interpret the origin of the surname.

In 1998, biographer N. A. Butinov proposed another version. In May 1867, on his return from the Canary Islands, Nikolai Nikolaevich named the new type of sponges Guancha blanca he discovered, and according to tradition added the abbreviated surname of the discoverer (Mcl) to this name. He was burdened by his prestigious Cossack surname and origin, having hardly achieved reckoning with the hereditary nobility (only by the efforts of the mother of Nikolai Nikolaevich after the death of his father - Nikolai Ilyich). Double surnames were characteristic of many famous noble families.

At the same time, the question of the origin of the second part of the surname is still not fully closed.

• Stolitsin V. "Nikolai Ilyich Mikluha" // "Lenin's Way." - July 17, 1986