Obolenskii, Mikhail Andreevich

Born 1805; died Jan. 12 (24), 1873, in St. Petersburg. Prince; historian and archivist.

As the director of the Moscow Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1840 to 1873, Obolenskii collected many written and material sources on Russian history, chiefly of the 16th and 17th centuries. He published several chronicles and collections of sources, including Foreign Works and Documents Relating to Russia (vols. 1–4, 1847–48), Book on the Election as Tsar of the Great Sovereign and Great Prince Mikhail Fedorovich (1856), and Letters of the Russian Sovereigns and Other Members of the Tsar’s Family (vols. 1861–62). Between 1838 and 1859 he published 12 issues of the Collection of Prince Obolenskii, containing historical documents, some from the Moscow Archive and some from his private collection. A bibliography of his works was published in the journal Russkaia starina (1873, no. 2).