On March 27, 1940 the Hermitage received a parcel from the Bashkir town of Belebey sent by N. Shchekatikhin. Nikolai Shchekatikhin (1896–1940), an eminent art scholar who was among the fi rst to study the art and culture of Byelorussia, was arrested on false accusation in 1930 and exiled to Bashkiria. Repeated arrests, the hardships of exile and the severe climate lead to his premature death. Unable to engage in active scholarly activities, he continued to work on the materials he had collected. In 1937 he sent to the Hermitage his “Topography of Hoards with Lithuanian Coins on the Territory of the Old Lithuanian State”, acknowledged by his colleagues as an important contribution to the Lithuanian archaeology. At the approach of his death Shchekatikhin sent to the museum his collection of official stamps, stamp impressions and official book-plates, as well as the manuscript entitled “Lithuanian Coins before the Lublin Union of 1569”, which made the first part of his “Survey of the History of Lithuanian Coins in the 16th and 17th Centuries”.
The archive of the State Hermitage and the Numismatics Department possess the correspondence and official documents related to the acquisition of Shchekatikhin’s collection. The publication of these documents in the present article adds important details to the collector’s biography
