On 11 May 2022, Igor Vasilievich Sakharov, a leading Russian genealogist, President of the Russian Genealogical Society (RGO), Vice-President of the Russian Genealogical Federation (RFG), First Vice-President of the International Academy of Genealogy (MAG), turned 90.

Igor Vasilievich’s professional and academic biography is inextricably linked with the Russian National Library ((RNL—the former Saltykov-Shchedrin Library, in St. Petersburg), where he has worked since 1964.

• Igor Vasilievich Sakharov Igor Vasilievich Sakharov
• 2022-05-11 Birthday congratulations for I. V. Sakharov 2022-05-11 Birthday congratulations for I. V. Sakharov
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Since the 1980s, Igor Vasilievich Sakharov’s main professional pursuit has been genealogy. In 1987, on his initiative, he organized at the library a running academic seminar called “Genealogy and the History of the Family,” which has continued uninterrupted since its founding even to the present.

Since 1991, Igor Vasilievich has headed without interruption the Russian Genealogical Society, which he helped to revived after years being defunct and which worthily continues the traditions of the Society of the same name that existed during the Russian Empire.

In the 1990s at his suggestion, the Institute for Genealogical Research was established in the Russian National Library (in 2016 it was given the status of a Center), which Igor Vasilyevich continues to head. Over the years, the Russian National Library has become an authoritative center for academic research and methodological innovation in the field of genealogy, recognized as such not only in Russia, but also around the world.

For the past 20 years, since 2002, Igor Vasilievich has been an adviser to the Office of Heraldry in the Chancellery of the Head of the Russian Imperial House, H.I.H. The Grand Duchess Maria of Russia, and continues to participate actively even now in the study of the most complex genealogical and legal issues that arise when considering claims advanced by some of noble descent.

The academic and public activities of Igor Vasilyevich have garnered him many awards and honours, including the gratitude of the President of the Russian Federation for his work as part of the Presidential Council on Heraldry (2007), and the title of Honoured Worker of Culture of the Russian Federation (2008). His outstanding professional achievements were recognized in 2016 with the highest award of the Russian Genealogical Federation: the L. M. Savelov Medal. For his many years of service in the field of Russian genealogy, Igor Vasilievich was awarded several Russian Imperial Orders, including, in 2017, on his 85th birthday, the Order of St. Vladimir III Class.

On now on this, his 90^th birthday, in recognition of his many contributions to Russian academics, the Head of the Russian Imperial House, H.I.H. The Grand Duchess Maria of Russia, has awarded him on 25 April/8 May 2022 the Imperial and Royal Order of St. Stanislaw I Class.

The celebration of Igor Vasilievich Sakharov’s 90^th birthday took place on 11 May in his beloved library. Igor Vasilievich received the heartfelt congratulations of the Director of the Russian National Library of Russia, V. G. Gronsky, many coworkers and colleagues, bibliographers, genealogists and heraldists; and greetings were received and read from the Council of the Russian Geographical Society, the Union for the Revival of Genealogical Traditions, other genealogical societies and centers, the Staraya Basmannaya publishing house (which assembled and published a set of collected works by I. V. Sakharov for the occasion of his birthday), the Russian Nobility Assembly, and the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. (Igor Vasilievich has been a member of its church choir for many decades.)

As instructed by Grand Duchess Maria of Russia, the Head of the Office of Heraldry in H.I.H.’s Chancellery, Stanislaw V. Dumin, read the Decree conferring the Imperial and Royal Order of St. Stanislaw to Igor Vasilievich, and he presented the insignia of the Order to the honorand.

All the members of Her Imperial Highness’s Chancellery warmly extend their congratulations to Igor Vasilievich on his 90^th birthday and on receiving this new Imperial award, and wish him good health, many new creative successes, and God’s unfailing help in all his efforts to support and advance Russian academics and culture.