The man who did so much for Russian science, who wrote with such animation and talent about things that were close to the mind and feelings of the thinking people of Russia, was forgotten by Russian society almost at the moment when the coffin of the deceased was lowered into the grave. A few years after his death, it took a lot of effort to get even the most brief information about him.

M. I. Sukhomlinov.

The name of Ivan Nikitich Boltin for researchers of the XVIII century is primarily associated with works on the history of Russia, but the beginning of his life was quite far from historiography. I. N. Boltin was born in early 1735 (information about the date of his birth is contradictory) in the family estate - the village of Zhdanov, Alatyr district. The Boltin family goes back to an old noble family and traces its history back to Murza Kutlubag, a native of the Great Horde, who moved to Russia in the XV century, was baptized and received the name George, and his son was nicknamed Bolt.

I. N. Boltin's ancestors distinguished themselves in the military and diplomatic service, his father was a steward and owned very extensive landowners ' lands with hundreds of serfs in the Nizhny Novgorod, Alatyr, Arzamas and Murom counties. I. N. Boltin received his primary education at home, as befits noble children. It consisted of Russian literacy, reading, writing, arithmetic, and French. After studying at home, he completed his education in the Land Gentry Corps.

In 1751, I. N. Boltin entered military service in the Horse Guards, in which the flower of Russian noble youth was then serving.

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The government sought to accept into the guard noblemen of birth and wealth, and appearance was also important for admission. He served there for eighteen years and rose to the rank of Prime Major. (Perhaps it was in the army that he became a freemason and joined the lodge of R. L. Vorontsov.) I. N. Boltin's rapprochement with his colleague G. A. Potemkin also dates back to the same period.

From the Guard, he was assigned by the director of customs near Kiev, in the provincial town of Vasilkov on the Russian-Polish border, where he served for about four years. Here I. N. Boltin got the opportunity to supplement his education by reading books, studying geography and partly history. Two books written by him in Ukraine on the description of the Kiev and Chernihiv governorates testified to his interest in ancient architectural monuments. Boltin's further professional career was helped by his friendly relations with G. A. Potemkin, who appreciated his intelligence and talents in the state and literary fields. In turn, I. N. Boltin sympathized with Potemkin as a statesman.

I. N. Boltin was not in good health and often took vacations for medical treatment at the Sarepta, i.e. Tsaritsyn, healing waters. As a result of these trips, he compiled a kind of guide to the local places "Chorography of the Sarepta springs".

On the call of G. A. Potemkin to help with the development of the Crimea - the newly joined region to Russia - I. N. Boltin also went there. In 1781, he returned to military service and became a prosecutor at the Military Collegium, whose president was G. A. Potemkin. Five years later, he was awarded the rank of Major General and was elected a member of the military college, where he worked until his death, managing its treasury. In all official positions, I. N. Boltin was distinguished by hard work and conscientiousness. He combined his successful career with his work as a full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

While living in St. Petersburg, he significantly expanded the circle of his acquaintances: V. K. Trediakovsky, M. V. Lomonosov, A. P. Sumarokov often visited his house. In St. Petersburg, I. N. Boltin significantly supplemented the shortcomings of his home education mainly by reading and learning languages. The way he read books is great. For him, this was a real job: with a pencil in his hand, he marked the most important places and made extracts.

Among his contemporaries, I. N. Boltin quite deservedly enjoyed the fame of an expert in Russian history, although all his work on accumulating historical and other information was conducted, in fact, not for any specific purpose, but simply out of his own curiosity. I. N. Boltin was well aware of Russian life in the provinces, including peasant life. Being a large landowner, he traveled a lot on his estates, which were located in different Russian provinces.

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And if for some such journeys would have been a heavy duty, then for Boltin it was another great opportunity to acquire knowledge. In his papers, later descriptions of folk rituals, costumes, and everyday life were found; he also wrote down dialect words and expressions.: "As for the works of Russian literature, ancient, ancient and modern, Boltin's acquaintance with them extended to the most extensive limits that were possible in the state of our education at that time." I. N. Boltin was also well-read in contemporary European literature, considering the works of Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau to be its highest manifestation.

The works of many scientists and writers of the XVIII century testify to the emergence of interest in Russian history. Catherine II was no stranger to this. While working on her historical notes, she used the advice of I. N. Boltin to explain the dark places in the annals. She also submitted her dramatic works on the subjects of Russian history to him for trial. Catherine II's play from the reign of Rurik was published accompanied by Boltin's commentaries, which were equal to, if not greater than, the composition.

In 1784, the Natural, Moral, Civil, and Political History of Ancient and Modern Russia by a certain Leclerc was published in Paris. A native of France, where he served as a doctor, Leclerc often came to Russia, lived here for a long time, serving as a doctor, then a professor at the Academy of Arts, then an inspector of hospitals in Moscow. Not having, apparently, sufficient education and knowledge, Leclerc undertook, nevertheless, to write a book about Russia. It made a heavy impression on many people. Boltin's opponent, Prince Shcherbatov, wrote that " when he opened Leclerc's book, he immediately saw a ridiculous mixture of unfair accusations against Russia and lies." Potemkin considered this book a cruel insult to our national dignity.

I. N. Boltin also read Leclerc's book, apparently making critical notes for himself on almost every line of it. "I made notes for my own pleasure, having been accustomed from my youth, reading every book, to notice and write out passages worthy of notes." Friends, including A. I. Musin-Pushkin, advised him to publish them. They turned out to be two volumes of notes, for which, in fact, the composition of Leclerc's "impudent slanderer and a real liar" was only an external push and reason for the work of I. N. Boltin. In it, he showed his understanding of historical facts and striving primarily for truthfulness, revealed the negative attitude of Leclerc, like many foreigners, to Russia, ignorance of its history, as well as the Russian language.

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Interesting are the incorrect translations of Russian stable expressions and proverbs made by Leclerc revealed by I. N. Boltin: he conveys the red maiden as femme tres rouge (literally translated as a very red woman), a warrior is at war, and his wife is grieving at home - tandis que militaire combat, sa femme brule la maison (while a warrior is at war, his wife is at war). burns down the house), etc. In his research, I. N. Boltin went back to those prehistoric times that are currently subject only to etymology among the philological sciences. But even then, more than two hundred years ago, his attention to the word and the breadth of scientific knowledge allowed him to draw conclusions about the relationship between Russian and words that came from other languages. When interpreting the meanings of words taken from written monuments, he relied, where possible, on foreign-language lexemes: vir'nik found akin to the Finnish vero "submit, levy", cattle-to the Swedish scatt "submit, treasury"; votolyana "scroll" - to the Finnish wuota "uncultivated skin". He was the first to draw attention to the distinctive feature of the Russian language, which was later called polnoglasie. His work "Notes on the history of ancient and modern Russia by G. Leclerc" was published in 1788 by the highest order of Catherine P. It was highly appreciated by both contemporaries and historians of a later era. S. M. Solovyov wrote that this is "the first work on Russian history, in which one main idea is carried out, in which there is one general view of the whole course of history."

Three more books on Russian history were written by I. N. Boltin in a dispute with M. M. Shcherbatov (also the author of a work on Russian history). I. N. Boltin, together with I. P. Elagin and A. I. Musin-Pushkin, owns the first edition of the extensive editorial board of Russkaya Pravda with extensive and detailed comments, with the use of material from various sources. The author of these comments was I. N. Boltin. He also translated the monument. The historian N. V. Kalachov believed that this publication can be called an exemplary one. A. I. Musin-Pushkin I. N. Boltin helped to translate the "Teachings of Vladimir Monomakh".

I. N. Boltin became a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1783. At that time, he did not have time to publish his main works on history, but he was already known in society as a connoisseur of Russian antiquities. Participating in the compilation of the Dictionary of the Russian Academy of Sciences, he was part of the department that developed the rules for compiling the Dictionary. The main thing he insisted on was that the Dictionary should be alphabetical. J. K. Groth wrote on this occasion: "Time has proved the correctness of this judgment. Dashkova and most of the members of the Academy, contrary to Boltin, preferred the root-letter order; but after that they turned to alphabetical order." I. N. Boltin advocated the inclusion of proper names in the Dictionary, at least the most common ones. Regarding the words of foreign languages, he believed that it is necessary to introduce the terms of crafts, sciences and arts, and

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also, that compilers should focus not only on the Moscow dialect, but also take all regional words. The Academy did not agree with these proposals. Verbs, according to his suggestion, are presented in the Dictionary in the present tense.

The advice of I. N. Boltin was especially useful in the department that reviewed the preliminary works of the compilers, mainly of the first three parts. He took it upon himself to explain some difficult words to understand, especially those that were taken from written monuments: Cossack, molitsa ("the pulp of a tree eaten by worms"). Given that the Dictionary was word-derived, explaining the origin of the word and the meaning of its root was extremely important for compilers (for example, reasoning about the root-cres - in the words to resurrect-to resurrect). In addition, I. N. Boltin compiled the third part of the Dictionary and supplemented it with words extracted from various ancient books.

I. N. Boltin also took part in other works of the Russian Academy. Together with I. I. Lepekhin and S. Ya. Rumovsky, he examined the rules of Russian spelling written by V. Grigoriev.

The Russian Academy's Medal Committee highly appreciated his work, awarding him a gold medal in 1786. In his speech, I. I. Lepekhin, when awarding I. N. Boltin, said that he "gave his notes many useful tips for the perfection of the dictionary employees; participated in the committee reviewing the works of writers, and reported to the Academy written words from many books of the church, as the fruit of his long-term labors; helped and will help in the serviceability of the publication of the dictionary".

After the death of I. N. Boltin from consumption in 1792, his papers, which amounted to up to a hundred bundles of extracts, as well as a small collection of manuscripts, were bought by Catherine II and presented to A. I. Musin-Pushkin, in whose Moscow house they died during the fire of 1812.

The Russian Academy decided to decorate the hall of academic meetings with a portrait of I. N. Boltin, specially painted for this purpose. Other portraits of academicians were also placed in this meeting hall.

Ivan Nikitich Boltin was buried in the cemetery of the Alexander Lavra, but in the middle of the XIX century the monument on his grave was destroyed. However, the epitaph of an unknown author, published in one of their magazines, has been preserved.

Boltin is buried here: Loving the Russian word,
He gave him strength and superiority.;
From antiquity the veil was lifted by his hand,
Looking for treasures to benefit the language;
He is our chronicle, jealous of many summers,
Out of the darkness he plucked for good and for light.

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