Biography

Alexander Georgievich Mosyakin (Александр Георгиевич Мосякин) is a descendant of the Terek Cossacks on his paternal side. He was born, grew up and studied in the city of Grozny – the oldest centre for the extraction and processing of oil. This circumstance has largely determined the choice of his first profession. In 1975 he graduated from the Faculty of Geological Survey of the oldest oil university in the USSR – the Grozny State Oil Technical University named after its eminent alumnus Mikhail Dmitrievich Millionshchikov, with specialization in the hydrogeology of oil and gas accumulations. He has completed a course in military at education at the university – ВУС 0601 (1110006) — defense from the weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical and bacteriological weapons) and military field course, so that he could have served in the army as officer, but he preferred to work as geologist instead.

He was sent by allotment to the Checheno-Ingush geological survey party in the city of Argun of the North Caucasian Geological Administration, where for a while he worked on the survey of mineral and thermal waters in Northern Caucasus. For a while, he worked as specialist in Kazakhstan, and later he worked on the use of underground waters in national economy at the research institutes of oil and gas industry of the USSR in Grozny and Stavropol.

In 1981, he began distance studies at the Faculty of Theory and History of Art and Architecture of Leningrad Institute of Art, Sculpture and Architecture named after I. E. Repin (now St-Petersburg State Academic Institute of Art, Sculpture and Architecture named after I. E. Repin), which he graduated in 1986. [1].

In 1983, he started working at the Checheno-Ingush Museum of Art named after P. Z. Zakharov and expert at the Ministry of Culture of the Checheno-Ingush Autonomous Republic.

From 1983 to 1987 he was part of the personnel of the Ministry of Culture of the Checheno-Ingush ASSR, and, as part of his official duties, was responsible for the state-paid accounting and storage of the church treasures of Northern Caucasus, including the treasures of the Church of Michael the Archangel in Grozny.

He began to publish his works in local and central press since the mid1980s. Thus, he worked as contractual correspondent of the Social Industry newspaper, publishing in the genre of journalist study. While preparing material about the building of the Kronstadt Dam, he made acquaintance with the chairman of the Soviet Cultural Fund D. S. Likhachev, who helped him to gain accessed to closed special archives, and he began to work on the theme of treasures relocated as a result of the world calamities and the politics. The outcome of this study was published in 1989-1991 and represented the first USSR study about the 1920-30s’ sales of the Russian cultural heritage by the Soviet government: the treasures of national museums (the Hermitage Museum and the former imperial residences near St. Petersburg), the Gokhran and the Diamond Fund, the church treasures and the property of national libraries. These publications gained wide public resonance and introduced a new direction in the USSR historical studies on the issue of relocated cultural-historical treasures, which later became quite popular. [2].

At the end of the 1980s he married and came to Riga. From 1996 onwards, he published in newspapers the Sovietskaya Molodezh, the Telegraf, the Subbota, the Chas as well as in  journals – the Baltic Course, the Career, the EVA and others. Later on, he worked in the Biznes & Baltya newspaper for several years as the head of the international department and then as editor of its business site. At the same time, he did thorough archival research, collecting materials about relocated objects of cultural-historical heritage, including such valuables as gold, in the context of the world history, which enabled him to take a glimpse behind the scenes of historical events and write several books on the theme.

In 2013, he left journalism and started to write books while working at the Institute of System-Strategic Analysis in Moscow, directed by A. I. Fursov, which resulted in the publication of two of his books and analytic studies. He is actively engaged in teaching, lecturing and meeting readers, students and professional audiences [3].

Awards

Alexander Mosyakin received the award of the Ogoniok journal in 1989 for this publication “Sale” [4] and the price of the English media corporation Maxwell Communication in 1991 for his publication “Antiquarian Export Fund in the Our Heritage journal. He was nominated for the Golden Pen of the Baltics prize in 1997.

Family

Alexander Mosyakin graduated from Grozny Secondary School Nr. 2 and spent half of his life in the city, where his parents lived and worked. His father was the veteran of the Second World War and at the end of his life worked as construction engineer, while his mother taught mathematics at Grozny Secondary School Nr. 1. Alexander Georgievich managed to save his parents from certain death in 1994 by taking them out of Grozny, which was in the clutches of a military conflict, to St. Petersburg, where his sister lived.

The writer is married to Ludmila Mosyakina, and they have a grown-up daughter Ekaterina.

Notes

1.         ↑ The supervisor of A. G. Mosyakin’s course and diploma research about the art of Rembrandt was the war hero and corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Art, senior scientific employee and member of the Academic Council of the State Hermitage N. N. Nikulin (Н. Н. Никулин) (1923—2009), who in the 1970s wrote Memories of War [Воспоминания о войне], a book that is terrifying in its realistic rendering of life in the trenches. The book was published two years before the author’s death and made headlines in the military autobiographic literature. Alexander Georgievich often visited Nikulin at his home, where one of the rooms had a large photograph dated to 1941 and showing the Soviet infantry marching to death through a burning barley field, listening to Nikulin’s war stories. The teacher presented his student with a signed copy of his classical study The Golden Age of the Dutch Painting [Золотой век нидерландской живописи], and the book is preserved in A. G. Mosyakin’s private library.

2.         ↑ Pribylskaya, L. B. (Прибыльская Л. Б.) “По золотому следу” [Following the Golden Track] // Бизнес-Класс : журнал [journal the Business Class] — 2019. — October (№ 2). — pp. 42—48. — ISSN 1691-0362

3.         ↑ Mark Guriev (Марк Гурьев). Alexander Mosyakin (Александр Мосякин). Судьба золота Российской империи в срезе истории. 1880-1922. [The Fortunes of the Russian Imperial Gold at the Section of History. 1880-1922-] delfi.lv (19 October 2017).

4.         ↑ See: Ogoniok (Огонек). 1990. Nr. 1. P. 18.

Biography and photograph by L. B. Pribylskaya