The photo album of the Khlebnikov family changed hands many times over the years and today is in a deplorable state: the binding is loose, the leather shows signs of wear and tear, the sheets have many spots and black marks on them. In addition, numerous picture sleeves are torn or empty.
There are 87 photos spread over 46 pages. Most of them were taken in Kazan, Simbirsk, Astrakhan, St. Petersburg, and Moscow, where the poet’s parents or relatives lived.
The album entered the museum’s collection in 1994. An inventory of the pictures was conducted by researchers and each photo was assigned its own inventory number. The supplementary inscriptions and comparative analysis of the pictures allowed to expand the family tree. However, people that were part of the poet’s life were identified in only 29 of those photographs.
These are, firstly, his closest relatives: a grandfather on the father’s side, Alexey Ivanovich Khlebnikov, a grandmother on the mother’s side, Maria Petrovna Verbitskaya, his father Vladimir Alexeyevich Khlebnikov and mother Ekaterina Nikolaevna Khlebnikova (nee Verbitskaya), his older sister Ekaterina Vladimirovna Khlebnikova and younger brother Alexander Vladimirovich Khlebnikov, as well as his mother’s sister Varvara Nikolaevna Verbitskaya (married name Ryabchevskaya). The distant relatives are: his uncle on the father’s side Lev Alexandrovich Khlebnikov, a cousin on the father’s side and Velimir’s godfather Boris Lavrentievich Khlebnikov, cousins on the father’s side, Lyubov and Nina Lvovna, cousins on the mother’s side, Nikolay Nikolaevich Ryabchevsky and Maria Nikolaevna Ryabchevskaya (married name Kachinskaya), a great-niece on the father’s side, Katya Mikhailovskaya, and a great-nephew on the mother’s side, Goga Kachinsky, as well as a close friend and fellow student at the Astrakhan Gymnasium and St. Petersburg University, Alexander Mikhailovich Nikolsky, who became an academician.
Of the poet’s relatives living in Astrakhan, only his great-niece Evgenia Alexeyevna Zabelova recognized her mother in a little girl from one of the photos. The remaining 86 images remain unidentified.
The album’s title page is decorated with a colored ornament. In addition to photographs, 42 postcards are inserted into the sleeves, mainly with portraits of prominent Russian and foreign writers: Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ivan Turgenev, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin and others.
The album was donated to the museum by May
Petrovich Miturich-Khlebnikov (Moscow).
