Kon Felix

Kon Felix Yakovlevich (1864-1941) - a major figure in the international revolutionary movement (late 19th century) and the Soviet state (1930s), anthropologist and ethnographer, who made a significant contribution to the study of the peoples of Yakutia and Southern Siberia, the author of a number of works on Tuvan ethnography and museum work. In 1902-1903, on the instructions of the Ethnographic Department of the Russian Museum of Emperor Alexander III, he made an expedition to the Uryankhai region (Tuva), where he acquired a collection of items of traditional life of the Tuvans (Soyots). At the same time, Kon, as a member of the Anthropological Department of the Imperial Society of Natural Science, Anthropology and Ethnography at Moscow University, collected collections for the Museum of Anthropology at Moscow University and for the ethnographic department of the Rumyantsev Museum in Moscow. In 1948, his collections were given to the Ethnographic Museum (Leningrad). At present, the world's largest collection of ethnographic materials of Tuvans, formed largely due to the collecting activity of Felix Kon, is kept in the Russian Ethnographic Museum. It has about 1,500 items (more than 20 collections), reflecting almost all aspects of life of the people: traditional economy and crafts, vehicles, costumes, housing and its decoration, child rearing, Buddhist and shamanic cults.