Scope and Content Note
The papers of Lydia Nadejena (1892[?]-1977) span the years 1907-1974, with the bulk of the material dating from 1920 to1960. The papers are in English and Russian and include correspondence, journals, writings, research notes, photographs, and news clippings organized alphabetically by type of material or by name of person or topic. The collection received preliminary processing at Fairleigh Dickinson University where notes were attached to Russian-language items describing or translating the contents. These notes have been retained.
Nadejena was born and educated in Russia. Two journals, photographs, and a few items of school ephemera date from her student days before the Russian Revolution. After the Revolution, she made the United States her home, becoming a naturalized citizen. Nadejena married David Krinkin, also a Russian émigré and a cofounder and long-time editor of Russky Golos, a Russian language daily newspaper published in New York City. Nadejena also worked at Russky Golos during the 1920s and early 1930s as an arts writer and editor of the women's page. Her marriage to Krinkin, however, was deeply troubled, as shown in their correspondence in the papers. After leaving the newspaper, Nadejena became increasingly involved in the field of art history, her specialty being medieval Russian art.
In 1929 Nadejena traveled to the Soviet Union to work with Waldemar Bogoras of the Institute of Anthropology at Leningrad University. His “Special Research Commission of Old and New Customs and Beliefs” combined the disciplines of art history, anthropology, and archeology. Nadejena's association with Bogoras defined her own approach to the study of Russian art and cultivated admiration for the Soviet Union. She also worked with Aleksandr Ivanovich Anisimov for whom she had great respect. Her papers contain correspondence with Bogoras, field notes, correspondence to her husband from the USSR, and miscellaneous items relating to her trip. Nadejena also worked for many years at Finch College, and a file in the collection concerns her employment there and disagreements with the college administration.
Nadejena's correspondence with other Russian émigrés illuminates some of the difficulties they encountered in their new lives in the West. Prominent correspondents represented in the papers include Alfred Hamilton Barr, director of the Museum of Modern Art, Freda Kirchwey, editor and publisher of The Nation, and Metropolitan Veniamin, Exarch of the Americas, the Russian Orthodox cleric sent to the United States by the Soviet controlled Orthodox church in Moscow.