On October 12, 2018 at 11:00, in Moskovskiy railway station main hall, the grand opening of the “From Miklouho to Maclay” exhibition took place. It was dedicated to the 200th anniversary of Nikolay Ilyich Miklouho – the first chief of Nikolaevskiy (now Moskovskiy) railway station – the main station of the country. A huge banner on the wall with Nikolay Ilyich and his son, the great traveler Nikolay Nikolayevich Miklouho-Maclay greeted the residents and guest of the city in Moskovskiy railway station hall. The exhibition presents the images about the life of the famous father and son, the copies of N. N. Miklouho-Maclay drawings dated back to XIX century, as well as the unique materials of the research expedition on the trail of the great scientist in 2017 – the photographs taken by his descendant during the expedition, videos shot on the Maclay Coast (Rai Coast) in the villages, where the descendants of local Papuans still live keeping the memory of Russia and Miklouho-Maclay and passing the legends through generations from mouth to mouth.
From Miklouho to Maclay
Nikolay Ilyich Miklouho, the progenitor of all Miklouho-Maclays, was an extraordinary and charming person. He was born in Chernihiv region, in a poor noble family of ancient Miklouho-Maclay clan. In 1836 he finished Nizhyn Gymnasium and then, under the patronage of the writer and countryman Count A. K. Tolstoy, he entered the Engineering Corps of Transport Institute and successfully graduated from in 1840. Young engineer Nikolay Miklouho began working in the final works on connecting the Moskva River and the Volga (1840-1843). In 1843, among the first civil engineers, began the construction of the railway Petersburg-Moscow. At the end of 1849, Nikolay Ilyich was appointed to the responsible post as the Head of the Station (the Railway Station) in Saint-Petersburg – the first major railway station in Russia. Also, Nikolay Ilyich Miklouho was very close to Veliky Novgorod land. He was directly involved in the construction of the future Petersburg-Moscow road near the Yazykovo-Rozhdestvenskoye village where he lived with his wife, where, in 1846, their son Nikolay was born and became a world-famous scientist and traveler, a humanist who discovered the Papuans of New Guinea as equal people for the whole world. Nikolay Miklouho-Maclay was able to get in touch with the then little-studied tribes of the New Guinea Papuans only because of such qualities as respect for people, kindness, courage, selfless service to the Fatherland, founded in the family of Nikolai Ilyich.
