Ivan Semyonovich Shemanovsky

Ivan Semyonovich Shemanovsky – a former archimandrite of the Russian Orthodox Church, missionary, Russian historian, ethnographer, and founder of the first museum in Yamal. Shemanovsky was born into a noble family on 10 February 1873 (new style), and entered the Imperial Gatchina Institute in 1892. He then continued his studies at the Novgorod Theological Seminary and graduated in 1897. He took monastic tonsure, received the name Irinarkh, and was ordained a hieromonk.

 

In 1898 Irinarkh became acting head of the Obdorsk mission. There he was actively engaged in missionary work and published numerous articles in a church journal. Under his leadership an indigenous boarding house, a missionary school, a library, and a museum were established. In 1905 Irinarkh became an igumen, and in 1910 he left Obdorsk to become a diocesan missionary in Tver. In 1912 he headed a monastery in Tsaritsyn, and a month later he became head of the Seoul Orthodox mission as an archimandrite. In 1918 Irinarkh renounced his clerical rank and joined the commune "New Era." A year later he became editor of the party newspaper "The Voice of the Proletariat," and in 1920 he took the position of head of the Agitation and Educational Department at the Przhevalsk military commissariat. The end of Irinarkh's life is shrouded in mystery. According to some accounts he died in the Civil War in 1922–1923; according to others, he died in Dnepropetrovsk around 1936.