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Title: Iosif Konstantinovich Okulich papers
Date (inclusive): 1894-1949
Collection Number: 99050
Contributing Institution: Hoover Institution Library and Archives
Language of Material: Russian
Physical Description:
7 microfilm reels
(1.0 linear_foot)
Abstract: Diaries, correspondence, speeches and writings, printed matter, and photographs, relating to agriculture in Russia prior to
World War I, White Russian relations with the United States during the Russian Revolution and Civil War, and Russian émigré
affairs.
Creator:
Okulich, Iosif Konstantinovich, 1871-1949
Physical Location: Hoover Institution Library & Archives
The collection is open for research; materials must be requested in advance via our reservation system. If there are audiovisual
or digital media material in the collection, they must be reformatted before providing access.
For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
Materials were acquired by the Hoover Institution Library & Archives in 1999
[Identification of item], Iosif Konstantinovich Okulich Papers, [Box no., Folder no. or title], Hoover Institution Library
& Archives.
I. K. Okulich was born on 13 November 1871 (O.S.). He received his degree in agricultural engineering from the Swiss Polytechnic
in Zürich in 1894. In 1896 he began government service in the Ministry of Agriculture, and was appointed the following year
as Government Agronomist of the Tomskaia guberniia. In 1905 he was appointed head of the Agricultural Section of the Department
of Agriculture in the same ministry, a post he had held as acting director since 1903. In 1906 he was appointed Acting Director
of State Property for the Eniseiskaia guberniia (confirmed in this post in 1909), simultaneously serving as Vice-Inspector
of the Forester's corps of the Irkutskaia guberniia. The years 1912-1913 he spent in the Balkans as a special agent of the
Ministry of Trade and Industry, returning to the Ministry of Agriculture in 1913 as Assistant Director of the Department of
Agriculture in charge of the Fishing and Game Hunting Section.
With the onset of the First World War, Okulich became responsible for forage and food supplies for the army within his ministry.
In 1916 he was appointed a member of the Council of the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the administrative secretary for
the Chief Food Supply Committee (Glavnyi prodovol'stvennyi komitet). Sent on a mission to Siberia in 1917 to increase fuel
supplies, he remained there until April 1918, when the Siberian Creamery Union directed him to Great Britain for the purposes
of expanding trade. In 1919, he was appointed a special representative of the government of Admiral Kolchak, responsible for
financial oversight in the United States, Great Britain and France. In 1920-1921 he continued in this role for the Priamur
government, based in Vladivostok.
Following the conclusion of the Civil War in Russia, he spent 1923-1926 in Yugoslavia involved in the timber export business,
and then settled in Abbotsford, British Columbia, where he lived until his death on 21 January 1949. In Canada, Okulich devoted
himself mainly to farming and journalistic work, writing often for the émigré press on agricultural, political, economic,
and other issues concerning Russia and Siberia.
| 1871 November 13 | Born, Krasnoiarsk, Russia |
| 1895 | Entered government service as Resettlement Specialist of the Office of the Irkutsk Governor-General |
| Degree, agricultural engineering, Eidgenössisches Polytechnikum, Zurich | |
| 1897 | State Agronomist for the Tomsk region |
| 1903 | Director of the Special and Technical Crops Section of Department of Agriculture |
| 1906 | Manager of State Properties for the Enisei Region |
| 1911 | Financial and trade attaché in the Balkans |
| 1914 | Deputy Director of the Department of Agriculture for Hunting and Fishing |
| 1916 | Member of the Council of the Ministry of Trade and Industry |
| 1918 | Director of the Office of the Union of Siberian Creamery Associations in London |
| 1919 | Special Financial Commissioner of the Russian Government for the U.S.A., England and France; Chief representative of the Union of Siberian Creamery Associations in America and Western Europe; Plenipotentiary of the Union of Siberian Credit Unions in North America |
| 1921 | Plenipotentiary Representative of the Priamur Government in the U.S. |
| 1949 January 21 | Died, Vancouver, B.C., Canada |
This collection consists of the personal papers, correspondence, speeches and writings and collected materials of Iosif K.
Okulich.
It contains materials pertaining to the development of Russian agriculture and the cooperative movement in Siberia (particularly
in the first half of the 20th century), to the Russian Civil War in Siberia and the Far East, and to the resettlement of émigré
Cossacks from China and Europe to Canada in the 1920s-1940s. Also significant are Okulich's articles and collected information
about political developments in the Soviet Union and about the Slav question in the 1920s-1940s, and his involvement in émigré
life and undertakings, as reflected in correspondence with well-known émigré figures, and support for a number of émigré causes,
including the establishment of the Russkoe sel'sko-khoziaistvennoe obshchestvo and Museum of Russian Culture in San Francisco.
Materials relating to family members who are better known under the anglicized surname Okulitch have retained this spelling.
Detailed processing and preservation microfilming for these materials were made possible by a generous grant from the National
Endowment for the Humanities and by matching funds from the Hoover Institution and Museum of Russian Culture. The grant also
provides depositing a microfilm copy in the Hoover Institution Library & Archives. The original materials and copyright to
them (with some exceptions) are the property of the Museum of Russian Culture, San Francisco. A transfer table indicating
corresponding box and reel numbers is available at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
The Hoover Institution assumes all responsibility for notifying users that they must comply with the copyright law of the
United States (Title 17 United States Code) and Hoover Rules for the Use and Reproduction of Archival Materials.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Russia -- Emigration and immigration
Soviet Union -- History -- Allied intervention, 1918-1920
Soviet Union -- History -- Revolution, 1917-1921
United States -- Foreign relations -- Soviet Union
Soviet Union -- Foreign relations -- United States
Agriculture -- Russia