Lev Perovsky and the “Emerald of Kokovin”

Abstract

In 1835, auditor L. F. Yaroshevitsky discovered many unaccounted precious and semi-precious stones in the apartment of Ya. V. Kokovin, the commander of the Ekaterinburg Lapidary Factory. Among them was a large emerald, which, according to the auditor, “almost surpassed the dignity of the emerald in the crown of Julius Caesar”. The stones were packed in boxes, sealed, and sent to St Petersburg. After the boxes were opened in the capital, it turned out that the specified emerald had disappeared without a trace. The search for the gem remained fruitless. In the Essays on the History of Stone published in 1961 by academic A. E. Fersman, L. A. Perovsky, the vice-president of the Appanage Department and owner of a large collection of minerals was claimed to have stolen the emerald. For the sake of substantiating this version, the text of L. F. Yaroshevitsky’s report was distorted. Under the name of the “Emerald of Kokovin”, another Ural mineral got into the collection of the Fersman Mineralogical Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences. There is also no certainty that the author of the version was A. E. Fersman himself, because the academic died in 1945, leaving the second volume of Essays unfinished. The authority of academic A. E. Fersman and the popularity of his Essays (last reprinted in 2003) still contribute to the replication of the unfounded version of L. A. Perovsky’s stealing the “Emerald of Kokovin”. The purpose of this article is to justify the name of the “zealous lover of mineralogy”, as the famous German mineralogist prof. Gustav Rose called Lev Perovsky.