Mikhail Petrovich Barataev (January 1, 1784 – July 30, 1856) was a Russian

Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

 bureaucrat of Georgian

Georgia (country)

Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...

 origin and an amateur numismatist, the first to have studied the coinage of Georgia.

Barataev was born in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk

Ulyanovsk

Ulyanovsk The city is the birthplace of Vladimir Lenin , for whom it is named.-History:Simbirsk was founded in 1648 by the boyar Bogdan Khitrovo. The fort of "Simbirsk" was strategically placed on a hill on the Western bank of the Volga River...

) into the expatriate Georgian noble family of Baratashvili

Baratashvili

Baratashvili is a Georgian noble family, appearing at the end of the 15th century as a continuation of the Kachibadze , which were possibly related to the Liparitids-Orbeli....

. His father, Prince Pyotr Mikhailovich Barataev (1734-1789), was a general in the Russian army and Simbirsk governor. His mother came of the Russian untitled noble family of Nazimov. He served as an artillery officer from 1798 to 1809 and retired with wounds received in the Napoleonic Wars

Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...

. From 1820 to 1835, Barataev was a head of nobility of the Simbirsk governorate. He founded a Freemasonic

Freemasonry

Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...

 lodge "Key to Virtues" (Ключ к добродетели) in Simbirsk and was briefly arrested in 1826 for his ties with the Decembrists.

In 1839, Barataev was appointed a director of the customs department in Georgia. During his tenure in the Caucasus

Caucasus

The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...

, Barataev became interested in numismatics and collected a unique collection of Georgian coins. Upon his retirement in 1844, Barataev published, in French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 and Russian, his principal study The Numismatic Facts of the Kingdom of Georgia (Russian: Нумизматические факты грузинского царства; French: Documents numismatiques du Royaume de Géorgie) – the first scholarly treatment of the subject in question – which won him a membership of the French Academy of Sciences

French Academy of Sciences

The French Academy of Sciences is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research...

. He died at his estate Barataevka in Simbirsk.