Dmitry Staroselsky

Who was Dmitry Staroselsky?

Dmitry Semyonovich Staroselsky was a Russian general and bureaucrat who served as a Governor of Baku from 1872 to 1875 and Chief of the Administration of the Viceroy of the Caucasus from 1878 to 1884.

During his tenure in the Caucasus, Staroselsky maintained good relations with the Georgian and Azeri intelligentsia, and supported their cultural endeavors. He established Bakinskiye Izvestiya in 1872 and helped Hasan bey Zardabi to publish Akinchi, the first Azeri-language newspaper, in 1875. He helped compile reports about the life of Caucasian mountaineers published in Tiflis between 1868 and 1875.

Staroselsky had family ties with the Georgian nobility. He was married to Ekaterina, Princess Guramishvili, who was a sister-in-law of Prince Ilia Chavchavadze, a leading Georgian intellectual of that time. The couple had four sons – Simon, Givi, Nicholas and Vsevolod – and five daughters – Tamara, Nina, Elizabeth, Rusudan and Ketevan. Of these, Vsevolod became a White Russian general and commander of the Persian Cossack Brigade. Nina married Prince Ioseb Shalikashvili; they became grandparents of the American general John Shalikashvili. Givi’s granddaughter Irina married, in 1951, Prince Burhaneddin Cem, great-grandson of the last Ottoman Caliph Abdülmecid II.