People · Russian vice-consul, Mixed Court assessor, chairman of the Russian emigrants' committee
Nicholas A. Ivanov
伊万诺夫Yīwànnuòfū · d. 1941
Russian vice-consul and Mixed Court assessor who led Shanghai's Russian emigrants' committee from 1940; he was assassinated in 1941.
Nicholas A. Ivanov (伊万诺夫, Yīwànnuòfū) spoke for Shanghai’s Russian community in the courts and in the settlements’ official life during the 1920s and 1930s. After the revolution, many Russians in Shanghai had no state to represent them, and men such as Ivanov filled that gap.
The gazetteer says he joined the Russian foreign service in 1910 and arrived in China in 1911. After posts in Harbin and Hankou he became vice-consul and consular judge in Shanghai in 1919. The foreign consuls then named him the Russian assessor in the Mixed Courts of the International Settlement and the French Concession, where he sat on cases involving Russian residents.
He also led refugee bodies. He was vice-chairman of the committee for protecting the rights of Russian refugees in 1924, and chairman from November 1925. In August 1940 he took over the chairmanship of the Russian emigrants’ committee after his predecessor, Metzler, was assassinated. The gazetteer records that he was himself killed in September 1941, a few months before the settlements ended. His birth year is not given.