Anatol Michaelovitch Kotenev

Anatol Michaelovitch Kotenev (郭泰纳夫, Guōtàinàfū) was a Russian émigré policeman who became both an early historian of the Shanghai settlements and the Municipal Council’s first professional archivist.

A former Russian cavalry officer, he reached China in 1921 and joined the Shanghai Municipal Police the next year. Posted to the Mixed Court as Russian interpreter, he researched local history and published two books, one on the Mixed Court and the Council (1925) and one on the Municipality and the Chinese (1927).

In 1930 he joined the Secretariat to help Judge Feetham’s inquiry, and in 1931 he took over the Council’s records. He introduced a three-level classification of class, item and volume, put the archive for 1854-1932 in order, tried to fill gaps and built a reference collection of 3,400 volumes and more than 1,500 files. The gazetteer says the method stayed in use until the Council ended. He retired in 1937; the gazetteer gives no death date.