Ruthenica, 2016, vol. 26, No. 1: 1-16. Published online March 7, 2016. © Ruthenica, 2016 http: www.ruthenica.com ABSTRACT. Eduard von Martens (1831–1904) was a prominent German malacologist of the nineteenth cen- tury contributed heavily to taxonomy and zoogeogra- phy of different groups of Mollusca and created a plethora of taxonomic names of the genus and species rank. The type materials of the species described by him are kept now in the Berlin Natural History Museum (Museum für Naturkunde). This article deals with von Martens’ role as a student of continental snails and bivalves of the former Russian Empire. Though von Martens did not travelled to Russia himself, he was able to study numerous samples of mollusks provided to him by both Russian and German explorers. It made him a great student of Russian malacofauna of that time. Most of von Martens works in this field were devoted to investigation of continental mollusks of the underexplored regions of the Russian Empire (Siberia, Russian Turkestan, Caucasus). At least 15 species de- scribed by von Martens are accepted as valid by the Russian malacologists. The article contains detailed accounts of the 15 species with illustrations of their type materials (lectotypes, syntypes), notes on distri- bution, taxonomy and nomenclature of these taxa. Karl Eduard von Martens (1831–1904) was among the most prominent European malacologists of the nineteenth century (Fig. 1). Sometimes he is acknowledged as “the greatest German malacolo- gist of the 19th century” [Glaubrecht, Zorn, 2012: 37]. His contribution to the taxonomic knowledge of Mollusca covers almost all continents of the Globe as well as all domains of molluscan diversity – marine, terrestrial, and freshwater, with most publications devoted to non-marine taxa. Between 1859 and 1904, von Martens held a position in the Berlin Natural History Museum (Museum für Naturkunde) and spared no effort in order to curate the malacological collection of this institution that is now among the world’s richest collections of Mol- lusca. There is a series of biographical and histori- cal-zoological publications dealing with von Mar- tens and his malacological work [Meissner, 1901; Kobelt, 1905; Kabat, Boss, 1997; Glaubrecht, Zorn, 2012] that makes it unnecessary to repeat his cur- riculum vitae here. Instead, I would like to focus my efforts on von Martens’ contribution to the knowledge of the malacofauna of the former Rus- sian Empire that constituted a significant part of his malacological activity. Another aim of my paper is to present the results of examination of the type series of the Russian freshwater Mollusca described by this author and housed in the Natural History Museum, Berlin (ZMB hereafter). According to the recent catalogue of the former USSR continental mollusks [Kantor et al., 2010], 15 species of aquat- ic gastropods and bivalves described by von Mar- tens are currently accepted as valid by the ex-USSR malacologists. Nearly half of them have type locali- ties lying within borders of the former Russian Empire (Table 1). In most cases, the type series of these species are extant and were examined by me in ZMB in April of 2015. The data on some of these series (along with illustrations of the type speci- mens) have been published by Kilias [1961, 1967], Korniushin and Glaubrecht [2001], Korniushin [2004], and Glaubrecht et al. [2007] but nobody ever reviewed the overall contribution of von Mar- tens to the study of the Russian continental aquatic mollusks. Material and methods The main part of the study was carried out in the Berlin Natural History Museum (Museum für Naturkunde; ZMB hereafter) where von Martens collection is kept. The scheme of publication of the type materials follows that of my earlier works dealing with the type specimens of C.A. Westerlund [Vinarski et al., 2013] and O.F. Müller [Nekhaev et al., 2015]. In all cases when it was possible I tried to give dimensions of shells of holotypes or lecto- Eduard von Martens’s contribution to the knowledge of the Russian continental malacofauna (with examination of type materials of aquatic species accepted by Russian taxonomists) Maxim V. VINARSKI 1, 2 1 Museum of Siberian Aquatic Molluscs, Omsk State Pedagogical University. 14 Tukhachevskogo Emb., Omsk, RUSSIAN FEDERATION, 644099; 2 Saint-Petersburg State University, 7/9 Universitetskaya Emb., Saint-Petersburg, RUSSIAN FEDERATION, 199034. E- mail: radix.vinarski@gmail.com