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ArcheoBiblioBase: Archives in Russia: E-25

Last update of repository: 19 June 2020

Sankt-Peterburgskii filial Arkhiva Rossiiskoi Akademii nauk (SPbF ARAN)


Holdings

Total: 778 fonds, 486,813 units, 18th c.–2012 (some documents 16th–17th cc.)
institutional fonds—199 (152,673 units); personal fonds—563 (240,225 units); sound recordings—73 units (1958–1973); archival collections (razriady)—16 (93,915 units) (1554–2012)

The archive retains documentation (dating until 1932) of the Academy central administration, namely the Conference of the Academy of Sciences (1724–1932), its Chancellery and Commissions (1725–1803), the Chancellery and its Administration (1804–1928), chancelleries of the Academy President and Vice-President (1818–1886), Secretariat (1927–1939), the Secretariat and Chancellery of the Presidium (1939–1959), the Administrative Committee of the Administrative Division (1803–1948), and the Secret Division (Sekretnaia chast') (1922–1938). Among other records are original minutes of meetings of the General Assembly and Academy divisions and sections, supplements to the minutes, scientific correspondence, and various scientific and administrative documentation. The archive also preserves the records of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1783–1841), which later became a part of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences as the Division of Russian Language and Literature (ORIaS).
        Documentation materials of the eighteenth through twentieth centuries results from the work of scientific and auxiliary institutions of the Academy of Sciences, including fonds from the Library, Archive, Publishing House, Printing Press, Book Kiosk, the Botanical Gardens, the Main Astronomical Observatory in Pulkovo, and others. There is a wide range of documentation from different departments and offices (drawing, engraving, and instrumentation, among others) dating back to the eighteenth century. There are also records of the Academy research expeditions (18th–20th cc.) in Russia and other parts of the world. The archive also preserves fonds of museums, beginning with the Kunstkammer and its various specialized successor scientific repositories established in the early nineteenth century—the Museums of Anthropology and Ethnography, Geology, Zoology, and Mineralogy, among others.
        The evolution of science and scholarship from the end of the nineteenth through the first third of the twentieth century is recorded in fonds of various committees, commissions, and associations—the Archeographic Commission, the Byzantine Studies Commission, the Commission for Study of the Natural Productive Forces (Komissiia po izucheniiu estestvennykh proizvoditel'nykh sil) (1915–1930), and the Commission for Study of Tribal Structure of the Population of the USSR (Komissiia po izucheniiu plemennogo sostava naseleniia SSSR) (1917–1930), among others. In addition, the archive retains fonds of the St. Petersburg/Leningrad-based scientific research laboratories and institutes, which grew out of these committees, commissions, and associations–the Institutes of Astronomy, Physico-Technical (see E-33), Geomorphology, Chemistry, Demography, and Petrography, among others, as well as the Institutes of Russian Literature (Pushkinskii Dom) (see E–28) and Oriental Studies (Asiatic Museum) (see E–30), and other institutes in the humanities and social sciences.
        The archive holds fonds of scientific and scholarly institutions and societies outside of the Academy, including the Russian Institute of Archeology in Constantinople (1890–1928), the Russian Chemical Society (1868–1955), the Imperial Mineralogical Society (1817–1938), and the Russian Entomological Society (1846–1939), as well as the editorial office of Russkii istoricheskii zhurnal (1916–1922), among others. The archive also retains fonds of the Leningrad Division of the Communist Academy under the USSR Central Executive Committee (TsIK SSSR) (1929–1936) and its research institutes (agriculture, economics, agricultural economics, natural science, Soviet construction, state and law, philosophy, Marxist methodology, history, literature, philology and the arts), as well as of Marxist scientific and scholarly associations (those of biologists, physicians, mathematicians, economists, Orientalists, regional specialists [kraevedy], and others). There are also records of the research institutes under the Communist University in Petrograd (1922–1926), and the Leningrad Division of the Institute of History of the Association of Institutes in the Social Sciences (1927–1928), among others.
        Documentation of personal origin is mainly represented by personal papers of scholars of the eighteenth through twentieth centuries. Among the earliest materials is the so-called Pulkovo Collection (Pulkovskoe sobranie) which includes papers of the German astronomer and mathematician Johann Kepler (1571–1630), together with manuscripts of his teacher the Danish astronomer Tycho de Brahe (1546–1601). The archive also retains personal papers of most prominent Russian and foreign scientists and scholars who were members of or associated with the Academy of Sciences. Representing physics, mathematics and the natural sciences, are the documentary collections of M.V. Lomonosov and the inventor and mechanician I.P. Kulibin; the mathematicians Leonhard Euler and V.A. Steklov; the astronomers V.Ia. and O.V. Struve and F.A. Bredikhin; the physicists P.N. Lebedev and A.F. Ioffe (Joffé); the geologists F.N. Chernyshev and A.P. Karpinskii; the botanists A.S. Famintsyn, K.A. Meyer, and N.I. Vavilov; the zoologists Karl Ernst von Baer (K.M. Ber), Iohann Friedrich (I.F.) Brandt, and M.A. Menzbir; the soil scientist V.V. Dokuchaev; the geographers P.P. Semenov-Tian-Shanskii and L.S. Berg; the physiologists I.P. Pavlov and A.A. Ukhtomskii; the chemists A.M. Butlerov, A.E. Chichibabin, and V.E. Tishchenko; and the navigators Admiral Adam Iohann von Krusenstern (I.F. Kruzenshtern) and F.P. Litke, among many others.
        Among documents pertaining to the humanities there are papers of the historians G.S. Bayer, Gerhardt Friedrich Müller (Miller), Porfirii, Bishop of Chigirin (K.A. Uspenskii), E.E. (A.A.) Kunik, M.M. Kovalevskii, A.S. Lappo-Danilevskii, N.P. Likhachev, and V.N. Beneshevich; the historians of art N.P. Kondakov and D.V. Ainalov; the Orientalists B.A. Dorn, V.V. Bartol'd (Wilhelm Barthold), S.F. Ol'denburg, N.Ia. Marr, and I.Iu. Krachkovskii; the philologists Andreas Johan Sjögren (A.M. Shegren), F.F. Fortunatov, and L.V. Shcherba; the statistician and archeologist Peter Köppen (P.I. Keppen); the ethnographists N.N. Miklukho-Maklai, V.G. Bogoraz-Tan, and L.Ia. Shternberg; the literary scholars Ia.K. Grot and N.K. Nikol'skii, to name only a few.
        Archival collections (razriady) include manuscripts of scientific and scholarly works, biographical documents of scholars and scientists, correspondence of Academy members, and documents acquired from various institutions, including the Cabinet of Incunabula of the Library of the Academy of Sciences (BAN). Other collections include regulations, personnel registers of Academy institutions, and other documents on the history of Academy; records of several scientific and scholarly societies; a collection of Academy publications, including suspended and unfinished ones, along with printed and manuscript newspapers, prepared at the St. Petersburg Vedomosti Academy Press (1727–1799). There are also collections of portraits of scholars, metal engraving plates and prints (18th–19th cc.); and a collection of photographic and phonographic documents on the history of science, among others.
        Among documents in the graphic collection are maps, plans, and drawings; a series of watercolors on parchment by the Swiss artist Maria Sibylla Merian (17th c.), previously held in the Kunstkammer in the eighteenth century, along with other unique drawings of exhibits in that first Russian museum.
        Administrative and personnel records of LAFOKI transferred to PFA RAN in 2004 were joined to fond 298. Unarranged photograph archive of LAFOKI (ca. 40,000 negatives) will be added to the collection (razriad) of negatives or created a separate collection (razriad).


ABB ArcheoBiblioBase Archeo Biblio Base Patricia Kennedy Grimsted