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ArcheoBiblioBase: Archives in Russia: G-1

Last update of repository: 15 February 2021

Rossiiskaia gosudarstvennaia biblioteka (RGB)


Nauchno-issledovatel'skii otdel rukopisei
[Scientific Research Division of Manuscripts]

Address: ul. Vozdvizhenka, 3/5, building 1, “Dom Pashkova” (Pashkov House), main enter, 1 floor

Telephone: +7 495 622-85-82

Reading room: +7 499 557-04-70, add 23-38

Website: https://www.rsl.ru/ru/about/funds/ruk...

Opening hours: RdngRm: M–Sa 9:00–20:00

Head: Viktor Fedorovich Molchanov (tel. +7 495 695-98-47); e-mail [email protected]

Deputy Head: Andrei Ivanovich Serkov (tel. +7 495 609-96-14)

Head of the Sector of Completing and Scientific Processing of Archival Fonds: Elena Igorevna Sokolova


Holdings

Total: 834 fonds; 687,000 units; 6th c.–to present
Slavic-Cyrillic MS collections—91 fonds; Western MS collections—3 fonds; Oriental MS collections—10 fonds; institutional and society fonds—46 fonds; personal papers—529 fonds; family and estate papers—150 fonds; collections of Russian historical and literary documents—18 fonds; collection of graphic materials—1 fond

The Division of Manuscripts, like the library itself, owes its beginnings to the large collection of early Russian and Slavic manuscripts accumulated in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by N.P. Rumiantsev. The division now contains a vast number of collections of manuscript books, literary and other manuscripts; personal, family and estate archives; and records from a number of state institutions and public organizations; as well as iconographic material on Russian history and culture.
        The collections of manuscript books in the early Slavonic tradition represent one of the most important components of the Manuscript Division, with more than 100 collections acquired both from official sources and from private individuals. Largest and most valuable is what is known as the Museum Collection (Muzeinoe sobranie) (fond no. 178), consisting of acquisitions brought together between 1862 and 1947 by the Rumiantsev Museum and the Manuscript Division itself. These include copies of early Russian, Ukrainian, and other chronicles dating back to the twelfth century, as well as annals, legends, tales, cosmographies, and descriptions of guberniias, uezds, cities, towns, and monasteries. Among its special riches, this collection has the Glagolitic eleventh-century Codex Marianus of the Gospels from Mount Athos (Mariinskoe Evangelie) and the Archangel Gospel (Arkhangel'skoe Evangelie) of 1092—one of the oldest dated Early Rus' manuscripts. The Museum Collection also includes numerous memoirs, diaries, and biographical materials, educational and medical literature from Early Rus', and music manuscripts with early non-linear, neumatic notation.
        Individual accessions made after 1947 were put into a special fond known as the Manuscript Division Collection (Sobranie Otdela rukopisei) (fond 218). Individual accessions of manuscripts in the early Slavonic tradition (mostly pre-nineteenth-century) received after 1977 comprise the “Collection of Early Books of the Old Tradition” (Sobranie knig drevnikh i drevnei traditsii) (fond 722).
        The division also holds collections of Slavonic-Rus' manuscript books acquired from church institutions, including monasteries and ecclesiastical academies, and from private collectors. The most important of these acquisitions include collections from the library and archives of the Trinity-St. Sergius (Troitse-Sergiev) Monastery, the Joseph of Volokolamsk (Iosifo-Volokolamskii) Monastery, the Vvedenskaia Opta Hermitage (Vvedenskaia Optina pustyn'), the Moscow Theological Academy (MDA), and part of the collection from the Moscow Eparchial Library (Moskovskaia eparkhial'naia biblioteka).
        Private manuscript collections acquired by the library include those of V.I. Grigorovich, N.S. Tikhonravov, V.M. Undol'skii, E.E. Egorov, I.Ia. Lukashevich, and N.A. Markevich. Several important local collections of early manuscripts came from oblast libraries in Arkhangel'sk, Kostroma, and Vologda, and from the Crimean (Simferopol) Pedagogical Institute.
        A number of collections represent Old Believer traditions. Of particular interest, the collection of the Rogozhskoe Cemetery Community represents mainly the Belokrinitsa faction; the manuscript book collection from the merchant E.E. Egorov once belonged to the Preobrazhenie (Transfiguration) Community; the archive of the Mel'nikov family Old Believer activities (documents from 1850–1915) includes materials relating to the Moscow Old Believer Congress of 1905–1906; and a large collection of manuscripts from the Old Believer merchant P.A. Ovchinnikov includes the earliest copy of the seventeenth-century map of Russia known as Kniga Bol'shomu chertezhu, the original of which no longer exists.
        The division has significant collections of manuscript books in Greek and Latin and other Western European languages. The collection of Greek manuscripts contains the earliest written text to be found in the Manuscript Division, namely a fragment from a sixth-century Greek Books of the Apostles. Among the early Latin manuscripts from Western Europe is the text “Jewish Antiquities” of Josephus Flavius and the Mass for St. Willigis, Archbishop of Mainz (12th c.).
        Manuscript collections in Oriental languages includes manuscripts in Chinese, Arabic, Persian, Turkic, and ancient Hebrew languages. The collection of the Sinologist K.A. Skachkov includes Chinese xylographs (wood engravings) and manuscripts which date back to the Ming Dynasty, as well as albums of drawings, maps, and historical and geographical descriptions. The world-famous Hebraic collection of the Orientalist Baron D.G. Gintsburg (Günzburg), accumulated before the Revolution, contains close to 2,000 texts (9th–18th cc.). There are some inscribed books from the former Hassidic Community in Liubavichi (now in Smolensk Oblast), headed by the Rabbi Schneersohn. Among “trophy” receipts not yet publicly described arean estimated 300 Hebrew manuscripts from various European Jewish communities.
        The Manuscript Division retains a number of rich separate fonds from several state institutions, such as the Trading Quarter of Prince Shuiskii (Shuiskii posad), the Law Codification Commission (Komissiia ob ulozhenii) of Catherine the Great (1767), the Library of the General Staff, and the Moscow Ecclesiastical Censorship Committee (Moskovskii komitet dukhovnoi tsenzury); from social organizations and editorial offices, such as those of the journals Russkaia mysl' (Russian Thought—1880–1918) and Russkoe slovo (Russian Word—”1894–1918), which was published by I.D. Sytin. There are also the fonds of a number of Russian academic societies, such as the Society for Russian History and Antiquities (Obshchestvo istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh), the Society of Friends of Russian Philology (Obshchestvo liubitelei rossiiskoi slovesnosti), the Society of RussianDoctors (Obshchestvo russkikh vrachei), the Society for Early Russian Art (Obshchestvo drevnerusskogo iskusstva), and the Society of Friends of Spiritual Enlightenment (Obshchestvo liubitelei dukhovnogo prosveshcheniia).
        There are several collections of Masonic manuscripts and documents (some written in German and French) from Masonic lodges in Russia. These include materials of V.S. Arsen'ev and D.I. Popov, the high-ranking government official S.S. Lanskoi, and the historian S.V. Eshevskii.
        The division has family and estate archives from a number of high-ranking Russian gentry—the Apraksin, Bariatinskii, Kamenskii, Korsakov, Orlov-Davydov, Rumiantsev, Samarin, Sheremetev, Venevitinov, and Vorontsov-Dashkov families. There are also familyarchives of several industrial dynasties, such as the Chizhov and the Riabushinskii families, and estate archives of land-owning gentry such as the Gnidin, Kublitskii, Nasonov, Pavlov, Pazukhin, Rebinder, and Volynskii families.
        Personal papers of people who made themselves known in the social and revolutionary movement include major collections of papers of some of the Decembrists, and of A.I. Hertzen, N.P. Ogarev, and P.A. Kropotkin. There are papers of a number of important political and public figures of prerevolutionary Russia like A.D. Menshikov, A.N. Murav'ev, A.S. Norov, P.D. Kiselev, M.I. Kutuzov, D.A. Miliutin, K.P. Pobedonostsev, and N.P. Rumiantsev. There are personal papers of Church leaders such as Fotii (P.N. Spasskii), Leonid (L.V. Krasnopevkov), Filaret (V.M. Drozdov), Leonid (L.A. Kavelin), Nikon (N.I. Rozhdestvenskii), and Platon(P.G. Levshin); and those of famous Russian historians such as N.M. Karamzin, M.P. Pogodin, T.N. Granovskii, Ia.D. Barskov, V.O. Kliuchevskii, and S.M. Solov'ev.
        The division also holds the personal papers of many important political and intellectual figures of the Soviet period—for example, V.D. Bonch-Bruevich, M.N. Liadov (pseud. of Mandel'shtam), and V.I. Nevskii (pseud. of Krivobokov). The fields of history, philology, and philosophy during the Soviet period are represented by the papers of such scholars as N.K. Gudzii, B.P. Koz'min, M.K. Liubavskii, A.Z. Manfred, B.F. Porshnev, I.N. Rozanov, P.N. Sakulin, G.G. Shpet, and B.V. Tomashevskii, among others.
        Major fonds of personal papers of Russian classical literary and cultural figures include those of A.P. Chekhov, G.R. Derzhavin, F.M. Dostoevskii, N.V. Gogol', A.A. Fet (Shenshin), M.Iu. Lermontov, N.A. Nekrasov, A.N. Ostrovskii, V.V. Rozanov, I.S. Turgenev, F.I. Tiutchev, and V.A. Zhukovskii. There are also personal archives of a number of Soviet writers and poets—among them I.E. Babel', A.A. Blok,M.A. Bulgakov, K.I. Chukovskii, S.A. Esenin (Yesenin), D.A. Furmanov, A.Ia. Iashin (pseud. of Popov), V.V. Ivanov, V.Ia. Shishkov.
        Apart from acquired fonds and collections, the Manuscript Division has itself formed several “Territorial Collections” (territorial'nye sobraniia), which contain manuscript books and documents of government bodies and services, monasteries and churches, families and individual persons. The most significant of these are the Gor'kii, Smolensk, Guslitsy, and the Riazan Collections.
        There are important collections of autographs of world-famous people from past centuries. Of particular interest is the Museum Collection of Foreign Autographs, which includes documents of French kings and statesmen (a collection which once belonged to Thomas Münzer), of Germans who were prominent during the Reformation, of Italian revolutionaries, such as Giuseppe Mazzini; of social philosophers Jean Le Rond d’Alembert and Louis Blanc, of scientists such as Nicolaus Copernicus; and of the composers Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner, to name only a few.
        An extensive collection of microfilms, which were acquired from repositories abroad, includes copies of early manuscript books, as well as more recent manuscripts and archival documents—for example, from the archives of Goethe and Schiller in Weimar, and from the archive of the historian Theodor Mommsen.


Working conditions:
The so-called Rumiantsevskii hall—reading room of the Division of Manuscripts for 50 workplaces is located in the Pashkov House (https://www.rsl.ru/ru/4readers/rooms/...).
        For more details see British guide: Russian & Ukrainian Archives Guide available electronically: https://research.reading.ac.uk/archiv....

Reference facilities:
There is no comprehensive guide to the holdings of the Division of Manuscripts. The extensive reference system of the division as of 1962 was first described in an article by G.I. Dovgallo (g–1.1).
        For the early Slavonic-Rus' manuscript books, only the first three volumes of the planned six-volume directory (g–8) have been published (1983–1996). Earlier printed catalogues or manuscript descriptions have been prepared for many of the earlier integral collections. Typewritten descriptions of the most important collections of manuscript books supplement published reference literature. Many of the collections are still found as originally described, but some of them have been reorganized and renumerated on acquisition. There is a chronological catalogue listing manuscripts by date from the sixteenth through the twentieth century. There are separate card catalogues covering titles and incipits (Russian and foreign), and several auxiliary catalogues, but these do not cover all of the collections.
        For archival materials in the division, there are card catalogues listing all fonds. More detailed card catalogues, covering approximately two-thirds of the archival fonds, include an alphabetic catalogue of personal names (Russian and foreign) for authors of manuscripts and authors and recipients of letters, a composite catalogue of personal names (including reference within texts and letters), and a subject catalogue. The alphabetic catalogues of titles and incipits, in addition to manuscript books of the early Slavonic-Rus' tradition, also cover literary, historical, and other types of more recent manuscripts. There is also a special catalogue of genealogical tables.
        There are inventory books which cover some of the collections and archival fonds.
        In 1992 a computerized catalogue was established for the Gintsburg Collection of Hebraic manuscripts in a cooperative project with the Jewish National and University Library (Jerusalem) (see a-395.1). Work is currently underway to establish computerized description of all manuscript books in the division.
        Databases:
        “Katalog fonda otdela rukopisei” (“The catalogue of Fond of the Division of Manuscripts”);
        “Elektronnyi katalog rukopisnykh kollektsii kartograficheskikh dokumentov XIX–XX vv.” (“Electronical catalogue of manuscropt collections of catographic documents of 19th–20th cc.”);
        “Graviura v russkikh rukopisiakh XVI–XIX vv.: katalog” (“Engravings in Russian manuscripts of 16th–19th cc.”)

Library facilities:
The Division of Manuscripts has its own separate reference library (podsobnaia biblioteka), a large part on open shelves, apart from the main library holdings and special reference facilities of the Central Reference Library (Tsentral'naia spravochnaia biblioteka—TsSB), which are open to the public in the main building.

Copy facilities:
Scan, xerox, and photographic copies, microfilms, and microfiche may be obtained in accordance with printed library regulations.


ABB ArcheoBiblioBase Archeo Biblio Base Patricia Kennedy Grimsted