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ArcheoBiblioBase: Archives in Russia: G-21Last update of repository: 22 March 2020Sankt-Peterburgskaia gosudarstvennaia teatral'naia biblioteka (SPbGTB)Previous names
Established in 1756 as the Repertory Library of the Court Theater (renamed the Aleksandrinskii [Imperial Alexandra] Theater in 1832, and the Academic Theater in 1919), the library was reorganized as the Central Library of the Imperial Theaters in 1889. From the Direction of Imperial Theaters it acquired the collected materials pertaining to French drama of the St. Petersburg State French Troupe (the so-called Mikhailovskii Theater) and the theater library of Prince A.Ia. Lobanov-Rostovskii, who had assembled one of the largest existing collections of original French plays (16th–early 19th cc.). Before 1917 the library served as an official depository that received copies of all plays staged in state theaters in St. Petersburg. It was reorganized after 1917 as the Central Library of Russian Drama under the Division of State Theaters of the People’s Commissariat of Education (Narkompros). In 1919 the library acquired the complete collection of plays submitted to the censorship office from the archive of the Main Department for Affairs of the Press, which now forms the so-called “Censorship Fond” (1865–1917). Most of the additional manuscript materials were acquired during the 1920s and 1930s. These include the collection of Grand Duke Paul (Pavel) Aleksandrovich from the library of the Palei Palace in Tsarskoe Selo, the so-called Northern Theater Library of K.P. Larin, as well as private collections of A.E. Molchanov, M.G. Savina, N.N. Khodotov, V.V. Protopopov, and L.D. Blok, among others. In 1931 the library came under the administration of the A.S. Pushkin State Academic Drama Theater (the former Aleksandrinskii Theater had been named in honor of Pushkin in 1920). It was administratively separated from the theater in 1934 and was renamed the A.V. Lunacharskii Leningrad State Theater Library. In 1955 the library came under the jurisdiction of the Main Administration of Theaters and Music Institutions of the Ministry of Culture of the USSR. In 1955 it was shifted to the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, and in 1958 to the Administration of Culture of the Executive Committee of the Leningrad City Soviet. The library’s present name dates from 1995, when it dropped the honorific name of Lunacharskii. The Division of Manuscript and Rare Fonds, Archival and Graphic Materials as presently organized dates from 1991. |
