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ArcheoBiblioBase: Archives in Russia: H-63

Last update of repository: 17 March 2020

Gosudarstvennyi muzei istorii rossiiskoi literatury imeni V.I. Dalia (GMIRLI)


Otdel rukopisnykh fondov
[Division of Manuscript Fonds]

Address: 121002, Moscow, Denezhnyi per., 9/5

Telephone: +7 499 241-08-77, +7 499 241-88-73

E-mail: [email protected]

Website: https://goslitmuz.ru/collections/364/

Opening hours: MTh 10:00–16:00
Transport: metro: Smolenskaia; trol.: 10, B

Head: Evgeniia Mikhailovna Varentsova (tel. +7 499 241-08-77)


Holdings

Total: 500 fonds; over 80,000 units; mid. 15th–21st. cc.
422 collections (over 6,000 items)

The Manuscript Division (located in the same building that houses the A.V. Lunacharskii Study) contains an important collection of literary manuscripts, correspondence, and other personal papers of many Russian classical authors and prominent nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers. There are also a few fonds of literary organizations that functioned during the prerevolutionary and Soviet periods, collections of handwritten albums, folklore collections, and numerous scattered documents dating from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries pertaining to the development of Russian literature and culture.
        The oldest materials, which are found in the collection of manuscript books in the early Slavonic-Rus' tradition, comprise theological works, literary manuscripts, and writings on history and natural science. Among these, the earliest include a liturgical menaion (early 15th c.), a Gospel dated 1464, a codex of saints’ lives and homilies (Sbornik zhitii i pouchenii) (late 15th–early 16th c.), and a codex with chronological-astronomical tables from the first third of the sixteenth century from the Joseph of Volokolamsk (Iosifo-Volokolamskii) Monastery. Among historical texts are annals and chronicles. There are several illuminated manuscripts, including an Old Believer eighteenth-century text of saints’ lives with 187 miniatures.
        From the eighteenth century there are copies of works of M.V. Lomonosov, G.R. Derzhavin, and N.M. Karamzin, among others, and 49 manuscripts from the eighteenth-century collection of Ia.Ia. Mordvinov.
        Literary organizations and associations represented in the archives are the Society of Friends of Russian Philology (Obshchestvo liubitelei rossiiskoi slovesnosti) (1811–1830, 1837–1857); the Society of Russian Dramatic Writers (Obshchestvo russkikh dramaticheskikh pisatelei) (1870–1930); the cooperative publishing association of Moscow writers (“Knigoizdatel'stvo pisatelei v Moskve”) (1912–1925); the All-Russian Union of Poets (Vserossiiskii soiuz poetov) (1918–1929); the “Nikitinskie subbotniki” Literary Association (1914–1931); the Moscow Writers—™ Council (Moskovskii gorodskoi sovet pisatelei), with documents from the 1930s.
        A large fond of the editor of the journal Byloe, V.Ia. Bogucharskii (1861–1915), includes over 400 correspondents. Thereis also the editorial correspondence of a number of magazines and journals, including Milky Way (Mlechnyi put') (1914–1918); Red Army Man (Krasnoarmeets); Red Navy Man (Krasnoflotets); and Land (Zemlia) (1908–1923). There are also some fragments from the archive of the museum’s own series Zven'ia (1932–1951), including an unpublished report (other parts of those records were transferred to Literaturnoe nasledstvo in 1951).
        Personal papers (all of which have been acquired since World War II), arranged into fonds for individual from various accessions, include materials from members of the literary intelligentsia in the prerevolutionary period—V.G. Belinskii, F.M. Dostoevskii, I.S. Turgenev, A.P. Chekhov, and V.G. Korolenko. Herzen materials include original correspondence between Herzen and N.P. Ogarev from the archive of T.A. Astrakova. Another group of personal papers comes from the Orlov family archive (1811–1899), and there are others from archives of the Repnin, Raevskii, Krivtsov, and Volkonskii families, all of which contain documents on the history of Russian culture and life in the nineteenth century.
        For the postrevolutionary period there are manuscript materials of A.A. Blok (with at least 85 manuscript poems), S.A. Esenin (Yesenin), M.V. Isakovskii, A.V. Lunacharskii, S.V. Mikhalkov, K.M. Simonov, and many others. Among the 5,000 documents received from MVD sources in 1951 were manuscripts of A.A. Akhmatova, V.Ia. Briusov, S.M. Gorodetskii, and O.E. Mandel'shtam; and letters of N.S. Leskov, V.V. Rozanov, M.A. Bulgakov, and B.L. Pasternak, most of which have been arranged in fonds according to their authors.
        There is a collection of original literary autographs of prerevolutionary and Soviet writers; a collection of the manuscript copies of nineteenth-century literary works; and a collection of genre albums and albums containing autographs of famous personages in the Russian cultural world of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
        The large folklore collection (19th–20th cc.) contains recordings of traditional folklore in the prerevolutionary and postrevolutionary periods, as well as folklore texts on Soviet themes. There is a rich collection of materials from the period of the Second World War. There are also extensive materials and data gathered by ethnographic expeditions to the central regions of Russia, and the personal papers and documents of such scholars of folklore as F.I. Buslaev, E.N. Eleonskaia, and E.V. Pomerantseva.


Working conditions:
Researchers work in a small reading room adjacent to the museum division office and storage area.

Reference facilities:
There are archival inventories of the personal papers and an alphabetic catalogue of personal names. Annotations for a directory of personal fonds in preparation are available, part typewritten and part still in manuscript.

Copy facilities:
There are no copying facilities.


ABB ArcheoBiblioBase Archeo Biblio Base Patricia Kennedy Grimsted