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ArcheoBiblioBase: Archives in Russia: G-15Last update of repository: 15 February 2021Rossiiskaia natsional'naia biblioteka (RNB)Previous names
The library, established by order of Catherine II in 1795, and opened as the Imperial Public Library in 1814, had the status of a national library and legal depository for all books published in Russia (since 1811). After the Revolution, in 1918 it was renamed the Russian Public Library. In 1932 its name was ammended to honor M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, and in 1937 it became the M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public Library. One of the richest libraries in the world (with over 30,000,000 volumes), it was given its present name as the Russian National Library by presidential decree in March 1992, which also named it to the register of the most valuable cultural monuments of the people of the Russian Federation. A large, modern building for the library has recently been completed for the main library reading rooms and stacks across from the “Park Pobeda” metro station at the southern edge of the city (Moskovskii prosp., 165). Some of the holdings have already been transferred and, as of fall 1998, others are in transit. However, the Division of Manuscripts, the Division of Prints and Engravings, and the Sector of Rare Books, will remain in the old building at the corner of Nevskii Prospekt and ul. Sadovaia, and other divisions of the library described below will most probably remain in their present locations. The Division of Manuscripts was first established as the Depot of Manuscripts in 1805 on the basis of the P.P. Dubrovskii (Dubrowski) collection of manuscripts and historical documents, mostly gathered in France and other European countries in the course of thirty years by the Russian diplomat, and significantly increased during the upheavals of the French Revolution, and the library of the Zaluski brothers that had been brought from Warsaw to St. Petersburg in 1795 by Catherine II to become one of the founding collections of the new library. (Most of the Zaluski collection was returned to Poland after the Treaty of Riga in 1921 and perished in World War II.) The manuscript holdings were expanded with the accession of many private collections during the nineteenth century, such as those of P.K. Frolov (1817), F.A. Tolstoi (1830), and the Repository of Antiquities (Drevlekhranilishche) of M.P. Pogodin (1852), and a major part of the library from the Imperial Hermitage (1852–1861). It acquired the collection of Western European books and documents of General P.K. Sukhtelen (Suchtelen), and the collections of Oriental manuscripts of A.S. Firkovich and Archimandrite Porfirii (K.A. Uspenskii), to name only a few. By 1917 it ranked second to the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris among world libraries in terms of the extent and value of its manuscript holdings. With the nationalization of imperial, religious, and private collections after the October Revolution, the Division of Manuscripts was expanded extensively. It acquired an additional part of the library from the Imperial Hermitage (1920s) and manuscript materials from a number of other imperial and high gentry palace collections. It received the extensive manuscript collections from the libraries of the Petersburg Theological Academy (along with part of the archive), the Novgorod Theological Seminary and the Cathedral of St. Sophia in Novgorod, the Alexander-Nevskii Lavra, and the Kirillo-Belozerskii and Solovetskii Monasteries (1928). Among secular organizations, it acquired the collection of the Society of Friends of Early Written Texts (Obshchestvo liubitelei drevnei pis'mennosti) (1932), part of the manuscript book collection from the Russian Archeological Society, the editorial records of a number of prerevolutionary journals, and other nationalized and donated private collections, archives from other institutions, and personal papers and manuscript collections of a number of important families and individuals. Plekhanov House, which was founded in 1928 and has the status of a branch of the Division of Manuscripts, houses the personal archive and library of the noted Russian revolutionary, parts of which were transferred from abroad by his heirs, together with documentation of his entourage. From 1970 to 1988, the Division of Manuscripts was combined with the Division of Rare Books, but now the Scientific Research Sector of Rare Books and Bibliology (Nauchno-issledovatel'skii sektor redkikh knig i knigovedeniia) is administratively separate within the Division of Fonds and Services (Otdel fondov i obsluzhivaniia—OFO). The Division of Prints and Engravings (Otdel estampov) is likewise separate, as is the Division of Music Scores and Sound Recordings. In addition to specific archival holdings mentioned below, it should be noted that RNB has collected extensive samizdat and unofficial periodicals from the pre-1991 period. |
