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ArcheoBiblioBase: Archives in Russia: H-275Last update of repository: 18 March 2020Gosudarstvennyi muzei istorii religii (GMIR)Nauchno-istoricheskii arkhiv [Scientific Historical Archive] Website: http://gmir.ru/about/coll/fond_arch/ Holdings Total: 25,000 units The archive holds records of several state institutions (including GMIR and its predecessors) and social organizations, a significant group of personal papers, and a several subject-oriented collections on the history of religion and antireligious movements. The fonds of the State Museum of the History of Religion and the Central Antireligious Museum (constituting the administrative records of the museum itself and its predecessors) contain documentation on the scholarly, exhibition, and collection activities of the staff—including articles written by the museum staff, exhibition plans, work notes for lectures and excursions, and expedition reports. The fonds of the Central Council of the Union of Militant Atheists (Tsentral'nyi sovet Soiuza voinstvuiushchikh bezbozhnikov), the Moscow Vegetarian Society, the Combined Council of Conscientious Objector Communes and Groups (Ob"edinennyi sovet obshchin i grupp po otkazu ot voinskoi povinnosti), and other social organizations contain charters, minutes of meetings, other informational documentation, and personal files on group members, as well as files of legal proceedings against conscientious objectors. There are editorial records of a number of journals and periodicals, including the Bulletin of the Holy Synod (Vestnik Sviashchennogo Sinoda), the Voice of Tolstoi and Unity (Golos Tolstogo i Edinenie), the Holy Christian Molokanin (Dukhovnyi khristianin-molokanin), and the “Atheist” (Bezbozhnik), which contain editorial files, correspondence with readers, and informational material. The fond of the V.G. Chertkov “Free Speech” (Svobodnoe slovo) Publishing House is of particular interest, containing as it does a collection of documentary records on the life of various sectarian groups and on instances of religious persecution in Russia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There are personal papers of such prominent Tolstoians as P.I. Biriukov, I.M. Tregubov, E.V. Molostova, M.S. Dudchenko, and F.A. Strakhov, which include personal documents, literary writings, correspondence and collections of documents on the history of religious movements. There are also the personal papers of the Dukhobor V.A. Makaseev, which include articles,diary notes, letters, and material on the life of the Dukhobors in Canada; of S.I. Bystrov, who made a study of the Old Believers; and of N.I. Subbotin, a professor at the Moscow Theological Academy and a church historian. There are the personal papers of a number of Soviet scholars who studied religion, including Professor S.G. Lozinskii (with works on the history of Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism in the Middle Ages); M.M. Sheinman (with his studies of the history of religion since the birth of Christ); the museum specialist A.A. Nevskii (materials on Orthodox iconography); the scholar of Buddhism M.I. Lavrov, who served as Russian consul in the Orient; and the Soviet government official and propagandist of atheism P.A. Krasikov. In the largest fond are the personal papers of the museum director, historian, and revolutionary V.D. Bonch-Bruevich, which include a large collection of documents on the history of sectarianism, orthodoxy, and free-thinking in late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century Russia, correspondence with religious activists, and a collection of photographs. The rich collection of manuscript books (15th–20th cc.) includes apocryphal works (Jewish and early Christian literature not included in the Bible), lives of saints, liturgical texts, various religious compilations (sborniki) with edifying texts, choral manuscripts, legends and parables, annals and chronicles, polemics, spells or exorcisms, herbals, texts on astrology, and free-thinking and philosophical works in the Old Church Slavonic, Russian, and Latin languages. The oldest of the manuscripts are a late fifteenth-century Psalter and an inspirational compilation known as the Izmaragd. There are several manuscript sinodiki (prayers for the deceased) from the Solovetskii Monastery (17th c.). Russian materials include the collection of the Kostroma historian and literary specialist N.N. Vinogradov. Materials relating to the Orthodox Church are not a major part of the holdings, since most Orthodox Church records are held in state archives. Nevertheless, the collection of “Materials on the History of the Orthodox Church” has scattered documents relating to the history of a number of parishes and monasteries with reference to their economic situation, and to relations between Church and State, trends within the Orthodox Church, and religious education; there are also some theological works and sermons. More important, original materials document other Christian sects, both in Russia and in foreign countries. The collection of “Materials on the History of Sectarianism in Russia” has documentation on the Old Believers, Baptists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Tolstoians, among other groups, relating to their history, teachings, organization, and relations with civil authorities. The collection entitled “Materials on the History of Freemasonry in Russia” contains documents from individual lodges, descriptions of Masonic rituals and ceremonies, letters, and hermetic writings. Another significant collection comprises “Materials on the History of Atheism and Free-Thinking.” Graphic materials (held in the general fond of exhibits) include pictures of religious monuments and places of pilgrimage; portraits of priests; lithographs and chromolithographs on dogmatic subjects and on the iconography of different faiths; cheaply produced religious literature of a moralizing nature; anticlerical engravings; collections of antireligious posters, Old Believer drawings and posters (18th–19th cc.), especially from the collection of V.G. Druzhinin. There are also engravings by Russian masters, such as L. Bunin, I.S. Klauber, I. Rozonov, N.I. Utkin, A.G. Ukhtomskii, and A.F. Zubov; and well-known European artists. The Oriental Fond includes a collection of greetings cards from China made by V.M. Alekseev in 1906 and 1907, and an album of the Taoist Pantheon consisting of 227 drawings from a collection made by M.I. Lavrov. N.B. A large part of the administrative records of the museum itself for the years 1933–1976 is now held in TsGALI SPb (D–18, fond 195 [4039]). Reference facilities: The reference system of the archive is currently being further developed. There are opisi for the fonds that have already been processed. |
