scholarly journals Peter the Great’s Lost Letter to Georg Wilhelm de Henning: On the History of Expert Thought and the Antiques Market

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatiana Bazarova ◽  
Aleksandra Chirkova
Keyword(s):  
Professional Community ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
State Archive ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Petersburg Institute ◽  
Russian State ◽  
Expert Analysis ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
State Library

The elements of expert analysis established in Russian academic circles by the late nineteenth century, when auxiliary historical disciplines became an indispensable part of the academic base of historical knowledge, are described in this article with reference to a lost letter by Peter I to Georg Wilhelm de Henning sent on 24 December 1724. These elements include the study of the letter, the stages and methods of introducing it into scholarly circulation, and the assessment of its significance and value in monetary terms. It is established that the original of the letter ended up in a private collection in the early twentieth century and became inaccessible to historians. However, handwritten copies, a draft, and descriptions have survived. The article analyses the work with Peter I’s letter performed by the members of the commission for the publication of Peter the Great’s letters and papers, as well as by the first owner of the letter, N. K. Bogushevsky, the Parisian antiquarian Noël Charavay, into whose hands the letter fell a decade after its former owner’s death, and N. P. Likhachev, a prominent specialist in a number of auxiliary historical disciplines to whom the antiquary turned for an expert opinion. While researching the copies and descriptions of Peter I’s letter, the authors used traditional methods of expert analysis of the missing original found in the collections of St Petersburg Institute of History (Russian Academy of Sciences), the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts, and the National Archives of France. Referring to handwritten materials from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts, the Russian State Library, and sales catalogues, the authors carry out a brief analysis of the Western European and Russian antiques market in the late nineteenth – early twentieth centuries in relation to Russian documents from the eighteenth century (prices and demand). The attribution of authenticity to historical documents (including the first Russian emperor’s autographs) was not only an issue of the reliability of historical knowledge or academic interest, but also one of reputation of connoisseurs, collectors, antiquarians, and the experts they turned to. At the same time, reputation helped ensure the quality of expertise and was a tool for raising this through horizontal connections within the professional community.

scholarly journals Archive of the Karatygin family: professional publications and handwritten materials

2018 ◽  
pp. 57-64
Author(s):  
L. B. Khaitseva ◽  
Yu. B. Alieva
Keyword(s):  
Professional Community ◽  
Professional Experience ◽  
Research Papers ◽  
Library Education ◽  
Russian State ◽  
Personal Contribution ◽  
Learning Programs ◽  
History Of ◽  
Specialized Department ◽  
State Library

The authors draw attention of the professional community to the professional experience of the Karatygin family with the documents covering one hundred years of Russian sci-tech  and special libraries. The quantitative data on professional publications and manuscripts by the Karatygins family donated to the Russian State Library are given.The Karatygins archive is the most significant collection acquired by the RSL specialized department in the recent years. It has compiled everything related to the development of sci-tech and special libraries, from general regulative documents, stenographs and All-Union conferences minutes, typical provisions and library rules to the reports of real regional special libraries. Research papers, statistical and methodological materials, learning programs, lectures and other documents are also included. The archive is of interest to researchers investigating into the history of special and sci-tech libraries, and the personal contribution of Fedor and Tatiana Karatygin into the development of sci-tech libraries and the library education in the country.

New Facts on the History of the Russian America (Based of the Russian Archival Documents)

2009 ◽  
pp. 54-58
Author(s):  
Ivan B. Mironov
Keyword(s):  
Russian Federation ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
State Archive ◽  
Historical Archive ◽  
Russian State ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
State Library

The refusal of Russia from its territory in Alaska is presented to this day as a goodwill gesture for the peace and consent with USA. The fragments of the documents stored in the archive of foreign policy of the Russian Empire, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, in the Russian State Historical Archive, in the State Archive of the Russian Federation, in the research department of manuscripts of the Russian State Library, reveal the true reasons for the taken decisions. New facts for scientific use and previously unknown documents are introduced.

scholarly journals The “Non-Euclidean Geometry” of the Manuscript: Mikhail Bulgakov’s Digital Archive

2020 ◽  
pp. 55-60
Author(s):  
Liubov’ V. Khachaturian ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Digital Archive ◽  
State Archive ◽  
Mikhail Bulgakov ◽  
Russian State ◽  
Electronic Copy ◽  
History Of ◽  
State Library

The article examines the problem of access to archival sources, many of which are currently closed for research due to a number of reasons, including epidemiological ones. The author sees the solution to the problem in creating special unified electronic archives, in which all information about manuscripts is placed on the Internet site or portal, regardless of where they are located geographically. In the author’s opinion, electronic resources of the “second generation” meet the most complete tasks of scientific research: digital archives that allow not only quickly selecting sources, but also working with an electronic copy of the document identical to the original. Regardless of the scientific qualification of the researcher and the state of the original, any Internet user gets direct access to the electronic copy: they can study it, clarify it, quote it in their works and distribute links to the source. On the material of the “Autograph. The 20th-Century. Digital Archive of Russian Literature” portal, the author describes the process of creating a digital archive as a research work that is located at the junction of two Humanities disciplines: source studies and textual studies. In the course of the research, the author turns to the new materials of the portal – the digital archive of Mikhail Bulgakov. The author gives a detailed description of the history of the writer’s archival collections in various organizations (Institute of World Literature, RAS; Russian State Library; Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts), as well as a description of research works of the past decade on Bulgakov’s artistic heritage. During the writer’s lifetime, the archive was kept by Bulgakov himself, then by his widow, Elena Bulgakova, with a full understanding of the value that the collection as a whole represents. As a result, a huge, interconnected and actually commented complex of manuscripts, albums, correspondence, and visual materials was created. Then the archive was divided into two unequal parts (the Bulgakov-prose writer archive and the Bulgakov-playwright archive) and transferred to two different repositories: the Pushkin House (Fund 369) and the Lenin State library (Fund 562). The Bulgakov collection of the Pushkin House is “adjacent” to the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts funds, which reflect the history of the text based on the materials of organizations (Glavrepertkom, archival funds of theaters, magazines and publishing houses). The author further describes the materials from the Mikhail Bulgakov Fund at the Institute of World Literature, RAS, presented on the “ Autograph. The 20th-Century” portal. The author cites unpublished (or published with notes) sources from the least studied part of the archive – the collection of theater albums. Comparing the theater album devoted to the stage history of the play The Days of the Turbins (The White Guard, The Brothers Turbins) and the text of Theatrical Novel (A Dead Man’s Memoir), the author infers that the album is a kind of a autodocumentary source of the novel, clarifying many controversial points in its interpretation. The genre nature of this type of album requires a separate study. In conclusion, the author emphasizes that the ideal material for such research can be the digital archive of Mikhail Bulgakov.

History of Russia’s debt (based on materials from the personal archive of V. I. Bovykin)

2021 ◽  
pp. 12-16
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Al'bertovna Milenko
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Method ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Project Organization ◽  
Russian State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Personal Archives ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
State Library

The object of this research is the analysis of the personal archives of Russian historians. The subject of this research is the examination of the personal archive of Professor Valery Ivanovich Bovykin, preserved in the Department of Manuscripts of the Russian State Library since 1998. Leaning on the aforementioned sources, the article explores the history of the project “The Fate of Russia's Debt”, which was among unaccomplished plans of the scholar. The author attempted to assess the role of V. I. Bovykin in project organization on studying Russia's debts in the early XX century. The article touches upon the topic of discovery of the scholar’s laboratory, his archive for finding new scientific historical knowledge. The author analyzes how the Professor's personal archive allows following the process of creating the project infrastructure, since all the materials on the project were accumulated by the scholar, which defines the novelty of this work. It is revealed that the project of V. I. Bovykin was against the foreign policy conducted by the Russian Federation in the 1990s. The conclusion is made that the key components of the scientific method, followed by Valery Ivanovich Bovykin in his research, imply a solid empirical base, as well as advancing the topic to the international level.

The Modernities of H. Lawrence Freeman

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 719-779
Author(s):  
David Gutkin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Black Press ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
White Press ◽  
Grand Opera

H. Lawrence Freeman's “Negro Jazz Grand Opera,” Voodoo, was premiered in 1928 in Manhattan's Broadway district. Its reception bespoke competing, racially charged values that underpinned the idea of the “modern” in the 1920s. The white press critiqued the opera for its allegedly anxiety-ridden indebtedness to nineteenth-century European conventions, while the black press hailed it as the pathbreaking work of a “pioneer composer.” Taking the reception history of Voodoo as a starting point, this article shows how Freeman's lifelong project, the creation of what he would call “Negro Grand Opera,” mediated between disparate and sometimes apparently irreconcilable figurations of the modern that spanned the late nineteenth century through the interwar years: Wagnerism, uplift ideology, primitivism, and popular music (including, but not limited to, jazz). I focus on Freeman's inheritance of a worldview that could be called progressivist, evolutionist, or, to borrow a term from Wilson Moses, civilizationist. I then trace the complex relationship between this mode of imagining modernity and subsequent versions of modernism that Freeman engaged with during the first decades of the twentieth century. Through readings of Freeman's aesthetic manifestos and his stylistically syncretic musical corpus I show how ideas about race inflected the process by which the qualitatively modern slips out of joint with temporal modernity. The most substantial musical analysis examines leitmotivic transformations that play out across Freeman's jazz opera American Romance (1924–29): lions become subways; Mississippi becomes New York; and jazz, like modernity itself, keeps metamorphosing. A concluding section considers a broader set of questions concerning the historiography of modernism and modernity.

P.A. Ovchinnikov — Collector of Manuscript Books

2010 ◽  
pp. 70-74
Author(s):  
Andrey S. Usachev
Keyword(s):  
Early History ◽  
Research Department ◽  
Russian State ◽  
History Of ◽  
State Library

The article tells about the collection of manuscript books of collector and Old Believer P. Ovchinnikov (1843—1912), now stored in the Manuscript Research Department of the Russian State Library. The special attention is paid to early history of the collection: to features of work of the collector with manuscripts, and also to their use by other researchers. The research is based on the data of various sources — notes on books, memoirs of contemporaries about P. Ovchinnikov, the unpublished documents.

Historian of the Russian State Library. In Memory of L.M. Koval (1933—2020)

2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-172
Author(s):  
Margarita Y. Dvorkina
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Library History ◽  
Russian State ◽  
Great Patriotic War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Publishing Houses ◽  
October 17 ◽  
State Library ◽  
The 19Th Century

The article is devoted to the memory of Lyudmila Mikhailovna Koval (October 17, 1933 – February 15, 2020), historian, Head of the History sector of the Russian State Library (RSL) and the Museum of Library history. The author presents brief biographical information about L.M. Koval, the author of more than 350 scientific and popular scientific works in Russian and in 9 foreign languages. She published 29 books in Publishing houses “Nauka”, “Kniga”, “Letniy Sad”, ”Pashkov Dom”, most of the works are dedicated to the Library. Special place in the work of L.M. Koval is given to the Great Patriotic War theme. The article considers the works devoted to the activities of Library staff during the War period. L.M. Koval paid much attention to the study of activities of the Library’s Directors. She prepared books and articles about the Directors of the Moscow Public and Rumyantsev Museums and Library from the end of the 19th century and almost to the end of the 20th century: N.V. Isakov, D.S. Levshin, V.A. Dashkov, M.A. Venevitinov, I.V. Tsvetaev, V.D. Golitsyn, A.K. Vinogradov, V.I. Nevsky, N.M. Sikorsky. The author notes contribution of L.M. Koval to the study of the Library’s history. Specialists in the history of librarianship widely use bibliography of L.M. Koval in their research. The list of sources contains the main works of L.M. Koval, and the Appendix includes reviews of publications by L.M. Koval and the works about her.

Complicated Fate of Schneerson Collection

2013 ◽  
pp. 50-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Svetlana Y. Khvostova
Keyword(s):  
Russian State ◽  
History Of ◽  
State Library ◽  
Jewish Museum

On the Opening of the Department of the Russian State Library in Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow, as well as about the history of the Library of Schneerson family, which had become the center of the collection.

‘...Insured against the tyranny of time’.Knut Hamsun’s last play and an unknown Russian film script

2018 ◽  
pp. 76-102
Author(s):  
T P. Lonngren
Keyword(s):  
Film Adaptation ◽  
State Archive ◽  
Short Summary ◽  
Russian State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theatrical Play ◽  
Russian Film

After a short summary of the story behind K. Hamsun’s play In the Grip of Life [Livet i Vold], its plot and stage history in Russia, the article proceeds to tell about an unknown film script. Cinematic adaptations of Hamsun’s books have always dominated Norwegian literature, while none of his dramatic pieces have made it to the screen. However, a film script was uncovered, an adaptation of In the Grip of Life: a play specially written for a Russian theatre. The script was found in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts, among the documents of Evgeny Sergeevich Khokhlov. Based on the history of filmmaking and relevant filmography, Khokhlov’s film script is not just the only attempt at film adaptation of a Hamsun play, but the first ever project based on a theatrical play in Russian cinematic history. Written almost 100 years ago, the script is far from perfect in the modern understanding of filmmaking; nonetheless, it has certain merits in the eyes of contemporaries. The very attempt to interpret the play by means of a nascent artistic genre may be considered a proof of its relevance to Russian audiences at the time.

Theodore H. Friedgut, Stepmother Russia, Foster Mother America: Identity Transitions in the New Odessa Jewish Commune, Odessa, Oregon, New York, 1881–1891, together with Israel Mandelkern, Recollections of a Communist (ed. and annotated Theodore H. Friedgut). Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2014. 199 pp.

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Foster Mother ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Identity Transitions ◽  
Israeli Kibbutz

This chapter reviews the book Stepmother Russia, Foster Mother America: Identity Transitions in the New Odessa Jewish Commune, Odessa, Oregon, New York, 1881–1891 (2014), by Theodore H. Friedgut, together with Israel Mandelkern, Recollections of a Communist (edited and annotated by Theodore H. Friedgut). Stepmother Russia, Foster Mother America is a two-in-one volume that explores an obscure episode in the history of the Jews in the late nineteenth century while at the same time connecting much of its content to the author’s own life experience as a son of western Canada’s Jewish farming colonies and, later, as an ideologically driven halutz on an Israeli kibbutz. Stepmother Russia, Foster Mother America retells one branch of the mostly forgotten history of the Am Olam agricultural movement and brings a new layer into the discussion of global Jewish agrarianism, while Recollections of a Communist offers an edited and annotated version of a memoir written by Mandelkern.

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