On the circumstances of the transfer of the Lepidoptera collection of Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich to the Zoological Museum in St. Petersburg

2021 ◽  
Vol 325 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-136
Author(s):  
N.V. Slepkova

The work examines the circumstances of the transfer of the largest collection of butterflies, collected by Grand Duke Nikolai Romanov for 26 years, to the Zoological Museum of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg in 1899–1900. The gift was made on the condition that the collection would retain the name of the donor; that, because of its considerable size, there will be a special custodian; that it would remain untouchable and without resupply, except for the species that may come from the Russian Empire; that it will be available for the work of scientists and professionals interested in the field. Two requirements were added a little bit later. The collection should have been kept in the same cabinets as it was at the Grand Duke’s palace. Otto Hertz was to be left the custodian with the position of senior zoologist. The main sources of the article are the minutes of the meetings of the Physics and Mathematics Department of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, museum reports, books of receipts from the Scientific Archives of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, materials of the St. Petersburg branch of the Archive of RAS and the Russian State Historical Archives.

Author(s):  
Piotr Daszkiewicz ◽  
Dominika Mierzwa-Szymkowiak

Letters from Władysław Taczanowski to Alexander Strauch in the Russian Academy of Sciences Collections. An Interesting Contribution to the History of Zoology in the Nineteenth Century The article presents the Polish translation and analysis of the letters from Władysław Taczanowski (1819–1890) to Aleksander Strauch (1832–1893). The correspondence is stored in the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg and comprises 29 letters written between 1870 and 1889. The main theme of these letters is specimens of reptiles and amphibians sent to Warsaw by Polish naturalists, such as Benedykt Dybowski from Siberia, Konstanty Jelski from French Guiana and Peru, Jan Kalinowski from Korea, as well as specimens brought by Taczanowski from Algeria. Strauch determined the species and used them in his publications. This correspondence is also a valuable testimony of the exchange of specimens between the Warsaw Zoological Cabinet and the Zoological Museum of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. In return for herpetological specimens, the Warsaw collection received numerous fish specimens from the Russian Empire and a collection of birds from Mikołaj Przewalski’s expedition to Central Asia. The content of the letters allows a better understanding of the functioning of natural history museography but also the organization of shipments, preparation, determination, and exchange of specimens. They are a valuable document of the history of nineteenth-century scientific museography.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 210-218
Author(s):  
Margarita F. Khartanovich ◽  
◽  
Maria V. Khartanovich ◽  

The exposition of the 18th century Kunstkamera of the Imperial Academy of Sciences was arranged according to the principle of a universal, all-encompassing presentation of the surrounding world through material monuments. Along with natural history collections, items related to the traditional spiritual and material culture of various peoples were displayed in the Kunstkamera. As part of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, the Kunstkamera was a kind of public presentation of the activities of academicians, reflecting the development of scientific knowledge in a particular area through the principles of organizing objects and their interpretation. This article analyzes the stages of exhibiting objects of traditional culture, their relationship and interdependence with the development of scientific interest in the “description of peoples”. In the first decades of public exposure for the Kunstkamera (1730s–1740s), the items of traditional culture of any nation were exhibited based on their functional purpose. Large-scale expeditionary geographic studies of Russia, begun by Peter I and continued during subsequent reigns, significantly expanded the body of information and materials stored and studied at the Imperial Academy of Sciences. The ethnographic assemblies received state “publication” during the ethnographic carnival, organized on the occasion of celebrations upon the signing of a peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire during the reign of Empress Anna Ioannovna. Since the end of the 1740s, due to the expeditionary research of the territories of the Russian Empire, the collection of ethnographic items has acquired a systemic classification character, which contributes to a reliable reflection of the system of organizing life sustainment for a certain people in specific territorial conditions. By the last decades of the 18th century, the ethnographic exposition of the Kunstkamera of the Imperial Academy of Sciences was the result of an integrated scientific approach to the presentation of the cultural diversity of the peoples of the Russian Empire.


Author(s):  
Yu. Yakutin

The article continues the series of publications devoted to the academicians-economists of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who actively worked with the Free Economic Society of Russia — the VEO of Russia. Telling about the life milestones and stages of state and public activity of a member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, Admiral Nikolai Semyonovich Mordvinov, the article reveals the essence and meaning of the admiral's special opinions on key aspects of the socio-economic policy of the Russian Empire in the first half of the XIX century. N.S. Mordvinov's reflections on property, serfdom, industry, trade, and tariffs are summarized; about finance, banks, and insurance. The role of N.S. Mordvinov in the practical activities of the Imperial Free Economic Society of Russia is emphasized. N.S. Mordvinov's vision of the goals and objectives of the VEO as an important institution of Russian civil society is revealed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-160
Author(s):  
Andrei Platonov

The article contains a brief biography of the ordinary academician of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences E. E. Golubinsky, one of three major church historians of the Russian Empire (along with Macarius Bulgakov and Filaret Gumilevsky), written by the editor and publisher of his handwritten heritage.


Author(s):  
B. A. Alimdjanov ◽  

The topic of the history of banks’ activity in Central Asia has been little studied in national and world historiography, although its study allows revealing new aspects of the economic policy of the Russian Empire in the region. The article is written on the basis of documents extracted from the Russian State Historical Archives (RSHA). The financial institutions of the Russian Empire took into account local specifics and encouraged the production of export-oriented products. The main goal of the article is to reveal the active operations of the Russian-Asian Commercial Bank in the formation of market relations in the traditional economy of the outskirts of the Russian Empire. We believe that the colonial economy had a specific character, which was expressed not in the destruction of the local «industry», but in the development of agriculture. In writing the article, statistical methods and the theory of modernization of the colonial periphery were used


Author(s):  
Rafael Komiljonov

The article examines the Genesis of the institution of jury trial in the Russian Empire from the moment of its introduction to the end of the Provisional government. It is noted that the emergence of a trial with the participation of jurors was influenced by Western models of the judicial process, and the forms of participation of citizens in the administration of justice that previously existed on the territory of the Russian state were taken into account. The role that the jury system has played with some success in the search for truth, justice, and the implementation of effective and independent justice in the past centuries is particularly highlighted.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 355-373
Author(s):  
Irina V Sinova

The article deals with the issues related to the evolution of the use of women in the civil service at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries on the example of the Maritime Ministry on the basis of previously unpublished documents stored in the Russian state archive of the Navy and periodical press materials. The study of gender issues can be of scientific interest on the basis of its documents, as practically not in demand in research related to the women’s issue. As a result of the struggle of the public, there were some concessions on the part of the authorities related to the expansion of women’s access to fill certain positions in a number of areas that experienced a lack of certain qualifications, including public service, in the conditions of intensive bourgeois development. The article analyzes the legal acts regulating the work of women, especially in the public service. it is shown how the changes that took place in the Russian Empire influenced the transformation of the socio-economic situation of women in General, and, also, became a reflection of the social policy of the state. The article reveals the attitude of the heads of departments of the Ministry to the admission of women to the public service, as well as their opinion on the degree of necessity for the service itself in attracting women to it. The article deals with the arguments of men - heads of departments of the Ministry, related to the impact of women’s work on home life, on the family and on itself, which differed largely by philistine assessments, rather than progressive views. In fact, on the part of the authorities, concessions to women were more imaginary and forced than the result of an objective assessment of their equal opportunity to serve in the public system.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 63-93
Author(s):  
Amiran Urushadze

The article analyzes governmental debates on the functions, rights and privileges of the Armenian Catholicoi in the context of inter-institutional controversies. The author attempts to identify and analyze the most influential programmes for solving the “Echmiadzin issue” and their origins presenting at the same time certain aspects of political interaction between the Russian Empire and the Armenian Church as overlapping processes and related events. The history of relationships between Russian state and Armenian Church in XIX–XX centuries shows that different actors of the imperial politics had different ideas about the optimal model of cooperation with Echmiadzin. The divisions took place not only between the various departments (the Ministry of Internal Affairs versus the Ministry of Foreign Affairs), but also within them, where individual officials could hold “anti-departmental” views in each particular case. All this hindered administrative consolidation, slowed down the empire's response to important political challenges and dragged the imperial structures into protracted service-hierarchical confrontations. The “Etchmiadzin Question” and the governmental discussions around it show in part the administrative paralysis of the autocracy and the decompensation of the system of power in the Russian Empire in the early 20th century. The article employs a rich documentary base of archival materials from the collections of the Russian State Historical Archive. These materials are introduced into the scholarly discourse for the first time ever.


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