National Library of Russia (RNB)

• Rossiiskaia natsional'naia biblioteka (RNB)

• National

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as the Depot of Manuscripts in 1805 on the basis of the P.P. Dubrovskii (Dubrowski) collection of manuscripts and historical documents, mostly gathered in France and other European countries in the course of thirty years by the Russian diplomat, and significantly increased during the upheavals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 Bibliothèque 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.

Details about holdings of the Manuscripts department: http://www.iisg.nl/abb/rep/G-15.div1.php?b=rep%2FG-15.tab1.php%3Fb%3DG.php%2523G-15

2017-06-27

• Englisch

http://www.iisg.nl/abb/rep/G-15.div1.php?b=rep%2FG-15.tab1.php%3Fb%3DG.php%2523G-15

Author : Open Jerusalem http://openjlem.hypotheses.org/