The Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the
Russian Academy of Sciences (abbreviated name: IRLI RAS) is a
scientific institution subordinate to the Ministry of Science and
Higher Education and the Russian Academy of Sciences. The structure
of the Institute includes research departments, centers, groups and
laboratories, as well as the Literary Museum, the Manuscript
Department and the Phonogram Archive (repository of sound folklore
recordings of the peoples of the world). The Institute is located in
St. Petersburg (since 1927 at the address: Makarova embankment, 4 -
the former building of the Maritime Customs; former addresses:
1905-1922, Universitetskaya nab., 5 - the main building of the
Academy of Sciences; 1922- 1927, Tiflisskaya st., 1 - the building
of the archive of the Customs Department; 1920-1924, Millionnaya
st., 22 and 24 - exhibition halls and apartments of employees in the
palace of princes Abamelek-Lazarev; 1925-1927, embankment Makarova,
d. 6 - exposition halls of the Museum).
It was created on
December 15, 1905 on the initiative of a number of figures of
Russian culture. In 1995, by decree of the President of the Russian
Federation, Pushkin House was included in the State Code of
Particularly Valuable Cultural Heritage Objects of the Peoples of
the Russian Federation.
The history of the Pushkin House began in 1899 - with
celebrations on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of
A.S. Pushkin and with the anniversary exhibition, for which 703 exhibits
were collected from individuals and various institutions. At the same
time, on the initiative of the President of the Imperial Academy of
Sciences, Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich and under his
chairmanship, a Commission was established to discuss the issue of a
monument to the poet. The idea of erecting a monument was gradually
transformed into the establishment of the "Pushkin House, a special
literary pantheon, where the relics of Russian writers of the 19th
century would be collected and stored." The meeting of the Commission,
which approved this provision, took place on December 15, 1905, this day
is considered the birthday of the Pushkin House.
The main fund of
the Pushkin House was collected by B. L. Modzalevsky. He also owned the
draft "Regulations on the Pushkin House", approved by Emperor Nicholas
II in 1907. The tasks of the new institution were defined as the
collection and storage of everything that "concerns Pushkin as a writer
and a person," as well as "everything that concerns the life and work of
representatives of Russian belles-lettres."
The first acquisition
of the Pushkin House was the Pushkin Library, acquired in April 1906
with government funds, it laid the foundation for a huge collection of
books, manuscripts and objects associated with the name of the great
Russian poet. At the expense of the treasury, the Paris Museum of A. F.
Onegin (Otto) was also bought. Onegin's collection was acquired by the
Academy of Sciences on May 15, 1909, but remained in the lifetime use of
the Parisian collector. In 1917, the collection of the first literary
museum in Russia, the Pushkin Museum of the Imperial Alexander Lyceum,
abolished by the February Revolution, turned up in the Pushkin House. In
1922, the collection of the Pushkin House was replenished with family
relics and documents kept in the Hannibal family, they were transferred
to the museum by Pushkin's second cousin, Anna Hannibal. In 1925 Onegin
died, and in 1928 his collection was also transferred to the Pushkin
House.
From the first years of the existence of the Pushkin
House, its collections were replenished not only with Pushkin's relics.
In 1909, some of the items displayed at the exhibition of the Academy of
Sciences in memory of I. S. Turgenev arrived here.
After the
revolution, the collection of the Lermontov Museum at the Nikolaev
Cavalry School entered the Pushkin House. The museum collection included
paintings and drawings by M. Yu. Lermontov, manuscripts, documents,
books autographed by the poet and his friends, memorable relics, almost
all lifetime portraits of Lermontov, his relatives, friends and
acquaintances. The collection of the museum of the Nikolaev Cavalry
School is the most important part of the Lermontov fund of the IRLI RAS,
which is the most complete in content and significant in volume of all
the existing collections of Lermontov materials, and the Lermontov Hall
of the Pushkin House is the only Lermontov Museum in St. Petersburg.
In 1930, the Pushkin House received the collection of the former
Nekrasov Museum at the Regional Central Library of Gubpolitprosveta.
In 1931, the St. Petersburg Tolstoy Museum was included in the
entire collection of the Pushkin House.
Since 1930, the Pushkin
House became the Academic Institute of Russian Literature (abbreviated
as IRLI), retaining its original name - Pushkin House and being a
complex museum and research complex, the only one in the world in its
originality.
Since 1995, the Pushkin House has been included in
the State Register of Particularly Valuable Cultural Heritage Objects.
In 1930, Pushkin House turned into an actual academic
institute. Since that time, following the research tasks and the logic
of the historical and literary process, the main areas of activity of
the Pushkin House have been determined. Almost from the very beginning,
two of its main departments were formed: ancient and new Russian
literature. They, in turn, included certain subdivisions at different
stages, were transformed and modified, but collecting and historical and
literary studies remained unchanged in the activities of the Institute.
In 1938, the Department of Folklore became part of the IRLI, which
had its own history: created as a folklore section of the Institute for
the Study of the Peoples of the USSR of the Academy of Sciences, then it
became a structure of the Institute of Anthropology, Ethnography and
Ethnology, after which it was transferred to the Pushkin House.
Throughout its history, the Department of Folklore has carried out a
huge "field" research work. More than 100 expeditions, including
philologists, musicologists, ethnographers, recorded folklore in the
Soviet and post-Soviet periods. Over 200,000 phonograms - samples of
oral art of the peoples of the North, Siberia, the Far East, the
Caucasus, Central Asia on various media: wax rollers, vinyl records,
tapes, digital disks are stored in the Phonogram Archive. The phonogram
archive is the largest ethnomusicological repository in the country, its
goal is not only to preserve sound materials, but also to conduct
systematic recordings of oral folk art, study and publish them.
Especially valuable in the Phonogram Archive is the collection of the
oldest sound recordings relating to the earliest use of the phonograph
in folklore and ethnographic practice in the 1890s-1920s. The historical
collections of the Pushkin House, numbering more than 7,000 wax
cylinders and disks, are included in the World Register of the UNESCO
Memory of the World Program.
As an independent structure of the
Institute of Russian Literature, the Sector of Pushkin Studies was
formed only in 1956 - much later than a number of other scientific
departments, but in fact, academic Pushkin studies began its history
even before the official opening of the Pushkin House, or rather, led to
the birth of the latter. The sector of Pushkin studies was headed by B.
V. Tomashevsky just a year before his untimely death. A small part of
the Sector was later headed by B. P. Gorodetsky, and in 1962 the Sector
was transformed into the Pushkin Studies Group under the Sector of New
Russian Literature, headed until 1974 by B. S. Meilakh. In fact, for
many years, the employees of the sector (group) were largely engaged in
research work, the results of which were published on the pages of the
serial publication Pushkin: Research and Materials (vols. I-XVII;
1956-2003), as well as the development of the corresponding chapters in
collective monographs which have become the leading genre of scientific
works of the Institute. In 1986, the Pushkin Group was transformed into
the Department of Pushkin Studies, which was tasked with creating a new
academic Complete Works of the poet and the Pushkin Encyclopedia. To do
this, first of all, it was necessary to train new cadres of Pushkinists,
and therefore, under the guidance of V. E. Vatsuro and S. A. Fomichev, a
two-year seminar on Pushkin's source studies was organized at Leningrad
State University. At the request of the Chairman of the Pushkin
Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician D.S.
Likhachev, for several years, target positions for postgraduate students
in the specialty “Pushkin studies” were allocated, which made it
possible to partially staff the Department of Pushkin Studies with young
employees.