Metadata: Drawings, Engravings, Lithographs, Postcards
Collection
- Country:
- Russia
- Holding institution:
- Russian Geographic Society
- Holding institution (official language):
- Русское географическое общество
- Postal address:
- 190000, Russia, St. Petersburg, per. Grivtsova, d. 10, litera A
- Phone number:
- (812) 315-62-82
- Web address:
- http://www.rgo.ru/ru
- Email:
- rgo@rgo.ru
- Reference number:
- Category 116
- Title:
- Drawings, Engravings, Lithographs, Postcards
- Title (official language):
- Рисунки, гравюры, литографии, открытки
- Creator/accumulator:
- Research Archive of the Russian Geographic Society
- Date(s):
- 1611/1980
- Language:
- Russian
- English
- German
- French
- Polish
- Dutch; Flemish
- Italian
- Arabic
- Extent:
- 433 storage units
- Type of material:
- Graphic material
- Scope and content:
- Among this category’s materials are drawings of plants, birds, folk costumes and their decorative details, and musical instruments; postcards with views of cities of Europe and Asia, particular buildings, etc. Materials pertaining to Jewish history are found in both the category’s inventories, and in particular, in op. 1, there is an album by A. Chikhin titled “Travel Notes and Sketches during My Wanderings,” which contains drawings in pen, oil, and pencil of scenes from the Caucasus, Ukraine, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, and Palestine, including sketches of scenes from Jerusalem, and in particular, the Damascus Gate, the City of David, the tomb of Absalom, the sepulcher of Nimrod, Jaffa, Nazareth, etc. (1887-89). Housed in op. 2 are collections of cards, including postcards (in colour and black and white) with views of Jewish commercial streets in Amsterdam (undated); sets of postcards showing cities of the Pale of Settlement (Belostok, Brest-Litovsk, Mogilev, and Rovno), including depictions of synagogues and other Jewish houses of worship, Jewish commercial streets and markets (late 19th – early 20th c.), etc.
- Archival history:
- The Russian Geographic Society (RGO) was founded by imperial decree of Emperor Nicholas I and on recommendation of Interior Minister L. A. Perovskii on 6 (18) August 1845. The idea to establish the society was conceived by Admiral Baron F. P. Litke (subsequently head of the Imperial Academy of Sciences), tutor of Grand Prince Konstantin Nikolaevich, the future first chairman of the RGO. The mission of the RGO was to “assemble and direct the best young minds of Russia toward a comprehensive study of their native land.” The RGO combined specialists in geography and allied sciences, as well as travel enthusiasts, ethnographers, and public figures. In the course of its activities it was renamed on several occasions: from 1845-50, it was called the Russian Geographic Society (RGO); from 1850-1917, the Imperial Russian Geographic Society (IRGO); from 1917-25, the Russian Geographic Society (RGO); from 1925-38, the State Geographic Society (GGO); from 1938-92, the Geographic Society of the USSR (the All-Union Geographic Society; VGO); from 1992-95, the Russian Geographic Society; and from 1995 to the present, the All-Russian Public Organization “Russian Geographic Society” (VOO “RGO”). At different times, the society has been headed by representatives of the royal family, famous travellers, researchers, and statesmen. The hundreds of expeditions organised by the society have played an important role in the colonisation of the Arctic, Siberia, the Far East, Central Asia, Australia, and the world’s oceans and seas. Honorary members of the IRGO / RGO have included statesmen, public figures, and scientists of Russia – P. P. Semenov-Tian-Shanskii, Count S. Iu. Witte, N. I. Vavilov, V. I. Vernadskii, Baron F. P. Vrangel’, A. M. Gorchakov, V. I. Dal’, V. A. Obruchev – as well as Leopold II of Belgium, the Ottoman Sultan Abdul-Hamid, Carl Gustaf XVI of Sweden, King Oscar II of Norway, Shah Naser al-Din Shah Qajar of Persia, Baron Ferdinand Richthofen, Roald Amundsen, Fridtjof Nansen, and Thor Heyerdahl. Since 2009, the president of the Russian Geographic Society has been RF Defense Minister S. K. Shoigu. In 2010, the RGO Board of Trustees was established; it is headed by RF Pres. Vladimir Putin.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- The Research Archive of the Russian Geographic Society began to form archival collections (categories) in connection with the development, publication, and distribution to all provinces of the Russian Empire of seven thousand copies of the society’s ethnographic agenda. These were in the form of instructions for persons interested in providing the Russian Geographic Society with ethnographic materials. The agenda proposed that ethnographic descriptions of the peoples inhabiting the empire be prepared according to the following subjects: “1) with regard to appearance, 2) on language, 3) on everyday home life, 4) on features of social life, 5) on mental and moral capabilities and education, 6) on folk traditions and monuments.” The publication and distribution of the ethnographic agenda led to the Russian Geographic Society receiving a large quantity of ethnographic descriptions, and not only from members of the society, but also from local officials, representatives of the urban and rural intelligentsia (clergy, teachers, doctors), and peasants. In 1853 alone, the Imperial Russian Geographic Society received approximately two thousand manuscripts from various provinces. The materials received were originally stored in the society’s library or in the archives of its departments. Between 1863-67, the archives of the society’s departments were unified into a single overall Research Archive of the Imperial Russian Geographic Society. F. I. Istoman, secretary of the ethnography department, began the process of cataloguing the archive’s manuscripts in 1886. He systematised the manuscripts on Russia as a whole and set apart collections (categories) of manuscripts pertaining to major administrative-territorial units. Materials received by the society’s archive subsequently went to supplement already-formed categories. These were mainly materials sent from the local level containing answers to questionnaires found in various society agendas developed in the period of 1866-1913, for example, the “Agenda for the collection of local ethnographic information,” “The agenda for the collection of folk legal customs,” “The agenda for the collection of information on ethnography,” etc. In the 1910s, the ethnographer D. K. Zelenin analysed and described documents housed in the categories of the Research Archive; the inventories he compiled were published as A Description of the Manuscripts of the Research Archive of the Russian Geographic Society (pts. 1–3., St. Petersburg, 1914–16). The materials of the Research Archive were originally arranged mostly by province of the Russian Empire; in 1895, new categories started to be formed that included documents that did not pertain to any particular location or province; and collections of graphic materials started to be formed as well.
- Access points: persons/families:
- Chikhin, A.
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds includes two inventories (op. 1 – drawings, engraving, lithographs; op. 2 – postcards) without any apparent structure.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary