Metadata: Institute of Linguistics of the USSR Academy of Sciences
Collection
- Country:
- Russia
- Holding institution:
- St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences
- Holding institution (official language):
- Санкт-Петербургский филиал архива Российской академии наук
- Postal address:
- 199034, Russia, St. Petersburg, Universitetskaia naberezhnaia, d. 1
- Phone number:
- (812) 323-08-21
- Web address:
- http://isaran.ru
- Email:
- archive@spbrc.nw.ru
- Reference number:
- F. 77
- Title:
- Institute of Linguistics of the USSR Academy of Sciences
- Title (official language):
- Институт языкознания Академии наук СССР
- Creator/accumulator:
- Institute of Linguistics of the USSR Academy of Sciences
- Date(s):
- 1887/1969
- Language:
- Russian
- English
- German
- French
- Yiddish
- Extent:
- 2,626 storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Scope and content:
- The fonds includes office correspondence (1921-69); materials on dissertation defences (1936-39); manuscripts of scholarly works and reviews of them, etc. (1926-39); accounting documents (1931-39); personal files of retired staff members (1915-1950); research manuscripts transferred from the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Language and Literature upon the merger with the Institute of Language and Thinking (1936-41); and “Chaldean impression prints” from the collection of N. Ia. Marr, transferred in 1959 to the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Linguistics of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Materials pertaining to Jewish history and culture (ops. 2, 3, 5-7) were housed among materials on the defence of dissertations: personal files of degree candidates; transcripts of defences; synopses of works; and reviews, and in particular, of the dissertation by S. D. Magid titled “The Ballad in Jewish Folklore” (1936-39). There are also scholarly works and related materials on dialectal languages, spelling reforms, and the compilation of dictionaries and phrasebooks; and notes, articles, and reports on the overall issues studied by the institute; these include articles by M. M. Gitlits titled “On the Issue of the Formation and Ways of Development of the Jewish Language (Yiddish)”; “I. G. Frank-Kamenetskii as a Hebraist”; “What Does the New Teaching on Language Mean for the Study of Yiddish?” (1938); “For the Inculcation of the New Teaching on Language among the Jewish Teaching Masses” (undated); A. Ia. Borisov, “An Unknown Yiddish Translation of Isaac Israeli ben Solomon’s ‘Book of Definitions’”; L. Stankov, “On the Impersonal Construction in Yiddish”; M. Shul’man, “Borrowings from Yiddish in German and East Slavic Languages” (1939); N. V. Iushmanov, “The Structure of the Semitic Root” (1941); etc. Also housed in the fonds are documents pertaining to the institute’s staff, including personal files of the Hebraists I. I. Ravrebe and I. G. Frank-Kamenetskii, the Yiddish language specialist M. M. Gitlits (1930s), and others.
- Archival history:
- The Academy’s archive was established by decree of Emperor Peter I in 1728 to house documents of the Conference (supreme assembly) of the Academy of Sciences. At the same time, Academy of Sciences President L. L. Bliumentrost appointed Gerhard Friedrich Müller, a student of the Academy gymnasium (subsequently an academician, and the first historiographer to the Russian Empire), to organise the files of the Conference of the Academy of Sciences. During the 18th-20th c., separate archives of other subdivisions of the Academy of Sciences existed as well: the archives of the Chancellery of the Academy of Sciences (18th c.) and the Committee of the Board of the Academy of Sciences (the chancellery’s institutional successor; documents date from 1803); and archives of departments. In 1922, all Academy archives were merged into a single Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences, renamed in 1930 the Archive of the USSR Academy of Sciences (and in 1991, once again the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences). In 1936, a Moscow branch of the archive was created in connection with the Academy’s relocation to that city. In 1963, the Archive of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad was reorganised as the Leningrad Branch of the Archive of the USSR Academy of Sciences, while the Archival Directorate was transferred to Moscow. In 1991, the Leningrad branch was renamed the St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SPF ARAN). The archive houses over 1,600 fonds containing approximately one million storage units.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
The Institute of Japhetic Research was founded on the initiative of Academician N. Ia. Marr in 1921. The institute’s primary activity pertained to studying the ways in which languages developed and interpenetrated, and to forecasting the development of a unified language in the future. The Institute of Japhetic Research, which had an initial staff of six, was headed by N. Ia. Marr. Structurally, the institute consisted of the departments of ethnic and historical linguistics, with general meetings held to exchange views. Much attention was paid to the development of national languages and the creation of written languages for them, and in particular, the development and dissemination of alphabets for non-written languages of peoples of the Caucasus. In 1922, by decision of the Department of Historical Sciences and Philology of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the institute was renamed the Japhetic Institute; the simplification of its title did not alter the profile of its activities. Proceedings were published in Japhetic Collections, Materials on Japhetic Linguistics, and Issues and Problems of Japhetidology.
From 1925 on, the institute featured two specialised groups – cuneiform and numerals; and in 1926 the applied linguistics group, which dealt with the development of alphabets, transcription methods, terminology, and the theoretical norms of the future “panhuman language”, was formed. By 1927, there were groups to study housing terms, and myths and literary subjects, and to compile a dictionary of the Georgian literary language; and there was a Chuvash group. In 1930, in connection with another restructuring aimed at separating methodical and practical operations, three departments were formed, devoted to the theoretical elaboration of problems of genetics and speech development (within thematic sections); developing linguistic material as a base for research (in offices, arranged by language); and the production department, which included a section for studies and propaganda, and a personnel training department, which gave assignments to ethnic-minority personnel. In 1929-30, the institute established a postgraduate course, and in late 1931 it was merged with the Russian Language Commission, with the combined entity now called the Institute of Language and Thinking, which in 1933 was named after N. Ia. Marr. The institute’s work was conducted in classrooms and groups, and its press organ was a collection titled Iazyk i myshlenie (Language and Thinking).
In 1942, operations were conducted by two collectives – one in Alma-Ata, directed by I. I. Meshchaninov, the other in Kazan’, headed by S. P. Obnorskii. In 1944, the Institute of Language and Thinking was merged with the Institute of Language and Literature of the Peoples of the USSR, headquartered in Leningrad with a branch in Moscow. In 1950, it was transferred to Moscow and merged with the Institute of the Russian Language into a single Institute of Linguistics of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The Leningrad branch is currently called the Institute of Linguistic Research (ILI AN USSR).
- Access points: persons/families:
- Borisov, A. Ia.
- Frank-Kamenetskii, I. G.
- Gitlits, M. M.
- Israeli ben Solomon, Isaac
- Iushmanov, N V
- Magid, S. D.
- Marr, N. Ia.
- Ravrebe, I. I.
- Shul’man, M
- Stankov, L
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds includes six inventories systematised by structure.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
