Metadata: Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Collection
- Country:
- Russia
- Holding institution:
- Institute of the History of Material Culture
- Holding institution (official language):
- Институт истории материальной культуры
- Postal address:
- 191186, St. Petersburg, Dvortsovaia nab., d. 18
- Phone number:
- (812) 571-50-92
- Web address:
- http://www.archeo.ru
- Email:
- admin@archeo.ru
- Reference number:
- F. 47
- Title:
- Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences
- Title (official language):
- Институт Истории Материальной Культуры Российской Академии Наук
- Creator/accumulator:
- Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences
- Date(s):
- 1937/1959
- Language:
- Russian
- Extent:
- 122,965 archival storage units
- Type of material:
- Photographic images
- Physical condition:
- Good
- Scope and content:
- Material pertaining to Jewish and Karaite history and culture in this fonds includes photographs of an expedition to Crimea led by N. I. Repnikov in 1940 (albums O. 1528 and O. 1529), including photographs with views of the cities and neighbourhoods of Chufut-Kale, Bakhchisaray and Mangup-Kale, as well as photographs annotated as “Old kenesas in Chufut-Kale”; “Altar in an old kenesa”; “New Karaite kenesa. Entrance and women’s gallery”; “Frame built into the wall of the [new] kenesa”; “Courtyard of the home of [A. S.] Firkovich”; “Ceiling in one of the rooms in Firkovich’s home”; “Ancient Karaite book. Particular pages”; etc.; album O. 2224, which includes photographs taken during an expedition of the Institute of Archeology of the USSR Academy of Sciences to study fortresses led by the architectural historian P. A. Rappoport, contains photographs of the gable and exterior of the synagogue in Slonim (Grodno region) (1959); etc.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
The Institute of the History of Material Culture is the institutional successor to the Imperial Archaeological Commission established under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by decree of Emperor Alexander II on 2 February 1859 for the purpose of “searching for antiquities pertaining primarily to Russian history and the life of peoples who once inhabited the space now occupied by Russia; and collecting information about folk as well as other monuments of antiquity in the country”, and developing methods of “scientifically evaluating antiquities discovered”. The first chair of the Imperial Archaeological Commission was Count S G Stroganov, from 1882 to 1886 it was headed by A A Vasil’chikov, director of the Imperial Hermitage, and from 1886 by Count A A Bobrinskii. Its staff included the archaeologists P P Pokryshkin, A A Spitsyn, B V Farmakovskii, V V Latyshev and others. In 1889, the Imperial Archaeological Commission was granted the exclusive right to allow and control excavations on state, urban and peasant lands. It conducted work pertaining to the protection and restoration of major monuments of antiquity, and published annual reports from 1859 to 1918 as well as from 1901 to 1918, its News (Izvestia). It also produced the series Materials on the Archeology of Russia (37 volumes were published from 1866-1918) and individual publications. In 1918, the Imperial Archaeological Commission became the basis of the newly established Russian State Archaeological Commission. In 1919, it was abolished and the leadership function in Soviet archeology was transferred to the newly organised Russian Academy of the History of Material Culture in Petrograd, reorganised in 1926 as the State Academy of the History of Material Culture (GAIMK). In July 1937, the GAIMK was in turn reorganised as the Institute of the History of Material Culture within the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad, with a branch in Moscow. In October 1937, the presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences approved the institute’s structure as part of the History and Philosophy Department of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1943, the institute’s directorate was transferred to Moscow and a statute was adopted ratifying the institute’s two branches in Moscow and Leningrad. The presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences ratified the Leningrad branch of the Institute of the History of Material Culture of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which in 1959 was reorganised as the Institute of Archeology of the USSR Academy of Sciences, with the Leningrad branch preserved as a component thereof. In 1991, by decision of the presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the Leningrad branch was reorganised as an independent archaeological institution, with its former name, the Institute of the History of Material Culture, restored. The Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences consists of five departments, two laboratories and a research archive, which includes manuscript and photograph departments, with 174 fonds containing manuscript materials, cartographic and graphic documents, and drawings and photographs.
1859 should be considered the start date of the formation of the photo archive of the Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences should – this was the year of the establishment of the Imperial Archeological Commission, whose collection of photographs and negatives formed the basis for the photo archive collection. It contains over 1,200,000 items (negatives, positives and films). It is the oldest in Russia and the only specialised photo archive in the Russian Academy of Sciences system. The archive contains documentation of archaeological works in the Russian Empire and the USSR until 1945 and materials from expeditions from the period that followed. During the reorganisations of several Soviet institutions in the 1920s-30s, the photo archive received collections of the State Museum Fund, the Glavnauka Restoration Studio, the monuments preservation section of the Committee on the Arts and Committee to Popularise Art Publications, and collections from the Shuvalov Family Palace-Museum and the libraries of the Winter and Marble Palaces. The photo archive is organised as a collection of photos, negatives and postcards in albums of different formats, designated by the indices “Q” and “O” and numbered; the photos in albums are numbered consecutively. There are card catalogues arranged by author, archaeology and geography. There is a supplemental system, based on inventory records, for negatives and photographs. The numbering and ordering of negatives and photographs taken, for instance, during the same expedition do not correspond to the numbering and arrangement of these materials in the albums.
- Access points: locations:
- Bakhchisaray
- Crimea
- Slonim
- Access points: persons/families:
- Firkovich, A.
- Subject terms:
- Architecture
- Karaite Judaism
- Photographs
- Synagogues
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds is arranged by geography and document type.
- Finding aids:
- There are departmental card files as well as inventories of the fonds.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary