Metadata: P. V. Shein
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, St. Petersburg, Universitetskaia naberezhnaia, d. 1
- Phone number:
- (812) 323-08-21
- Web address:
- www.ranar.spb.ru
- Email:
- archive@spbrc.nw.ru
- Reference number:
- F. 104
- Title:
- P. V. Shein
- Title (official language):
- Шейн П. В.
- Creator/accumulator:
- Shein, Pavel Vasil’evich
- Date(s):
- 1826/1903
- Language:
- Russian
- Belarusian
- Hebrew
- Yiddish
- English
- German
- Polish
- French
- Extent:
- 1,288 archival storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- Good
- Scope and content:
-
The fonds contains manuscripts of P. V. Shein and other persons on folklore and ethnography, as well as various documents: telegrams, memoranda, certificates, diplomas, letters from various institutions, newspaper clippings, photographs, letters from various persons, etc. (1826-1903). Documents pertaining to Jewish history and culture are found in both series, and may be provisionally divided into two thematic groups:
1) EthnoGraphic materials collected in the provinces of the Pale of Settlement – Vil’na, Vitebsk, Grodno, Ekaterinoslav, Kovno, Minsk, Mogilev, Kherson, and Chernigov – containing information about Jews, in particular, a description by A. V. Lisovskaia of the everyday life of Jews, their dwellings, clothing, and food (undated); notes by P. V. Shein on the attitude of Belorussians toward Jews (undated); “A Wedding among the Kopys’ Townspeople”, which describes a dance called the “Zhidovochka” (undated); a description of a song about a sandpiper that “has become an essential part of religious ritual among Jews” (undated); a letter to P. V. Shein from L. N. Shalyt, owner of a Vil’na tannery, offering congratulations on the birth of a child in Hebrew (1900); etc.
2) P. V. Shein’s literary experiments, in particular, the manuscript of his translation of the tragedy Saul’s Kingdom by Yosef Ha-Efrati (also known as Joseph Troplowitz) (1848), etc.
3) Materials on the “Jewish question”, including documents of the Volozhin yeshiva: a report on its condition according to an audit in 1889; a statement on the yeshiva’s enrolments showing the distribution of students by place of birth and age; a copy of the yeshiva’s rules; letters from its pupils to the inspector A. A. Il’in; and drafts of the inspector’s reports to the director of national schools of the Vil’na province (1891); a translation of an article titled “The Number of Jews on Earth”, published in the Hebrew-language historical and literary collection Ha-Kerem (Warsaw, 1888); excerpts from the journal Voskhod on the “Jewish question” (1889, 1891); a printed edition of a work by A. A. Alekseev titled “The Truth about Russian and So-Called Polish Jews” (an excerpt from nos. 3-7 of Dukhovnaia beseda [Spiritual Discussion] for 1870); etc.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
Pavel Vasil’evich Shein (1826-1900) was a folklorist, ethnographer and linguist. He was born in the family of the Jewish merchant M. Shein. He taught himself Russian and German, and produced a Russian verse translation from the Hebrew of the tragedy Saul’s Kingdom by the poet-maskil Yosef Ha-Efrati (also known as Joseph Troplowitz). In 1848, he converted to Lutheranism. In 1851, he graduated from the German school of the St. Michael’s Lutheran Church, and wrote poetry in Yiddish. During his studies, he became close with a teacher of the school, the poet F. B. Miller, and then joined a circle of Moscow writers and artists including F. N. Glinka, S. E. Raich, M. V. Avdeev and others; and became acquainted with the Slavophiles K. S. Aksakov, S. P. Shevyrev and A. S. Khomiakov. Under their influence, he became interested in collecting folklore and associated with the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature at Moscow University. From 1851 to 1860, he taught Russian and served as a tutor on manorial estates; and he worked as a teacher in the state colleges of Tula and Epifan’ (1861-81). In the summer of 1861, he was invited by Lev Tolstoy to teach Russian at the Iasnaia Poliana school. In 1881, he received a full-time position at the Vitebsk secondary school [gimnaziia] and subsequently in Shuia, Zaraisk, Kaluga, etc. He published his first article, titled “Russian Folk Epics and Songs”, in the journal Proceedings of the Society of Russian History and Antiquities in 1859 and he continued to collect folkloric and ethnoGraphic materials. From 1871 on, he received funding from the Russian Geographic Society and subsequently a pension from the Ministry of Finance. From the 1890s on, he recruited correspondents, mainly teachers, to join his collection efforts, instructing them in techniques for recording folklore and providing them with a special program. From 1876 to 1900, he published articles in V. F. Miller’s Ethnographic Review. In 1881, he retired and settled in St. Petersburg. From 1886 on, he took part in the compilation of an academic dictionary of the Russian literary language. His primary works were Russian Folk Songs Collected by P. V. Shein (Moscow, 1870); Materials for Studying the Way of Life and Language of the Russian Population of the Northwest Territory (vols. 1-3; St. Petersburg, 1887-1902); The Great Russian in Songs, Rituals, Customs, Beliefs, Fairy Tales, Legends, Etc. (St. Petersburg, 1898-1900, vol. 1).
The archive of the Academy of Sciences was established by decree of Emperor Peter I in 1728 to house documents of the Conference (supreme assembly) of the Academy. 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 to 20th centuries, separate archives of other subdivisions of the Academy of Sciences existed as well: the archives of the Chancellery of the Academy of Sciences (18th century) and the Committee of the Board of the Academy of Sciences (the chancellery’s institutional successor; documents date from 1803) as well as 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 items.
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds comprises two series, arranged mainly alphabetically.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary