Metadata: Vorontsov, Counts
Collection
- Country:
- Russia
- Holding institution:
- St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences
- Holding institution (official language):
- Санкт-Петербургский институт истории Российской Академии наук
- Postal address:
- 197110, St. Petersburg, Petrozavodskaia ul., d. 7
- Phone number:
- (812) 235-15-80
- Web address:
- http://www.spbiiran.nw.ru
- Email:
- spb_ii_ran@mail.ru
- Reference number:
- F. 36
- Title:
- Vorontsov, Counts
- Title (official language):
- Воронцовы, графы
- Creator/accumulator:
- Vorontsov
- Date(s):
- 1474/1904
- Language:
- Russian
- Polish
- English
- French
- German
- Extent:
- 2,324 archival storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- Good
- Scope and content:
- The fonds contains materials pertaining to the foreign policy and military campaigns of the Russian Empire, in particular: diplomatic correspondence of members of the Vorontsov family (1744-1849); documents on commerce and trade policy, industry and finance (1770-94); excerpts from Russian and foreign archives (1786-89); copies of memoranda, reports and decisions regarding particular issues of domestic policy; a collection of copies of decrees from 1704 to 1788; documents pertaining to science, education and culture; court cases on land disputes, official misconduct and embezzlement; copies of investigative files of the Privy Chancery (18th century); files on schismatics; information on various crimes in different provinces (1819-20); Count A. R. Vorontsov’s correspondence with Count A. A. Bezborodko, Count V. P. Kochubei, Prince A. A. Czartoryski and other statesmen; a memorandum by M. S. Vorontsov on the state of the Novorossiia region and measures to address existing problems (late 1820), etc. Pertaining to the history of Jews in Russia is a bound manuscript (op. 1) titled “An Investigation of Jews”, with numerous marginal comments; this is a copy of the well-known Investigation on Jews’ Murder of Christian Infants and Use of Their Blood, published in 1844, which in particular focuses on the Velizh case.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
The Vorontsovs were an old Russian noble family descending from the legendary Simon Afrikanovich, said to have departed the Varangian land for Kiev in 1027. The fonds includes documentary materials of Count Roman Illarionovich Vorontsov (1707-83), commander-in-chief and viceroy of the Vladimir, Tambov and Penza provinces and member and then chairman of the Legislative Commission (1760-63); his brothers, Count Mikhail Illarionovich Vorontsov (1714-67), a statesman, diplomat and vice-chancellor (1744) and chancellor of the Russian Empire (1758-63) and Count Ivan Illarionovich Vorontsov (1719-86; according to other sources, - 1789), a lieutenant-general, senator, chamberlain and president of the Estates Collegium in Moscow; R. I. Vorontsov’s daughter, Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova (1743-1810), director of the Russian Academy of Sciences (from 1793 on); R. I. Vorontsov’s sons Aleksandr Romanovich Vorontsov (1741-1805), a count and senator (1779), president of the Commerce Collegium (from 1773 on), diplomat (who in 1790 was involved in the expulsion of Jewish merchants from Moscow) and chancellor of the Russian Empire (1802-04), and Semyon Romanovich (1744-1832), a count, general, diplomat and ambassador to Venice and Great Britain (1783-1806); and the latter’s son (R. I. Vorontsov’s grandson) Mikhail Semenovich (1782-1856), a prince (1845), general field marshal (1856), adjutant-general (1815), governor-general of Novorossia and plenipotentiary governor of Bessarabia, member of the State Council and honorary member of the Academy of Sciences; and his wife, Elizaveta Ksaver’evna Vorontsova (née Branitskaia, 1796-1880), a lady-in-waiting and owner of a copper smelting plant in the Urals.
The St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SPbII RAS) is the institutional successor of the Leningrad branch of the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which was established in February 1936 on the basis of the Historical Archaeographic Institute, which in turn had been formed via a merger of the Russian State Archaeographic Commission and the Standing Historical Commission of the Academy of Sciences, as well as the Leningrad branch of the Institute of History of the Communist Academy of the USSR Central Executive Committee and the Institute of Books, Documents and Letters of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which had absorbed the Russian and Western European parts of the collection of Academician N P Likhachev. The Leningrad branch of the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences was thus descended from Russia’s oldest research institutions: the Archaeographic Expedition of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences founded in 1829 and the Imperial Archaeographic Commission (IAK) established in 1834. In 1953, the presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences resolved to “abolish the Leningrad branch of the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences (LOII), leaving the institute’s archive in Leningrad”; this latter entity was used to form the Department of Ancient Manuscripts and Documents of the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The decision to abolish the LOII was soon recognised as erroneous, and in April 1956 the Leningrad branch of the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences was restored. In connection with the breakup of the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences into the Institute of the History of the USSR and the Institute of World History, in August 1968 the Leningrad branch of the Institute of History became the Leningrad branch of the Institute of the History of the USSR. In 1992, the Leningrad branch of the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences was reorganised as the St. Petersburg branch of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 2000, the institute became independent and, in accordance with a decree of the presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences of 27 June 2000, it was renamed the St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The Research and Historical Archive arose as a successor to assemblies of the Imperial Archaeographic Commission (IAK) and was formally established in 1837 by decree of Emperor Nicholas I as part of the Ministry of Education; its purpose was to collect, study, and publish documentary sources on the history of Russia. By 1917, the IAK’s manuscript materials comprised 92 fonds and collections numbering over 64,000 archival storage units. In January 1922, the Russian State Archaeographic Commission became part of the Academy of Sciences. Its fonds and collections were supplemented with nationalised archives of monasteries and private collections and with several fonds transferred from other archives. In 1936, all these materials were transferred to the archive of the Leningrad branch of the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which was established the same year. Also constituting a significant portion of the LOII fonds was the collection (assembled from the 1880s to the outbreak of the First World War) of Academician N P Likhachev, a prominent collector of Russian and Western European documents, manuscripts and early printed books as well as autograph manuscripts and seals. The archive currently contains over 390 fonds, including approximately 188,000 archival storage units.
- Access points: locations:
- Russia
- Subject terms:
- Blood libel
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds comprises two series arranged mainly by structure.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
