Metadata: Collection of the Archaeographic Commission
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. К-114
- Title:
- Collection of the Archaeographic Commission
- Title (official language):
- Коллекция Археографической комиссии
- Creator/accumulator:
- Archaeographic Commission
- Date(s):
- 1446/1792
- Language:
- Russian
- Belarusian
- Polish
- Latin
- Greek, Modern (1453-)
- Extent:
- 317 archival storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- Good
- Scope and content:
-
The collection includes documents and writs submitted to the Archaeographic Commission in 1837-38 from the Arkhangel’sk Provincial Administration; the town halls of Bol’shie Soly and Ol’sk; offices of Bialystok; the municipal magistrates of Bel’sk, Velizh, Grodno, Kovel’, Kremenets, Orsha, and Polotsk; the Vitebsk and Pskov Revenue Chambers; offices and monasteries of Minsk; the municipal dumas of Mogilev and Mstislavl’; and the Novotorzhskii Boris and Gleb monastery; as well as private individuals. Most of the documents and writs confirm various privileges granted by Polish kings to the cities of Baisogala, Bialystok, Bel’sk, Velizh, Vitebsk, Goniądz, Grodno, Knyszyn, Kovel’, Kremenets, Mogilev, Mstislavl’, Ol’sk, Orsha, Polotsk and Surazh, and the towns of Viekšniai, Zhizhila, Cherikov and others, including: the introduction of the Magdeburg Rights, with particular administrative procedures and coats of arms, the right to establish guilds and protection of residents’ commercial interests from competition via the introduction of restrictions, especially restrictions on the trading activities of Jews, whose legal status in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was determined by royal privileges.
Material pertaining to Jewish history includes writs and letters of the Polish Kings Sigismund II Augustus, Sigismund III, Władysław IV Vasa, John II Casimir Vasa, Michael I (Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki), John III Sobieski, Augustus II the Strong, Augustus III of Saxony and Queen Bona, and may be provisionally divided into two thematic groups:
1) Writs and corroborative certificates granted by Polish kings to cities, magistrates, local residents and certain categories of the population (in particular, those of the townsperson estate), which, along with confirming privileges related to the Magdeburg Rights and other liberties, prescribed restrictions against Jews; in particular, a writ granted to the townspeople of Kremenets restricting Jewish commercial activity as detrimental to the interests of the local population, and a subsequent writ barring Jews from keeping shops in the city and engaging in trade, and directing them to pay royal excises and taxes, and obey the local gentry and constabulary administration (1571, 1650); a writ granted to the residents of Vitebsk barring Jews from settling in the city – de non tolerandus iudaeis (1597); to the residents of Grodno, barring Jews from buying grain in the city or trading in particular goods, particularly vodka, without the consent of the magistrate; and from settling and residing within the city or keeping small shops there, with those Jews who had already purchased land, built structures and become engaged in commerce ordered evicted to certain suburbs allocated for them (1601, 1633, 1679); to the residents of Mogilev, entitling the city to resettle Jews to a plot of land allocated for them, where their “school” (synagogue) was located, and to prevent Jews from settling separately; and a later writ barring Jews from settling in the city as a whole, and from maintaining breweries in the city (these were allowed only outside the city wall) or shops, conducting trade in the city, etc. (1633, 1661, 1669, 1676, 1697, 1735); to the residents of Polotsk, barring Jews from engaging in commerce in the city or building or purchasing homes (1697); and a writ requiring Jewish (as well as Christian) merchants to apply for permission of the magistrate in order to trade in salt, malt, herring and other goods (1601).
2) Writs and certificates imposing certain obligations on Jews and entitling them to certain rights on an equal basis with other residents of cities and towns, including: a charter granted by Queen Bona to the residents of Grodno requiring Jews to perform all municipal obligations (1540); a writ of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania exempting Grodno townspeople and Jews from a tribute that had been unlawfully imposed despite previously granted royal privileges (1587); corroborative writs to the townspeople and Jews of Grodno (1588) establishing a fee for milling rights, and to the Jews of the town of Cherikov entitling them to trade in beer, honey, vodka and other goods in the town; as well as a writ exempting the Jews of Cherikov from several obligations and making them equal in rights with other residents of the town (1758).
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
The Imperial Archaeographic Commission (IAK) was established in St. Petersburg in 1834 within the Ministry of Education under the supervision of Minister Count S. S. Uvarov. The commission’s first chairman was Prince P. A. Shirinskii-Shikhmatov; it consisted of I. I. Berednikov, K. S. Serbinovich, P. M. Stroev (its virtual director) and N. G. Ustrialov. The Imperial Archaeographic Commission was to collect and publish historical documents selected by the Archaeographic Expedition of the Academy of Sciences in 1829-34. In 1837, its status was ratified as an independent research institution with its own charter, and its mission stipulated as that of discovering and publishing sources on Russian history to the late 18th century, and from 1839 on, that of publishing documents on Russian history in foreign languages. It published articles on the history of various localities of Russia, in particular, the first systematic publication of the Complete Collection of Russian Chronicles (from 1841 on) and the multivolume Russian Historical Library (from 1872 on). The IAK carried out searches for materials on Russian history in foreign archives and acquired documents in Russia and abroad. In the mid-19th century, along with the Imperial Archaeographic Commission in St. Petersburg, the Kiev (1843), Vil’na (1864) and Caucasus (in Tiflis, 1864) Archaeographic Commissions were established. In 1896, the Moscow Archaeographic Society formed an Archaeographic commission. The commissions continued their activities after the October Revolution. In 1922, the Petrograd Archaeographic Commission was transferred to the Russian Academy of Sciences and in 1926 the Historical-Archaeographic Commission of the USSR Academy of Sciences (from 1931-36, called the Historical-Archaeographic Institute) was established on its basis.
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.
- System of arrangement:
- Documents are divided into five groups (I-V) depending on the language in which they are written; within each group, documents are arranged chronologically.
- Finding aids:
- There is an inventory (which represents a fragment of a guide by M. G. Kurdiumov titled A Description of Writs Housed in the Archives of the Imperial Archeographic Commission [St. Petersburg, 1907]) arranged by language and chronologically.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
