Metadata: N. V. Pigulevskaia
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. 1036
- Title:
- N. V. Pigulevskaia
- Title (official language):
- Пигулевская Н. В.
- Creator/accumulator:
- Pigulevskaia, Nina Viktorovna
- Date(s):
- 1902/1974
- Language:
- Russian
- English
- French
- German
- Italian
- Arabic
- Hebrew
- Syriac
- Extent:
- 937 archival storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Photographic images
- Physical condition:
- Good
- Scope and content:
-
The fonds contains scholarly works by N. V. Pigulevskaia, and works of other persons (1915-74), documents pertaining to her biography and research-organisational activities (1902-74) and correspondence (1926-70).
Op. 1 includes manuscripts of scholarly works by N. V. Pigulevskaia, including a draft version of her article “The Orient and the Jews in the Book of Isaiah”, a notebook with excerpts used for this article and a manuscript pamphlet containing translations of words from chapters of the Book of Isaiah (1921-24) and a work titled “From the History of Social and Religious Movements in Palestine in the Roman Era” (published posthumously in a collection titled The Middle East, Byzantium, and the Slavs [Leningrad, 1976]), which includes a section titled “On Judaic Laws in the Age of Jesus and the Apostles” (1927) and “On Literate Peoples of Antiquity” (1958); evaluations of colleagues’ work, in particular, of a doctoral dissertation by N. A. Meshcherskii titled “An Old Russian Translation of the Hebrew Book of Esther and the Issue of Translations from the Hebrew in Old Russian Literature of the Kievan Period" (1946-54); of N. A. Meshcherskii’s monograph Josephus Flavius’s “History of the Jewish War” in Old Russian Translation (1956-58) and K. B. Starkova’s monograph The Dead Sea Scrolls, Translations, and Commentary (1967); etc.
Op. 2 contains biographical materials, autobiographical statements and questionnaire and personnel forms of N. V. Pigulevskaia (1930-69), a photographic portrait of her (1968), and photographs of P. K. Kokovtsov (1935), members of the Russian Palestine Society, A. P. Volkov, Ts. Harkavy (1962) and others; P. K. Kokovtsov’s evaluation of N. V. Pigulevskaia’s scholarship, including his proposal that she be awarded the doctorate without the need to defend a dissertation (1938); correspondence with the Russian Palestine Society’s office in Israel regarding scholarly contacts and the exchange of literature, a list of scholarly literature for the library of the Russian Palestine Society’s Israel office, etc. (1951-62); a copy of a report compiled by I. Zaitsev, the Russian Palestine Society’s representative in Jerusalem, and transmitted to RPO Chair S. P. Tolstov, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, on increasing scholarly contacts between research institutions of Israel and the USSR, with an appended translation of an article from the newspaper Maariv titled “Soviet Society Has Opened its Gates for a Unilateral Reception of Guests in Jerusalem, without Inviting Israeli Scholars to Moscow” (1955-56); materials pertaining to the Palestine Compendium, including proofing sheets with editing by the authors R. I. Rubinshtein, N. A. Meshcherskii, I. G. Livshits, K. V. Ode-Vasil’eva, A. G. Lundin and editor-in-chief N. V. Pigulevskaia, including of N. A. Meshcherskii’s article “An Excerpt from the Book Josippon in the Tale of Bygone Years”; I. N. Vinnikov’s article “From the Field of Semitic Lexicography”; A. Ia. Borisov’s article “On the Time and Location of the Life of the Karaite Writer Ali Ibn Sulayman” (1956); etc.
Op. 3 includes N. V. Pigulevskaia’s correspondence, in particular, a letter from Israeli President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi thanking N. V. Pigulevskaia for articles she had sent (1962); letters from the Semitics scholar N. V. Iushmanov regarding difficulties in publishing his study The Structure of the Semitic Root (1940); from S. B. Pototskii, a specialist in the history of the Middle East, regarding his provision of articles for the Palestine Compendium (1968); etc.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
Nina Viktorovna Pigulevskaia (née Stebnitskaia, 1894-1970) was a historian, Orientalist, Byzantologist and corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1911 she graduated with a gold medal from the private women’s secondary school [gimnaziia] of M. N. Stoiunina and in 1912 enrolled in the history and philology department of the Bestuzhev Higher Women’s courses, studying ancient and medieval history, the history of the Church, Latin literature and the Greek language. Upon the courses’ merger with Petrograd University in 1918, she remained in the department of the history of religion, studying under the direction of Academicians P. K. Kokovtsov and A. A. Vasil’ev. Her specialisation was Assyriology and she also studied Hebrew. In 1922 she finished her graduate work in Petrograd University’s department of Oriental studies. From 1921-28, she worked at the State Public Library. In December 1928, she was arrested in the case of the religio-philosophical circle known as “Voskresen’e” (“Resurrection” or “Sunday”) and sentenced to five years of forced labour. She served her sentence in the Solovki prison camp; in 1931, her sentence was reduced in light of her poor health to exile in Arkhangel’sk. From 1938 on, she worked at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences and simultaneously taught at Leningrad State University. She was awarded her doctorate in philology on the basis of her scholarly record. In 1939, she earned her doctorate in history with the study “Mesopotamia at the Turn of the 5th-6th c. AD: The Syriac Chronicle of Joshua the Stylite as an Historical Source” (Proceedings of the Institute of Oriental Studies, vol. 31, 1940). Her major works are devoted to the study of Syriac historical and literary monuments, the socioeconomic and cultural development of Syria, Arabia, Iran, and Byzantium in the Middle Ages and issues pertaining to the genesis of feudalism. She was elected a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1946 and that same year became a professor at Leningrad State University. From 1952 on, she served as vice-president of the Russian Palestine Society and editor of the Palestine Compendium. It was during her tenure that, at sessions of the Russian Palestine Society, the discoveries of the Dead Sea scrolls and issues of Sabean studies were first discussed in the USSR. In 1960, she became a member of the French Asiatic Society and was awarded a personal commemorative medal of the College de France. Her major works included Syrian Sources on the History of Peoples of the USSR (Moscow, Leningrad, 1941), Byzantium and Iran at the Turn of the 6th-7th c. (Moscow, Leningrad, 1946), Byzantium on the Roads to India (Moscow, Leningrad, 1951), The Cities of Iran in the Early Middle Ages (Moscow, Leningrad, 1956), Arabs at the Borders of Byzantium and Iran in the 4th-6th c. (Moscow, Leningrad, 1964) and The Culture of the Syrians in the Middle Ages (Moscow, 1979).
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.
- Access points: persons/families:
- Kokovtsov, P. K.
- Subject terms:
- Bible
- Correspondence
- Manuscripts
- Photographs
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds comprises three series arranged according to the structural-chronological and thematic-chronological principles, chronologically and alphabetically.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
