Metadata: M. N. Sokolov
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. 746
- Title:
- M. N. Sokolov
- Title (official language):
- Соколов М. Н.
- Creator/accumulator:
- Sokolov, Mikhail Nikolaevich
- Date(s):
- 1837/1941
- Language:
- Russian
- Hebrew
- Arabic
- English
- Extent:
- 22 archival storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Photographic images
- Physical condition:
- Good
- Scope and content:
-
Material in this fonds that pertains to Jewish history and culture may be provisionally divided into three thematic groups:
1) Documents pertaining to the biography and scholarly and pedagogical activities of M. N. Sokolov, including a biographical statement and a list of his scholarly works (1929); a copy of an evaluation of M. N. Sokolov’s scholarship by P. K. Kokovtsov (1929); a file on a library donated by L. F. Friedland and the cataloguing thereof; copies of minutes of the history and philology department for 1892-1918; a report and informational material compiled by M. N. Sokolov on the library’s systematisation; etc. (1920s); an identification document issued to M. N. Sokolov for his trip to Evpatoriia to analyse the Karaite Library, a report on this trip, and other documents pertaining to the transfer of the library’s manuscripts to the Asiatic Museum of the Academy of Sciences (1927); reports on M. N. Sokolov’s work in the Hebrew Office of the Asiatic Museum (1924-32); excerpts from transcripts of sessions of various councils and commissions of scientific institutes and departments of Leningrad State University, in particular, a copy of minutes of a meeting of the subject commission on languages and culture of the Ancient East, with P. K. Kokovtsov, V. V. Struve, M. N. Sokolov, and N. Ia. Marr in attendance, on the issue of whether G. G. Genkel’ should be permitted to lecture on the history of Judaism and Judeo-Arabic language culture at Petrograd University (1921); photographs and pencil portraits of relatives and friends of M. N. Sokolov, and a group photograph with P. K. Kokovtsov, V. l. Kotovich, V. V. Barthold, N. Ia. Marr, L. V. Shcherba, A. N. Samoilovich, M. I. Rostovtsev, I. Iu. Krachkovskii, and others (undated).
2) Manuscripts of M. N. Sokolov’s scholarly works and related materials, including a paper he wrote as a student titled “The Greek Text of the Second Book of Chronicles from the Septuagint in its Relation to Masoretic and Syriac Texts” and translations pertaining to it (1916-17); lecture notes and other materials pertaining to the study of Hebrew and Arabic, excerpts, and outlines (1910-1928); M. N. Sokolov’s handwritten notes (1917-30) on the book Der Prophet Jesaja (The Prophet Isaiah, Leipzig, 1890); and excerpts from various scholarly works on Hebraica (1917); bibliographic cards for research (1721-1931) on Jewish history and culture; the articles “Abraham ibn Ezra as Exegete and Jewish Polyhistor” (1918); “The Song of Songs in the History of Biblical Exegesis” (1918); “The Arabic original of the Mibhar ha-Peninim attributed to Solomon ibn Gabirol” (1928); a fragment of a study on Hebrew titled “A Fortune-Telling Document from the Early 19th century” (undated), etc.; manuscripts of lectures delivered at Petrograd University titled “An Introduction to the Study of the Hebrew Language”, “A Beginning Course of the Hebrew Language”, and preparatory materials for them (1918-22); the program of the beginning course in Hebrew M. N. Sokolov was to teach for the 1933-34 academic year; etc.; photographs of Hebrew manuscripts; inventory lists of Hebrew manuscripts held at the Karai-Bitikligi Karaite National Library (Evpatoriia); “Descriptions of Hebrew Manuscripts of the Karaite National Library” (1926-27); lists of Hebrew manuscripts of the Asiatic Museum and of the State Public Library’s Archimandrite Antonin (A. I. Kapustin) collection (undated); evaluations and conclusions regarding scholarly works by D. M. Zel’tser, I. O. Gintsburg, P. K. Kokovtsov, and others (no later than 1927, 1930); etc.
3) Scholarly works and documents of other persons, including the program of a course given by I. G. Bender titled “Jewish Literature of the 19th century (the Era of the Enlightenment)” (1929); autograph manuscripts of an unidentified person with notations regarding German-language articles: Edwin R. Thiele, “Sacred Antiquities of the Jews”; and G. B. Winer, “The Archeology of the Christian Church” (1837); the manuscript of an unidentified author, “The Hebrew-Russian Ark, According to the 3rd and 4th Book of Kings and the Prophecies of Isaiah” (19th century); a synopsis of a report by I. O. Ginzburg titled “The Worldview of the Jewish Rationalists of the Middle Ages” (undated); a lecture program by D. A. Khvol’son titled “An Introduction to the Study of the Hebrew Language” (1870s); materials pertaining to D. A. Khvol’son’s biography, and a photographic portrait of him; documents pertaining to D. G. Maggid’s appointment as instructor in Hebrew and Yiddish at Leningrad State University, with an appended memorandum by him titled “On reorganising the Jewish studies department at Leningrad University” (1924-25); “A Catalogue of the Second Part of the Judeo-Arabic manuscripts of the Second Firkovich Collection (New Series) Compiled by Academician P. K. Kokovtsov” (1924); an evaluation by P. K. Kokovtsov of the scholarship of D. M. Zel’tser, and letters to the editors of the collection Jewish Thought (1926) and to N. S. Derzhavin, dean of Leningrad State University’s department of languages and material culture, on the issue of appointing I. O. Ginzburg a docent in Hebrew (1926); I. Iu. Krachkovskii’s evaluation of I. O. Ginzburg’s report “The Worldview of the Jewish Rationalists of the Middle Ages” and of a publication, prepared by I. O. Ginzburg, of a composition by Daud al-Muqammis from the Firkovich collection (1927).
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
Mikhail Nikolaevich Sokolov (1890-1937) was a Hebraist and Arabist. Upon graduating from the Moscow Theological Seminary in 1910, he enrolled at the Moscow Academy, which he graduated in 1914 with the degree of master of theology; he remained with a stipend at the latter institution, in the department of Hebrew and biblical archeology, to prepare for the professorship. That same year, he was sent to Petrograd University’s department of Oriental languages in order to study Semitic languages; he graduated in 1917 with Hebrew-Arabic specialisation. In 1918, he received his master’s degree in Hebrew literature and became a privat-docent; he consecutively held the posts of senior assistant, teacher, assistant professor, acting professor and (in 1931) head of the department of Hebraic studies. In 1921 he was elected secretary of the College of Orientalists. From 1924 on he was a research associate and researcher-curator of the Asiatic Museum of the USSR Academy of Sciences, where he headed the Hebrew office and catalogued the library of Hebrew books and manuscripts. In 1927, he was in charge of the analysis and inventorying of the materials of the Karaite National Library in Evpatoriia etc. In 1929, he was sent to Oxford’s Bodleian Library to identify a fragment of the Arabic original of the Mibhar ha-Peninim attributed to Solomon ibn Gabirol. From 1921 on, he worked concurrently at the Research Institute of the Comparative History of the Literature and Languages of the West and East (ILIaZV). In 1919-20, he was a member of the committee on replacing professors in the departments of the philology faculty of the Belorussian State University in Minsk, professor in the department of Arabic language and literature of the Lazarev Institute in Moscow and, from 1921 to 1924, a research consultant of the Institute of Japhetic Research. In December 1933, he was arrested on charges of involvement in a (fictional) church and monarchist organisation called “The Anglicans”. In March 1934, the OGPU collegium sentenced him to five years in a “corrective labour” camp under article 58-10 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. In October 1937 at Bamlag (the Baikal Amur Corrective Labour Camp near the city of Svobodny, Amur region), he was sentenced to death by the NKVD’s Troika for the Far Eastern Territory. He was shot on 10 October 1937. He was posthumously exonerated in 1989 by the district attorney of the city of Leningrad. His major scholarly works were: “A Fortune-Telling Document of the Early 19th century” (Annals of the College of Orientalists, 1925, vol. 1); “A Fragment of the Book of Laws of Anan ha-Nasi” (Proceedings of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1928, no. 3); “The Arabic Original of the Work Mibhar ha-Peninim, Attributed to Solomon Ibn Gabirol” (ibid., 1929, no. 4).
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: locations:
- Russia
- St Petersburg
- Access points: persons/families:
- Khvol’son, D.
- Maggid, D. G.
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds comprises a single series arranged by structure, and in part alphabetically.
- Finding aids:
- An inventory is available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
