PUSHKIN HOUSE AND THE PROCESS OF CONCENTRATING PUSHKIN’S MANUSCRIPTS IN THE USSR (1930s–1940s): ARCHIVAL SOURCES

Abstract

The article explores the underresearched period of the existence of the Pushkin Manuscript Collection at the Institute of Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The authors focus on the analysis of the situation the Institute had to face while preparing for the 1937 National Pushkin Exhibition honoring the 100th anniversary of the poet’s death, and on the subsequent decree of the USSR Council of People’s Commissars of March 4, 1938, On the Organization of the State Pushkin Museum. In strict accordance with this document, Pushkin House was obliged to transfer all Pushkin-related data to the newly organized museum in Moscow. After their withdrawal, the history of the Pushkin House as it was conceived by its founders would de facto come to an end, and the «generic» name of the Institute of Russian Literature would be lost forever. The authors introduce the academic community to unpublished documents that recreate — via significant and fundamental episodes — the process of saving the main manuscript collection of the Pushkin House through the efforts of its managers and archive curators in the pre-War years. A later decree of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences dated June 2, 1948 assigned to the Pushkin House the archival and museum funds of the State Pushkin Museum, which was under the jurisdiction of the Gorky Institute of World Literature of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Since that time, Pushkin’s manuscripts (with a few exceptions) were concentrated in the Manuscript Department of the Institute of Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences.