Creating Culture: The Rossica Collection of the Imperial Public Library and the Construction of...

Creating Culture: The Rossica Collection of the Imperial Public Library and the Constructionof National IdentityAuthor(s): Mary StuartSource: Libraries & Culture, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Winter, 1995), pp. 1-25Published by: University of Texas PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25542708 .Accessed: 15/06/2014 17:15

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Creating Culture: The Rossica Collection of the Imperial Public Library and the Construction of National Identity

Mary Stuart

Romantic nationalism and state patriotism were two varieties of nation

alist ideology that arose in Russia in the mid-nineteenth century. M. A.

Korf, director of the Imperial Public Library in St. Petersburg in the 1850s, drew on both doctrines in creating the library's Rossica collection of foreign

language writings about Russia. Designed to promote national identification

and to serve a host of specific social and political ends, the collection was

widely viewed by the educated public as a major advance for Russian cul

ture. The Rossica collection was maintained at the library?renamed the

Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public Library in 1932 and the Russian National

Library in 1992 ?

throughout the Soviet period, and it remains there today.

The creation of the Rossica collection of the Imperial Public Library be

tween 1850 and 1870 was a conscious attempt on the part of its founders to

promote the formation of national consciousness, glorify state and em

peror, encourage native scholarship, enhance the prestige of the national

library, gather intelligence on ?migr? political factions, and gain a strate

gic advantage in diplomatic relations with foreign governments. The

project that was to achieve these ambitious aims was planned as a com

prehensive collection of all books, periodicals, pamphlets, and ephemera on Russian history, literature, philosophy, art, law, religion, philology, eth

nography, geography, natural sciences, and technology written in lan

guages other than Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, and Serbian (and

eventually also excluding Finnish, Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian),

published within the Russian empire or without. As an exercise in invent

ing culture, the Rossica collection reflected contemporary notions of na

tional identity and cultural heritage. If the project could be denounced by a Soviet critic in 1936 as chauvinistic, racialist, and imperialist in its

aims,1 in the 1850s and 1860s, it was seen as a major advance for Russian culture.

Russia and the West

Few issues have engaged Russian social thought with such tenacity and Libraries & Culture, Vol. 30, No. 1, Winter 1995 ?1995 by the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819


http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

2 L&C/The Rossica Collection

intensity as the questions of Russia's relationship to the West. Russian

thinkers from the seventeenth century to the present have been attracted to

and repelled by the West in equal measure, and comparison with the West, whether explicit or implicit, has dominated intellectual discourse in Rus sia practically without interruption. Implied in the comparison is an on

going process of self-construction, the invention and elaboration of what

has been termed an "imagined community"2 or "collective individual,"3

namely Russia, that can be distinguished from an excluded "other,"

namely Western Europe or any of its constituent parts. Some measure of

comparability or identification with the West is taken as axiomatic, with

Western culture the benchmark for comparison. Throughout the eigh teenth century and much of the nineteenth, educated elites in Russia strove to fashion a native cultural identity, to construct the Russian char

acter and define its essential traits relative to this European other.4

The practice of framing Russian national identity in Western terms, with reference to Western standards, was cultivated most extensively by

Peter I with his numerous projects for importing Western technologies, Western experts, and Western institutions. Deemed backward by all West

ern measures of technological and cultural progress, Russia was

expected

to narrow the gap with the West through the medium of foreign tutelage. Over the course of the eighteenth century, the nature of the borrowing and

the models themselves varied widely, but the habit of seeking validation of

the activities and aspirations of Russian elites by comparing them with

Western achievements became deeply engrained.

For Russia, westernization was both the point of entry into the Euro

pean family of nations and the impetus for self-construction. Through

comparison and adaptation, Russians developed a sense of collective iden

tity, bounded and separate from other groups. Inevitably, foreign tutelage

produced frictions and resentment, exemplified by the disgruntlement in

the 1730s with the "government of foreigners" and by the criticism voiced

in mid-century of the domination of the Academy of Sciences by foreign scholars. After the French Revolution, opposition to foreign influence

reached a crescendo among educated Russian society, yet reception of for

eign ideas and fashions did not diminish. Increasingly, Russian cultural

and intellectual activities were pronounced equal in merit to Western

achievements. The writings of the dramatist D. I. Fonvizin, the publicist N. I. Novikov, and the historian I. N. Boltin gave expression to this

na

scent national pride. One historian has termed the impulse to claim cul

tural parity with the West in the eighteenth century "compensatory nationalism."5

In the reign of Peter the Great, the effort to create a native Russian cul

tural tradition culminated in the founding of the Academy of Sciences in

1725. In mid-century the nation's cultural apparatus was augmented by



3

the founding of Moscow University (1755), Moscow University Press

(1756), and the Academy of Fine Arts (1757). During the reign of

Catherine the Great, the Russian Academy (1783) and the Public Library

( 1795) completed the inventory. Though highly diverse in many respects, the founders of these institutions were animated by a common vision of a

vigorous, idiosyncratic Russian culture equal or

superior to any European

culture.

The most dramatic of the conscious acts of cultural creation in Russia

was the formation of the literary language in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.6 M. V. Lomonosov, A. P. Sumarokov, E. R. Dashkova

and other early literati sought to impart a native quality to the literary

language. The quest for national distinctiveness also stimulated the study

of Russian history,7 which in turn gave rise to the archaeographic and eth

nographic ventures of the early nineteenth century.8 Meanwhile, the vic

tory over Napoleon ushered Russia into the ranks of the great European powers and redoubled national self-esteem.9

The extent to which the formation of national identity was a function of

westernization is particularly apparent in the nineteenth century. It was

only with the penetration of German romanticism in the 1820s and 1830s

that Russian elites acquired the means to transform national conscious

ness into nationalist ideology.10 Under the influence of German idealist

philosophy, Russian thinkers began to distinguish between nation and

state in their construction of Russian identity. The Society of the Lovers of

Wisdom, founded in Moscow in 1823, served as the primary conduit into

Russia for the ideas of the German idealist and romantic philosophers. The writings of Herder, Fichte, Schelling, Schlegel, and others exerted a

powerful influence on the imagination of these young Moscow intellectu

als. The concept of nation as a unitary, historically individual organism,

evolving idiosyncratically and fulfilling its own special destiny, attracted a

wide Russian audience, along with the notion of Volksgeist, or national

character encoded in language, art, history, customs, and legends. Of par

ticular appeal in pre-emancipation Russia was the idea that beneath the

rawness of daily life lay the harmony and beauty of the national soul. Rus sia's relative "backwardness" became its chief virtue; in contrast to the

corrupt, decaying West, Russia stood for youth, vitality, and originality. Rulers of large European states readily adapted the doctrine of romantic

nationalism for political purposes.11 Nationalist ideology, propagated through symbols, rituals, and invented traditions,12 was used to reinforce

dynastic legitimacy, justify bureaucratic expansion, and promote social cohesion by inculcating attachment to the "nation." As Hobsbawn has ob

served, "[governments were plainly engaged in conscious and deliberate

ideological engineering"13 in order to enhance their authority. In Russia the convergence of romantic nationalism and state patriotism is strikingly




illustrated in the creation of the Rossica collection at the Imperial Public

Library in the latter years of the reign of Nicholas I (1825-1855).

The Establishment of a National Library

In their quest for native cultural distinction, the architects of the Acad

emy of Sciences, Moscow University, the Academy of Fine Arts, and the

Russian Academy drew heavily on Western models. In founding the Im

perial Public Library, Catherine the Great went beyond emulation to

physical expropriation, literally transplanting Poland's defacto national li

brary, the Zaluski collection, onto Russian soil. In the wake of the victory of the Russian army over the Poles in October 1794, the Russian govern

ment confiscated this three hundred thousand-volume library from the

Polish government. The collection was transported to St. Petersburg in

1795, where, following Catherine's death, it languished for more than a de

cade before the appointment of A. N. Olenin as assistant director in 1808.

Olenin became director of the library in 1811 and remained in the position until his death in 1843.14 Under Olenin's guidance, the library was trans

formed into a vital center of intellectual activity. When he inventoried the collection in 1809, Olenin found a total of only

eight books in Russian or Church Slavic. His constant preoccupation in

the library, as in his other cultural and intellectual pursuits,

was the pro

motion of a distinctive Russian cultural identity, and he immediately un

dertook to russify the new national library. He drafted the library's first

legal charter, enacted in 1810, granting the library the right to receive on

deposit two copies of every work published in Russia. In 1813, in the wake

of the triumph over

Napoleon, Olenin proposed the creation of a collection

of foreign publications pertaining to the War of 1812.15 Observing that the

Russian victory would prove fateful for world history, Olenin utilized every available means to obtain materials for this collection, including

an appeal

to the son-in-law of General M. I. Kutuzov, commander in chief of the

Russian army.16 In 1815 he sent a letter to the chairman of the Committee

of Ministers, S. K. Viazmitinov, requesting that the foreign censorship au

thorities supply the library with copies of banned publications for this col

lection.17 This moment of confrontation with the West was, in Olenin's

view, a critical juncture in Russian history, the point of Russia's entrance

onto the world stage; it was a singular opportunity to cultivate national

consciousness and celebrate native originality.18

Although Olenin's project remained limited to materials in foreign lan

guages on the War of 1812, interest in collecting materials for the study of

Russian history ran high among the educated elite at this time, and more

comprehensive collections of foreign writings about Russia were proposed

by other scholars. In 1817 the historian and bibliographer F. P. Adelung



5

published a proposal for a "Russian National Museum" in the journal, Son

of the Fatherland.19 This establishment was to include all books in all lan

guages on Russian history, geography and travel, statistics, and literature, as well as Russian art, ancient coins, medals, seals, armor, ethnographic

artifacts, flora and fauna, minerals, and mechanical inventions. The bib

liophile and archaeographer Burkhard-Genrikh fon Vikhman proposed a

similar project, likewise unrealized, in the same publication in 1821.20 Vikhman's "Russian State Museum" was to include everything Adelung had proposed, plus manuscripts, maps, heraldry, portraits of Russian sov

ereigns, national heroes, statesmen, scholars, and the papers and letters of

these notables. Neither proposal was enacted, probably because of their vast scope and the fact that various institutions were already collecting these materials independently.

The Cultural Climate in the Reign of Nicholas I

The romantic movement in Russia achieved its fullest expression in the first two decades of the reign of Nicholas I. This was an age of extraordi

nary intellectual ferment, a "cultural renaissance,"21 encompassing the

golden age of Russian literature, the rapid expansion of book and periodi cal publishing, and extraordinary growth in secondary and higher educa tion. One of the era's leading educational and cultural administrators (and assistant director of the Public Library from 1812 to 1833), S. S. Uvarov, articulated the guiding principle of government under Nicholas, later termed "Official Nationality."22 Uvarov, who was minister of education from 1833 to 1849, encapsulated this philosophy in his formula, "Ortho

doxy, Autocracy, and Nationality." The essence of the doctrine of Official

Nationality lies in the congruence of these three elements, signifying the

indivisibility of the Russian Orthodox Church, the tsar as embodiment of the state, and the nation or Russian people. Not surprisingly, this symbolic

formulation was immediately subject to a wide range of interpretations. In addition to the "dynastic" proponents of Official Nationality,23 there were the romantic nationalists, largely Muscovite intellectuals, who empha sized the messianic role of the Russian people and resisted the synonymy of state and nation. Originally intended by Uvarov to promote social cohe

sion, Official Nationality took on a more sinister coloration after the Eu

ropean revolutions of 1848 that brought new waves of repression in Russia.

During the reign of Nicholas I, numerous large-scale collaborative

scholarly projects were undertaken, generally at state expense, that con

veyed the spirit of Official Nationality. Examples include the description and illustration of Russian antiquities, published between 1840 and 1853 in six volumes with six additional volumes of commentary (Antiquities of the Russian State); the work of the commission to collect documents for a



Figure 1. Portrait of M. A. Korf From Imperatorskaia Publichnaia biblioteka za sto

liet, 1814-1914 (St. Petersburg: [s.u.], 1914).



Figure 2. The Baron KorfRoom, Imperial Public Library, as it appeared in 1914. From Im

peratorskaia Publichnaia biblioteka za sto liet, 1814?1914 (St. Petersburg: fs.n.J,

1914). This room, named after Korf upon his departure from the library in 1861, housed the

Rossica collection.



8 LScC/The Rossica Collection

history of the reign of Nicholas I, which under the direction of M. A. Korf

produced ninety-two folio volumes of unpublished material; the expedi tions and publishing activities of the Russian Geographical Society and

the Russian Archaeological Society; the reconstruction of St. Isaac's Ca

thedral, begun in 1822 and completed in 1858; and the creation of the Ros

sica collection of the Public Library.

The Public Library under the Korf Administration

When he was appointed director of the library in December 1849, Korf

had more than thirty years' experience in the upper echelons of the central

administration.24 Like his mentor, the statesman M. M. Speranskii, Korf

was not noted for his bonhomie; the author of the official centennial jubilee

history of the library observed that Speranskii and Korf would have been

friends, had either been capable of friendship.25 By all accounts, as an ad

ministrator, Korf was highly ambitious, thoroughly unscrupulous, and

enormously talented. He did not hesitate to vilify anyone who stood in his

way, and in 1848-1849 he was instrumental in removing S. S. Uvarov from

the post of minister of education, which he sought for himself.26 Although he was passed over for that position and appointed director of the library

instead, Korf was unwavering in his devotion to the library, which enjoyed

unprecedented prosperity under his administration.

Immediately upon his appointment, Korf arranged for the library to be

transferred from the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education to the Min

istry of the Imperial Court, which enhanced the power of the director con

siderably.27 This was no doubt accomplished on the strength of Korf's

close personal ties to the emperor, since the library was returned to the

Ministry of Education early in the tenure of Korf's successor. Tutor to the

emperor's younger sons and a frequent dinner guest of the imperial family, Korf was intensely loyal to Nicholas and a devout proponent of Official

Nationality. Korf created the Rossica division by directive on 1 August 1850. Like the

other ambitious cultural projects undertaken during the reign of Nicholas

I, the Rossica collection was intended to glorify the Russian state. Spon sored and underwritten by the emperor, the collection

was created through

a massive collaborative effort. Just as nearly every writer of note had par

ticipated in the compilation of the Russian Academy dictionary at the end

of the previous century, the entire scholarly community was mobilized to

help build the Rossica division.

In the library's annual report for that year, Korf explained the rationale

for the collection:

The Imperial Public Library has not had, from its founding, a de



9

fined system: it was composed, gradually, from war trophies, gifts from the emperor, private donations, and of those contemporary

Russian publications received on deposit. This was done according to available means, opportunity, and chance, and

as a result the Li

brary has not had, and could not have, either unity, or a plan, or

a

general guiding thread, and for all its enormous world treasures,

there is nothing original, nothing that could be celebrated as the dis

tinctive character of the sole Russian Imperial Public Library. In order

to impart to it such a character and at the same time to realize fully the common good, which the Sovereign Will has set as the goal of

this institution, it is necessary ... to combine in it 1 ) everything pub lished in Russian since the introduction of printing, and 2) every

thing published in any language about Russia?in a word, within

the overall composition of the library, embracing all branches of

knowledge, to establish a second, also universal, native Library.2

In spite of Korf's stated intention to collect retrospectively Russian

language publications as part of this effort, from the outset far greater em

phasis was placed on the acquisition of foreign-language materials for the

Rossica collection. Although the library did make important acquisitions of Russian publications during the Korf administration (most notably the

purchase of M. P. Pogodin's private collection, "Drevlekhranilishche"), it

did not organize a systematic or comprehensive effort to acquire them. Ac

quisition of foreign publications for the new division, named the Division

of Foreign Writings on Russia, was the main focus of the library's opera tions throughout the 1850s.29

"Rossica" and Russian National Consciousness

Although at one level the collection was symbolic of foreign influence, at another it was constitutive of national identity. Korf held that a compre

hensive collection of foreign writings about Russia would impart national

distinctiveness to the library. According to this conceptualization, Russian

national identity both emanated from and encompassed the West. In ef

fect, Korf inverted the question of foreign influence by placing the "for

eign" element in the service of Russian identity. By including not only foreign-language writings published abroad, but those published within the empire

as well, together with translations into other languages of Rus

sian authors, Korf cast the widest possible net in his construction of cul tural boundaries. His approach suggests an attempt to fabricate identity by accretion, a cumulative approach that locates cultural identity in the

eye of the beholder, as well as in the object beheld. In one sense, Korf redefined "foreign" in relation to "Russian," enlarging



10 hScC/The Rossica Collection

HaneuaiaiiM, ct. BblCO^AftlllArO paspimienia, orb HMI1EPATOP

CKO? ?lyCwwnoH Bhoju'otckh, bt, bh#b MaHYCKpnirra, fljn nyaciiMxt flo

iiOjinemH h HcnpanaeiUH.

MATERIALIEDI ZUM VERSUCHE

EINES KATALOGS SAEMMTLICHER UEBER RUSSLAND IN FREMDEN

SPRACHEN ERSCHIENENEN WERKE.

Mit Allerh?chster Genehmigung als Manuscript, zu weiteren Berichti

gungen und Vervollst?ndigungen, von der Kaiserlichen Oeffentlichcn

Bibliothek zum Drucke bef?rdert.

ST. PETERSBURG

Gedruckt bei C. Wienh?ber.

1851.

Figure 3. Title page of the 1851 preliminary catalog of the Rossica collection.

From copy held at the Library of Congress.

the domain of Russian culture and adding a new dimension to national

identity. What is "Russian," constituting the national heritage, now ex

tends across geopolitical boundaries to include the apperception of the

"other." "Russia through Western eyes" at once affirms Russian distinc

tiveness and establishes affiliation with the West. The fact of being per

ceived, described, interpreted, and assessed ?objectified ?by the "other"

augments national identity while also authenticating it.

As Hobsbawn has observed, the inclusive approach to the construction

of nationality was typical of mid-nineteenth-century European political discourse.30 In the era of bourgeois liberalism, nation-building was

a pro

cess of expansion and enlargement, of assimilating smaller communities to

larger polities, and the resulting ethnic heterogeneity of nations was

viewed as evolutionary progress. Language, ethnicity, and history were



J fofa??*?, m? ?9^uuJ^^^^^^

,?W1. LETTRES from a Lady, who Russia (s. 1.

e. s. a.) LETI v.

Farncworth.

179

sided several yoars i?

1992. LETELLIER (T..

Victor).

Voyage et il'm?raire ? Coii? slanlinoplc, chez les

La/.zes, en G?orgie, dans une partie

de la Perse et de la Russie, de 1826 ? 1833. Paris

1840.

1993 LETTRES sur le Caucase et la G?orgie, suivies ?l'une relation d'un voyage en

Perse 1812. Hambourg 1816. 1994. LETTRES sur la guerre de Russie en 1812-, sur la ville ?le St. Pclerbui-g, les moeurs et les usages des habilans de la Russie et de la Pologne; par L. V. D. P. Paris. 1816. 1995 LETTRES sur PAULOWSKY, ch?teau, appartenant ?

S. Al. l'Imp?ratrice Al?rc. Paris 1809.

1996. LETTRES d'une dame

anglaise,

r?sidente en Russie, ?

son amie en Angleterre. Rotterdam 1776. 1997. LETTRES d'un Scythe franc et loyal ? M. Rousseau de

Bouillon. Amsterd. et Paris-, 1771. (Critique de l'ouvra ge de Chappe

d'Auteroche:

Voyage en Sib?rie).

1998. LETTRES sur l'incendie de Moscou. Paris 1823.

1999. LETTRES d'un Russe, adress?es ? M. M. les R?dacteurs

le la Revue Europ?enne-, Nice 1832. 2000. LETTRES sur l'Empire de Russie. Paris 1840. V.

2001. LETTRE de l'ermite de Russie ? celui de la Guyanne, relative aux calomnies, d?bit?es sur les femmes russes.

Paris 1848.

Figure 4. Page 179from the 1851 catalog, showing bibliographic citation added on blank interleaf by unknown

scholar.



\ BIBLIOTH?QUE IMP?RIALE PUBLIQUE DE ST.-P?TERSBO?RG.

CATALOGUE

DE LA SECTION DES

RUSSICA

{ ?CRITS SUR LA RUSSIE EN LANGUES ?TRANG?RES. \

TOME I.

ST.-PETERSBOURG. IMPRIMERIE 1>E l'aGAD?MIE IMP?RIALE DES SCIENCES.

(Yass.-Ostr., 9 ligne, & 12.)

1873.

Figure 5. Title page of the 1873 Rossica catalog. From copy held at the University of Illinois Library, Urbana-Champaign.



772?789 ? 726 ? Let?Lev

Lettres d'une dame anglaise r?sidente en Russie v. Rondeau, Mrae, 1776.

772, - sur la Crim?e, Odessa et la mer d'Azof. (Fran?ais et russe.)

Moscou, 1810. 8? ?? sur la guerre de Russie en 1812 v. Polbusque, L. V. de, 1816.

-sur le Caucase et la G?orgie v. Freygang, Mme de, 1816.

773, -de l'Imp?ratrice de Russie et de M. de Voltaire. Paris, 1821.12? 774,

?- Ie?2e, du Caucase, adress?es ? un habitant de Paris. Paris, 1826.8?

775,-d'un Russe adress?es ? MM. les r?dacteurs de la Revue Euro

p?enne. (Sur la Russie.) Nice, 1832. 8? 776.- ? mes filles, sur mes voyages en Sib?rie et en Chine (1833?

1834.) Par le comte Camille de Ste A***. Lille, 1838. 8? -sur la Russie v. Demidoff, Anatole, 1840. -sur l'office divin v. Mouravieff, Andr?, 1847.

777,-? M. le comte de Montalembert et ? M. de Lamartine, par un

gentilhomme polonais. (Sur la Pologne.) Paris, 1847. 8? -russes v. Kr?dener, Baron, 1854.

-Trente, d'un v?t?ran russe v. Viazemski, Pce Pierre, 1855. - sur le Caucase v. Gille, Flor., 1859.

778,-sur l'?mancipation des serfs, ins?r?es dans le Nord, par D. S.

Paris, 1860. 8?

779.-d'un ?tudiant lithuanien. (Sur la Pologne.) (Paris,) 1861. 8? ?*- d'un petit-fils ? sa grand' m?re v, Pallavicini, Cte Andr., s. a.

780. Leufner, Wold., Mittheilungen aus der Dorpater gyn?kologischen Klinik vom 2. Semester 1859 bis zum Schl?sse des Jahres 1861. Dorpat, 1862. 8?

781. L??s, Marcelin, La Russie devant la civilisation. Paris, 1865. 18? 782. Leuthold, Christian. Geo., Capita dubia processus judiciarii livonici in

concursu creditoruni. Pernaviae, 1812. 4?

783. Leutmann, Jo. Geo., Dissertatio de bilancibus. Accedit dissertatio de usu bilancis petropolitanac in hydrostatico invento, de quanti tate argenti cupro inixti investigando. Petropoli, 1731. 4?

Leuuenclavins, Jo., De Moscorum bellis v. Herberstain,'Sigism. Liber Baro

ab, 1571.

784. Leuven, A. de, et Brunswick, Elisabeth ou la fille du proscrit. Drame tir? du roman de Mme Cottin. Paris, 1854. 12?

785. Leuzko, Henry, The ready reckoner, for shipmasters trading to Cron

stadt. 2d ed. Cronstadt, 1865. 8?

786. Levaillant de Florival, M?khitaristes de St. Lazare. Histoire d'Arm?nie, litt?rature arm?nienne. Venise, 1841. 18?

787.-Id. 2e ?d. ib. 1856. 12?

788. -

Coup d'oeil sur l'Arm?nie ou g?ographie sommaire, pr?cis de

l'histoire d'Arm?nie, tableau succinct de la litt?rature arm?nienne.

Paris, 1847. 8?

789.*Levanda, J. de, Dissertation sur l'utilit? et le m?rite d'un ouvrage anonyme ayant pour titre: Rapports entre la langue sanscrite

Figure 6. Page 726 from the 1873 catalog, showing entry for the citation added to the 1851

catalog by unknown scholar (see figure 4).




subordinate to empire as determinants of national identification. Thus

Korfs manner of representing the Russian collectivity was firmly

grounded in contemporary political thought. The Rossica project struck a responsive chord with various social

groups, each interpreting national identity according to its own aims and

aspirations. To an emperor and his advisors determined to seal the borders

against political contamination, a collection of foreign-language writings

on Russia would serve strategic interests.31 (The Rossica division con

tained more banned books than any other division of the library.)32 The

activities of political ?migr?s could be monitored through their publica tions, while knowledge of foreign governments would be enhanced by fa

miliarity with the foreign press and the writings of prominent political

figures abroad. For the first time in its existence, therefore, the Public Li

brary needed spare no expense in collection development.33 To a public imbued with ideas of national greatness, such a collection would provide evidence of Russia's presence around the globe and its growing stature

among the great powers. To elites seeking cultural and intellectual rap

prochement with Western civilization, it would provide new source mate

rial and a welcome turn to the West. Finally, for the library administration

it was a way of promoting Official Nationality and galvanizing public sup

port for the library while building on the existing strengths of the collec

tion. At a personal level, it was an opportunity for Korf to express his

devotion to Nicholas and also ensure himself a place in Russian cultural

history.34

At the outset Korf assigned responsibility for amassing the collection to

V. I. Sobol'shchikov, head of the library's fine arts division and its resident

architect. In his memoirs, written for a presentation volume for Korf in

celebration of his fiftieth year of government service, Sobol'shchikov de

scribed his assignment as a "burdensome lot,"35 but in a letter to his

colleague in the library, A. F. Bychkov, he called it his "terrifying commis

sion."36 To help him identify materials for the collection, Korf presented Sobol'shchikov with notebooks containing

more than one thousand cita

tions to foreign literature on Russia that he had compiled some thirty years

earlier, around the time of Vikhman's and Adelung's proposals.37

Aided by his colleagues thoughout the library, Sobol'shchikov as

sembled all foreign-language publications about Russia from the library's fourteen subject divisions. He prepared

a catalog of these materials,

num

bering 3,766 items, for submission to the scholarly community. In March

1851 Korf arranged for the printing of fifty copies of this preliminary cata

log, with an introduction in German and Russian, under the title Materials

for a Complete Catalog of Works about Russia, Published in All Foreign Lan

guages.38 The catalog

was arranged alphabetically by title and was as

sembled with blank interleaves for corrections and additions. In July 1851



15

the library distributed the copies confidentially (because of the inclusion of

banned titles) to individual scholars and to heads of scholarly organiza tions and institutions.

In the catalog's preface, Korf posed several questions for consideration

by the scholarly community concerning the parameters of the collection.

Central to the character of the collection was the question of geographical coverage. In essence the scholars were asked to probe the troubled rela

tionship between Russian empire and Russian national identity. Korf

asked, for example, which of the formerly independent national minorities

should be included in the collection. (Presumably those minorities se

lected for inclusion were thought to represent a constituent part of the Rus

sian nation.) Addressing an even thornier issue, Korf asked to what extent

Polish culture and history could be subsumed under Russian empire. These questions struck at the heart of tsarist policy toward the western

and Baltic provinces, Finland, and Poland, and less urgently, the Cauca

sus, Central Asia, and Siberia, under Nicholas I.39 Throughout his reign, the primary objective in the western borderlands was bureaucratic cen

tralization, while cultural russification was regarded as a desirable, but not always practical, goal. Generally, attempts at administrative russifica

tion met with greater success than those aimed at social or cultural assimi

lation, which in any event were sporadic and uneven. The police, military, and upper echelons of the bureaucracy were more readily brought under

control than were the schools, courts, and churches. Still, any manifesta

tion of ethnic fervor was swiftly suppressed, and at no time was the task of

absorbing the borderlands into the empire abandoned. Given his position in the government and his proximity to the tsar, Korf's views had the ring of official policy. He held that Finland, the Baltic region, the Caucasus, and Central Asia should be fully represented in the collection, but he drew the line at works on pre-partition Poland. The status of Ukraine as part and parcel of the Russian lands was taken for granted.

Among the recipients of the catalog were historians S. M. Solov'ev, P. M. Stroev, A. D. Chertkov, N. V. Kalachov, N. G. Ustrialov, M. A.

Obolenskii, A. V. Viskovatov, K. D. Kavelin, and K. A. Nevolin; philolo

gists O. M. Bodianskii, A. O. Mukhlinskii, S. V. Shevyrev, P. A. Pletnev, and N. I. Grech; natural scientists K. A. von Baer (head of the library of the Academy of Sciences), A. A. Al'fonskii (rector of Moscow University), and R. E. Trautfetter; bibliophiles S. D. Poltoratskii and S. A. Sobolevskii; social scientists P. I. Keppen and N. Kh. Bunge; Moscow University li brarian S. P. Poludenskii; and Makarii, bishop ofVilna.40 Some of these scholars listed as many as five hundred additional titles in the annotated

copies of the catalog they returned to the library.41 There were diverse replies to Korf's questions concerning the geo

graphic parameters of the collection. Solov'ev preferred a more inclusive



16 h&C/The Rossica Collection

approach, particularly with respect to Polish territory, and he specifically

proposed more comprehensive representation of writings on Polish history in the collection. K. I. Nevolin, in contrast, suggested

a more pragmatic

approach, arguing that particular regions be considered for inclusion on a

case-by-case basis, rather than with a

general rule, since at a

practical

level the literature for some regions would be prohibitively voluminous.

After the preliminary catalogs were returned to the library, acquisitions

of Rossica went into full swing. About the campaign, Korf later wrote that

"the history of official relations, searches in writing and in person, trips,

donations, bibliophilie strategems and heroic deeds, by means of which

this effort was conducted and gradually accomplished, could fill an entire

book."42 On the basis of the corrections and additions supplied by the

scholarly community, desiderata lists were circulated to book dealers in

Russia and western Europe. Korf made acquisition trips to Germany,

France, and Belgium in 1851 and 1856,43 and librarian and orientalist

K. A. Kossovich traveled to England and France in 1851.44 The librarian

A. D. Ivanovskii, later implicated in a series of thefts from the library, trav

eled to Poland, Austria, the western provinces, and Prussia in 1860 and

obtained more than one thousand titles.45 Book dealers in Halle, Frank

furt, Leipzig, Riga, St. Petersburg, and other cities scoured their invento

ries on behalf of the library and dispatched agents to other booksellers,

libraries, and private collectors. Donations were received from other li

braries, such as the Rumiantsev Museum, Dresden Royal Library, General

Staff library, and the Hermitage library (which in 1852 donated its entire

stock of foreign publications on Russia, numbering 8,911 titles, to the Ros

sica project),46 from book dealers, and from individual collectors and

scholars. The bibliophile S. A. Sobol'evskii wrote in 1868: "I would con

sider it a sin not to provide the SPB Library with a book about Russia that

it lacked, even if it were intensely interesting to me and completed

one of

my favorite series."47

By 1860 the collection numbered some thirty thousand titles. A. F.

Bychkov, then head of the library's Russian division and later director of the

library, observed that "Rossica grew like some mythic warrior, not by days, but by hours."48 Sobol'shchikov noted that increased demand associated

with the acquisitions campaign inflated book prices generally. In the

mid-1850s, the Crimean War created temporary obstacles for the project

by interrupting shipping and precipitating the fall of the ruble.50 Still, only four years after its inception, Korf was able to claim that "[t]his project,

begun in silence, without special resources . . . and without the fanfare you

would find in the West, but with true love and indefatigable activity, has

achieved, in a relatively short time, such results . . . that [the collection]

has become number one in the world."51 Use of the Rossica collection ac



17

counted for fully 16.5 percent of the total circulation of foreign-language materials in the library during the period from 1855 through 1859.52

Response to the Collection

For Korf, the creation of the Rossica collection was a public event, unit

ing various segments of society. It was not just

a collaborative undertak

ing, but a spectacle designed to edify and uplift the educated public in the

spirit of Official Nationality. At the same time, he recognized that public

support was vital to the realization of the project. Ever the master politi

cian, Korf assiduously promoted the Rossica collection among his associ

ates, the library's clientele, and the general public. He appealed to the

scholarly community in terms of its own self-interest, as well as national

pride; his introduction to the 1851 preliminary catalog characterizes the

proposed collaborative effort as a patriotic enterprise and stresses the

value of the collection for scholarly research. To his staff, Korf emphasized the patriotic nature of their labors. The contribution of the art and music

critic Vladimir Stasov, then a volunteer in the library and later head of the

fine arts division, to the preparation of a subject catalog of the collection was pronounced a "patriotic deed."53 Korf described the progress of the

project in the library's annual reports, which were taken at face value

by the press and presented in abridged versions to their readers. Sobol'shchikov observed in his memoirs that the library had become a

popular topic of conversation among educated society as a result of Korf's

effective public relations, noting in particular Korf's frequent articles in

newspapers and incessant lobbying among the "rich and powerful."54

Bychkov wrote that as a result of Korfs publicity campaign, "people started

talking about the library everywhere and often."55

Without exception, reviews of the library's annual reports and other

publications in this period were favorable to the Rossica project and the

library overall. Journals as diverse as the Muscovite on the right and the

Contemporary on the left praised the collection and the library administra tion in almost identical language. In 1852 Notes of the Fatherland applauded the creation of the Rossica collection and the effort to impart national character to the library: "At a time when scholarly organizations, private

individuals, and the government are striving to create Russian science . . .

when we treasure every piece of information about Russia, the library . . .

has become one of the most important motivating forces in this effort."56 The St. Petersburg Gazette commended the library's positive influence on

society in 1855,57 while the Contemporary (which in 1851 had described the confiscation of the Zaluski collection in 1795 with the euphemistic statement, "the government acquired

a significant quantity of books")58



18 hScC/The Rossica Collection

emphasized the importance of the library in the dissemination of knowl

edge59 and advancement of Russian culture.60

Repeatedly throughout the 1850s, the journals and newspapers the

Northern Bee, the Muscovite, Reader's Library, Son of the Fatherland, Notes of the

Fatherland, the St. Petersburg Gazette, the Russian Herald, and the Transactions

of the Academy of Sciences wrote about the library in the same favorable

terms. Phrases like "patriotic aspiration," "source of pride," "positive in

fluence on society," "native glory," "national/original/distinctive charac

ter," "patriotic effort on behalf of national culture," "moral results,"

"common good," and "expanding sphere of influence" resound through

out newspaper accounts of the library's activities.61 Time and again writ

ers noted the growing sympathy for the library in society and praised its

strong service orientation.

Although it is true that censorship was most severe in the final years of

the reign of Nicholas I, the overwhelmingly favorable reaction to the li

brary in the press cannot be wholly attributed to this circumstance. To be

sure, criticism of state-sponsored cultural projects would hardly be ex

pected to pass muster with the censors. Moreover, from 1849 until it was

disbanded in December 1855, Korf was head of the notorious Committee

of 2 April 1848 on censorship ?in effect, chief censor of the Russian

empire?which might have induced journalists and publishers to extol his

pet project in order to curry favor. Too, after the outbreak of the Crimean

War, there was a tremendous upsurge of patriotic feeling, which attached

itself to the Rossica project, among other foci, as a result of Korf's public relations campaign.62 Nonetheless, praise of the library in general and the

Rossica project in particular was loud and lavish even after the death of

Nicholas I. The fact that uniformly laudatory reviews of the library's an

nual reports and glowing reports of progress in the Rossica division ap

peared throughout the 1850s and into the 1860s, when critical remarks

would have been tolerated, suggests their essential sincerity. Precisely in

this period of relaxed censorship, the radical utilitarian critics N. G.

Chernyshevskii (1855),63 N. A. Dobroliubov (1859),64 and A. N. Pypin

(1857)65 praised the "enlightened" library administration in the Contem

porary. On the eve of the emancipation, the St. Petersburg Gazette, the Russian

Herald, and the Northern Bee all cited the central role of the library in pro

moting Russian culture, and one reviewer in the Russian Herald observed

that the library was mercifully free of bureaucratic attitudes and obstruc

tions so prevalent in state institutions generally.66

In spite of Korf's prox

imity to the court and his avowed enthusiasm for Official Nationality, his

project was

apparently interpreted as a genuine affirmation of national

identity and the native cultural heritage.

Perhaps most striking of all, there were no objections registered

to the

project on the grounds that it exalted the foreign element in Russian cul



19

ture. Korf's expansive conceptualization of national identity, extending across

geopolitical boundaries, apparently did not challenge conventional

notions of "Russian." Whether because of his effective public relations

campaigns, or because the boundaries of national identity were still very

porous in the 1850s, or because the expansionist philosophy that informed

the Rossica project was increasingly popular, the Russian public did not

apparently flinch at the idea of incorporating the cultural products of the

"other" in the national self-image.

In fact the question of the parameters of the collection remained unre

solved well into the 1860s. Another "preliminary" catalog for distribution to the scholarly community was lithographed in I860,67 revisiting the very same questions of definition from the 1851 catalog. With the collection es

sentially complete, this catalog was conceived as an "intermediate link"

between the 1851 catalog and a final catalog with full scholarly apparatus.

Prepared by Sobol'shchikov's assistant, E. E. Berkgol'ts (editor of Baltische

Monatsschrift and later head of Riga Public Library), and issued in one

hundred copies, the catalog contained some twenty thousand titles, ex

cluding materials in oriental languages, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, and Finnish. It did include works in other languages on Finland and the

Baltic provinces, as well as works on the Caucasus, Central Asia, Turkish

Armenia, and Swedish Lapland. Writings on Polish history and literature

prior to the partitions were excluded, together with works on other Ortho

dox peoples and materials in other "Slavic" languages (Bulgarian, Ser

bian, and Ruthenian). The scholarly community was invited to comment on these specifications and to use the catalog as

an interim guide to the

collection, even though it was not designed for that purpose. Meanwhile within the library, debate erupted over the extent and ar

rangement of the proposed final printed catalog. In the early 1860s, as ret

rospective acquisitions came to a close, two camps formed within the library over this issue. Korf, Sobol'shchikov, R. I. Mintslov, and K. A. Bekker ad

vocated an alphabetical catalog with subject index; Bychkov, the elderly B. A. Dorn, and V. E. Gen argued for

a classified catalog. Both sides main

tained that their method best facilitated access to the collection. In March 1864 a vote was taken, and the majority chose the classified catalog, but the following year they reversed themselves and opted for an alphabetical catalog on the grounds that it could be prepared more readily.

Toward this end, I. D. Delianov, Korf's replacement as library director, directed Bychkov to prepare a brochure listing the proposed cataloging rules and posing a series of questions for still further discussion. The pros pect of undertaking a complete catalog of the collection, now numbering some thirty thousand volumes, seemed increasingly daunting, and in 1865 the librarian Berkgol'ts and bibliophile S. A. Sobolevskii proposed, with

Korf's endorsement, that four separate catalogs be issued for portions of




the collection. These were to be a catalog of works pertaining to the era

of Peter the Great; a catalog listing works concerning the era of Catherine

the Great; a catalog of works on the Baltic provinces; and a catalog of

translations from Russian. They would be classified catalogs with alpha betical author indexes. Ultimately, of the four only the catalog on Peter

was completed (by Mintslov) and published (in 1872). In 1869 the librar

ian K. F. Fetterlein began work on an alphabetical catalog of the entire

Rossica division, which was published in 1873 in two volumes (containing

28,391 titles), with a classified index.69 Funding for the catalog was pro vided in part by Korf (with the proceeds from the sale of his biography of Speranskii and his account of the accession of Nicholas I) and M. I.

Glazunov, a book dealer who rented a shop in the library's building. The

catalog was cited at the first International Congress of Bibliography in Paris

in 1878, where the collection was recognized as "unique

en son genre."70

Conclusion

By the 1860s, the issue of Russia's relationship to the West had tempo

rarily been eclipsed by other social and political questions. The focus on

the design and implementation of the Great Reforms deflected attention

from the "other." Aesthetic and philosophical romanticism was sup

planted by realism and civic criticism in the arts and letters and by posi

tivism, utilitarianism, and materialism in science and philosophy.

Increasingly, comparisons with the West were cast in terms of political and

economic models, rather than in the language of romantic nationalism. Fi

nally, the departure from the library of the publicity-conscious Korf in

1861, and his replacement by Delianov, a more conventional, low-profile

bureaucrat (then also assistant minister of education), meant that in the

1860s the library was less in public view. For their part, in the era of the

Great Reforms, the librarians of the Public Library concentrated their ef

forts on the issues of reforming library governance and responding to the

rapid influx of new readers.

Although retrospective acquisitions largely ceased by 1870, the library

added new publications to the collection well into the Soviet period.71 Ac

quisitions were particularly active during the Russo-Japanese War, the

centenary of the War of 1812, and World War I.72 After the October revo

lution, diplomatic constraints and currency problems significantly

cur

tailed collection development, and acquisitions ceased altogether

following the reorganization of the library in 1930.73 The Rossica collection

was maintained at the library throughout the Soviet period and remains

there today, numbering some 150,000 books, pamphlets, and periodi

cals.74 (The library was renamed the Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public Li

brary in 1932 and the Russian National Library in 1992.) A two-volume



21

subject catalog of portions of the collection was issued in the 1960s, and

a revised and greatly expanded edition was published in three volumes in

the 1980s.76 While its importance

as a resource for the study of Russian history and

culture is undeniable, the Rossica collection is equally valuable for what it

reveals to us about the beliefs and customs of its founders. The creation of

the collection reflects a series of strategic choices concerning the bound

aries of the collective entity "Russia" and its relation to the foreign "other." As a state-sponsored exercise in constructing and disseminating

national identity and an expression of prevailing norms, the Rossica

project brings into sharp focus the complex process of inventing culture in

the era of romantic nationalism and Official Nationality in Russia.

Notes

1. M. Godkevich, "Rossica i Sovi?tica," Kniga iproletarskaia revoliutsiia 1936, no.

2: 146.

2. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983), 15-16.

3. Richard Handler, "On Having a Culture: Nationalism and the Preservation

of Quebec's Patrimoine,'" in Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture, ed. George W. Stocking, Jr. (Madison, Wise: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985),

192-215; Richard Handler, "On Sociocultural Discontinuity: Nationalism and

Cultural Objectification in Quebec," Current Anthropology 25, no. 1 (1984): 55-71.

4. On the rise of national consciousness in Russia in the eighteenth century, see

Hans Rogger, National Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century Russia (Cambridge, Mass.:

Harvard University Press, 1960). 5. Rogger, National Consciousness, 279. Technically this use of the term is anach

ronistic, since the doctrine of nationalism was not formulated until the end of the

eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. On European nationalism

see E. J. Hobsbawn, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Anthony D. Smith, Theories of

Nationalism, 2d ed. (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1983); Miroslav Hroch, Social

Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composi tion of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1985); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cor

nell University Press, 1983); Anderson, Imagined Communities.

6. The creation of a national language is discussed in Rogger, National Conscious

ness, 85-125.

7. On national consciousness and the study of history in this period see Rogger, National Consciousness, 186-252; Alexander Vucinich, Science in Russian Culture: A His

tory to 1860 (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1963); J. L. Black, G.-F.

M?ller and the Imperial Russian Academy (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's

University Press, 1986). 8. On the archaeographic and ethnographic expeditions, see Vucinich, Science in

Russian Culture, 90-91, 99-101, 150-152, 352-357; V P. Kozlov, Kolumby rossiiskikh

drevnostei (Moscow: "Nauka," 1985); Mary Stuart, Aristocrat-Librarian in Service to the




Tsar: Aleksei Nikolaevich Olenin and the Imperial Public Library (Boulder, Colo.: East

European Monographs, 1986), 20-25; A. A. Kochubinskii, NachaVnye gody russkago

slavianoviedieniia (Odessa: Tip. "Odesskago viestnika," 1887-1888).

9. Isaiah Berlin, "A Remarkable Decade," section I, "Birth of the Russian In

telligentsia," in Russian Thinkers, by Isaiah Berlin (Middlesex, England: Penguin

Books, 1978), 118; Cynthia H. Whittaker, The Origins of Modern Russian Education:

An Intellectual Biography of Count Sergei Uvarov, 1786-1855 (Dekalb, 111.: Northern Il

linois University Press, 1984), 94.

10. Edward C. Thaden, Conservative Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Russia (Se

attle: University of Washington Press, 1964), 27-31; Isaiah Berlin, "A Remarkable

Decade," section II, "German Romanticism in Petersburg and Moscow," in Ber

lin, Russian Thinkers, 136-149.

11. Hobsbawn, Nations and Nationalism since 1780, 80-100.

12. The classic work on invented tradition is Eric Hobsbawn and Terence

Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1983); on the British case in particular,

see Raphael Samuel, ed., Patriotism: The

Making and Unmaking of British National Identity, 3 vols. (London: Routledge, 1989).

13. Hobsbawn, Nations and Nationalism since 1780, 92.

14. On the early history of the library and the Olenin administration see Stuart,

Aristocrat-Librarian in Service to the Tsar.

15. Stuart, Aristocrat-Librarian in Service to the Tsar, 72; A. L. Gol'dberg, "Pechat

nye materialy Publichnoi biblioteki imeni M. S. Saltykova-Shchedrina

o voine

1812 goda," Voprosy istorii 1962, no. 6: 208; A. L. Gol'dberg, "Okno iz Evropy,"

AVmanakh bibliofila [1] (1973): 147. 16. Gol'dberg, "Pechatnye materialy," 208.

17. Ibid.

18. In 1812 Olenin, together with S. S. Uvarov (then assistant director of the

library and superintendent of the St. Petersburg educational district), the censor

I. O. Timkovskii, and journalist N. I. Grech, founded the journal Son of the Father

land, also designed to promote national identification. See Stuart, Aristocrat-Librar

ian in Service to the Tsar, 70?72.

19. F. Adelung, "Predlozhenie ob uchrezhdenii Ruskago NatsionaPnago

Muzeia," Syn otechestva ch. 37, no. 14 (1817): 54-72.

20. G. fon Vikhmann, "Rossiiskii Otechestvennyi Muzei," Syn otechestva ch. 71,

no. 33 (1821): 289-310. 21. Whittaker, The Origins of Modern Russian Education, 92-93.

22. On Uvarov and Official Nationality, see Whittaker, The Origins of Modem

Russian Education-, Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Rus

sia, 1825-1855 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 70-183; W. Bruce

Lincoln, Nicholas I, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias (Bloomington, Ind.: Indi

ana University Press, 1978), 239-252.

23. Riasanovsky, Nicholas I, 124.

24. On the library in this period, see Mary Stuart,

" 'A Potent Lever for Social

Progress': The Imperial Public Library in the Era of the Great Reforms," Library

Quarterly 59, no. 3 (1989): 199-222; Mary Stuart, "The Evolution of Librarianship

in Russia: The Librarians of the Imperial Public Library, 1808-1868," Library

Quarterly 64, no. 1 (1994): 1-29. On Korf,

see W. Bruce Lincoln, "Official Propa

ganda in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Russia: Baron Korf and The Accession of Nicholas

/," Oxford Slavonic Papers n.s. XXI (1988): 120-130; W. Bruce Lincoln,

"The Last

Years of the Nicholas 'System': The Unpublished Diaries and Memoirs of Baron

Korf and General Tsimmerman," Oxford Slavonic Papers n.s. VI (1973): 12-27;



23

W Bruce Lincoln, "Korf, Modest Andreevich," Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and

Soviet History, vol. 17 (Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Academic International Press, 1980), 177?

180; K. F. Fetterlein, "Korf, Modest Andreevich," Russkii biograficheskii slovar\ vol.

Kn-Kiu (St. Petersburg: Tip. Glavnago upravleniia udielov, 1903), 282-292. Al

though in the posthumously published excerpts from his memoirs, Korf does relate

a few events in the library from 1850 and 1851, he unfortunately does not mention

the Rossica collection. The original manuscript may contain material on the col

lection. Lincoln utilized the manuscript, then held at the Central State Archive of

the October Revolution, for his article, "The Last Years of the Nicholas 'System'." 25. Imperatorskaia Publichnaia biblioteka za sto liet, 1814-1914 (St. Petersburg:

[s.n.], 1914), 186-187.

26. Whittaker, The Origins of Modern Russian Education, 224; Lincoln, Nicholas I,

301.

27. A. F Bychkov, "Graf M. A. Korf," Drevniaia i novaia Rossia 1876, no. 4: 336

337. Korf's account of the transfer was included in the published excerpts from his

memoirs. See M. A. Korf, "Iz zapisok barona (vposliedstvii grafa) M. A. Korfa,"

Russkaia starina 1900, no. 5: 283-284.

28. Otchet Imperatorskoi Publichnoi biblioteki za 1850 god (St. Petersburg: VTip. II Otdieleniia Sobstvennoi E. I. V Kantseliarii, 1851), 17-18.

29. Iu. S. Afanas'ev and A. S. Myl'nikov, eds., Istoriia Gosudarstvennoi Publichnoi

biblioteki imeni M. E. Saltykova-Shchedrina (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1963), 60; Impera torskaia Publichnaia biblioteka za sto liet, 275.

30. Hobsbawn, Nations and Nationalism since 1780, 32-42.

31. O. D. Golubeva and A. L. Gol'dberg, V. I. Sobol'shchikov; O. D. Golubeva, V. E Odoevskii (Moscow: "Kniga," 1983), 60-61.

32. A. L. Gol'dberg and I. G. Iakovleva, "Kollektsiia 'Rossika' Gosudarstven

noi Publichnoi biblioteki im. M. E. Saltykova-Shchedrina," Istoriia SSSR 1964, no.

5: 101, n. 49. On the censorship of foreign publications in Russia, see Marianna

Tax Choldin, A Fence around the Empire: Russian Censorship of Western Ideas under the

Tsars (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1985). 33. Golubeva and Gol'dberg, V. I. SoboVshchikov, 60-61.

34. Shortly after Korf's death, the art and music critic Vladimir Stasov, who

served with Korf for twenty years, pronounced the creation of the Rossica collec

tion Korf's greatest accomplishment. See V V. Stasov, "Graf Modest Andreevich

Korf; biograficheskii ocherk," Russkaia starina 1876, no. 2: 414.

35. V. I. Sobol'shchikov, "Vospominaniia starago bibliotekaria," Istoricheskii

viestnik 10 (1889), no. 4: 301.

36. Golubeva and Gol'dberg, V. I. Sobol'shchikov, 58.

37. Imperatorskaia Publichnaia biblioteka za sto liet, 276; Golubeva and Gol'dberg, V. I. SoboVshchikov, p. 59; Sobol'shchikov, "Vospominaniia starago bibliotekaria,"

pp. 301-302.

38. Materialy k proektu polnago kataloga sochinenii o Rossii, na vsiekh inostrannykh iaz

ykakh izdannykh (St. Petersburg: C. Wienh?ber, 1851). 39. Policy toward the Baltic provinces, Belorussia, Poland, Finland, and

Ukraine under Nicholas I is treated in Edward C. Thaden, Russia's Western Border

lands, 1710-1870 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984). 40. Imperatorskaia Publichnaia biblioteka za sto liet, 280.

41. Golubeva and Gol'dberg, 62. The copy of the catalog held at the Library of

Congress is heavily annotated, but unfortunately there is no indication of the iden

tity of the author.




42. M. A. Korf, Desiatilietie Imperatorskoi Publichnoi bibliot?ki (1849-1859) (St. Pe

tersburg: V. Tip. II Otdieleniia Sobstvennoi E. I. V. Kantseliarii, 1859), 24. 43. Otchet Imperatorskoi Publichnoi bibliot?ki zu 1851 god (St. Petersburg: V tip. K.

Vingebera, 1852), 19; [review of Otchet Imperatorskoi Publichnoi bibliot?ki zu 1856god], Sovremennik 63 (1857), no. 5, sec. IV: 19-20; Desiatilietie Imperatorskoi Publichnoi bib

liot?ki, 40-41.

44. Otchet Imperatorskoi Publichnoi bibliot?ki zu 1851 god, 19; K. A. Kossovich, "Iz

vlechenie iz otcheta, predstavlennago direktoru Imperatorskoi Publichnoi bib

liot?ki," Otechestvennyia zapiski 80 (1852), no. 2, sec. II: 81-94.

45. Otchet Imperatorskoi Publichnoi bibliteki zu I860 god (St. Petersburg: V tip. II Otdieleniia Sobstvennoi E. I. V. Kantseliarii, 1861), 5, 75-76; Imperatorskaia Pub

lichnaia biblioteka za sto liet, 283-284. On the thefts see Mary Stuart, "The Crime of

Dr. Pichler: A Scholar-Biblioklept in Imperial Russia and His European Predeces

sors," Libraries & Culture 23, no. 4 (1988): 405-406.

46. Otchet Imperatorskoi Publichnoi biblitoeki zu 1852 god (St. Petersburg: V tip. II Otdieleniia Sobstvennoi E. I. V. Kantseliarii, 1853), 65.

47. V V. Kunin, Bibliqfily Pushkinskoipory (Moscow: "Kniga," 1979), 111-112. 48. Bychkov, "Graf M. A. Korf," 337.

49. V. I. Sobol'shchikov, "Chertkovskaia biblioteka v Moskvie i Imperatorskaia Publichnaia biblioteka v S.-Peterburgie," Golos (13 April 1864), no. 103: 2.

50. Imperatorskaia Publichnaia biblioteka zu 1854 god (St. Petersburg: V. tip. II Ot

dieleniia Sobstvennoi E. I. V. Kant-seliarii, 1855), 41.

51. Ibid., 68-69.

52. N. A. Efimova, Chitateli Publichnoi bibliot?ki v Peterburge i organizatsiia ikh ob

sluzhivaniia v 1814-1917gg. (Trudy Gosudarstvennoi Publichnoi bibliot?ki im. M. E.

Saltykova-Shchedrina, vol. 6) (Leningrad: Gosudarstvennaia Publichnaia bib

lioteka, 1958), 76, 166. 53. Godkevich, "Rossica i Sovi?tica," 146. Stasov's work on the subject catalog

of the Rossica collection is described in his memoir of the library. See V V. Stasov,

"Vospominaniia gostia Bibliot?ki," in V. V. Stasov, Sobranie sochineniia V. V. Stasova,

1847-1886, vol. 3 (St. Petersburg: Tip. I. N. Skorokhodova, 1894), cols. 1518-1519.

See also Golubeva and Gol'dberg, V. I. Sobol'shchikov, 65-67; V. N. Stefanovich, V. V.

Stasov (1824?1906); ocherk bibliotechnoi deiateVnosti (Moscow: Izd-vo Vsesoiuznoi

knizhnoi palaty, 1956), 61-65.

54. Sobol'shchikov, "Vospominaniia starago bibliotekaria," 311.

55. Bychkov, "Graf M. A. Korf," 340.

56. (Review of Otchet Imperatorskoi Publichnoi bibliot?ki zu 1851 god), Otechestvennyia zapiski 81 (1852), sec. VI: 77.

57. (Review of Otchet Imperatorskoi Publichnoi bibliot?ki zu 1854 god), Sanktpeterburg skiia viedomosti 1855, no. 76 (9 April): 371-372.

58. [Review of Otchet Imperatorskoi Publichnoi bibliot?ki za 1850god], Sovremennik 26

(1851), no. 3, sec. Ill: 58.


(1853), no. 10, sec. IV: 19.


(1854), no. 5, sec. IV: 45.

61. Sievernaia pchela 1851, no. 236: 941; Sievernaia pchela 1860, no. 15: 57; Mosk

vitianin 1850, no. 12, sec. V: 17; Moskvitianin 1854, no. 22, sec. IV: 62; Otechestvennyia

zapiski 82 (1852), sec. VI: 5; Otechestvennyia zapiski 75 (1851), sec. VI: 11-13; Otechestvennyia zapiski 81 (1852), sec. VI: 77, 80; Otechestvennyia zapiski 94 (1854), sec. IV: 18, 24; Syn otechestva 5 (1852), no. 5, sec. VI: 1, 5, 8; Izviestiia Imperatorskoi



25

Akademii nauk po otdieleniiu russkago iazyka i slovesnosti 4 (1855), no. 4: cols. 191-192;

Izviestiia Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk po otdieleniiu russkago iazyka i slovesnosti 8 (1859), no. 4: col. 302; Sanktpeterburgskiia viedomosti 1852, no. 68 (22 March): 273-275;Sankt peterburgskiia viedomosti 1855, no. 76 (9 April): 371-372; Sanktpeterburgskiia viedomosti

1860, no. 1 (1 January): 1-2; Russkii viestnik 3 (1856), pt. 2: 147-148; Biblioteka dlia chteniia 106 (1851), sec. VI: 30-31; Biblioteka dlia chteniia 114 (1852), sec. VI: 25.

62. Otchet Imperatorskoi Publichnoi biblioteki za 1855 god (St. Petersburg: V tip. II Otdieleniia Sobstvennoi E. I. V. Kantseliarii, 1856), 4; Sovremennik 57 (1856), no. 5, sec. IV: 3.

63. (Review of Otchet Imperatorskoi Publichnoi biblioteki za 1854 god), Sovremennik 51

(1855), no. 5, sec. IV: 5-7.

64. (Review of Otchet Imperatorskoi Publichnoi biblioteki za 1858god), Sovremennik 75

(1859), no. 5, sec. Ill: 99-103.

65. (Review of Otchet Imperatorskoi Publichnoi biblioteki za 1856god), Sovremennik 63

(1857), no. 5, sec. IV: 16-24.

66. Mikhail Longinov, (review of Desiatileitie Imperatorskoi Publichnoi biblioteki

[1849-1859]), Russkii viestnik 25 ( 1860) : 81. 67. Korrekturnye listy kataloga inoiazychnykh sochinenii o Rossii nakhodiashchikhsia v Im

peratorskoi Publichnoi Biblioteki (St. Petersburg, 1860). 68. A. L. Gol'dberg, "Vazhnyi put' rasshireniia informatsionnoi bazy is

toricheskikh issledovanii," in Sovershenstvovanie informatsionnykh istochnikov (Lenin

grad: [s.n.], 1976), 81; Otchet Imperatorskoi Publichnoi biblioteki za 1865 god (St. Petersburg; V tip. II Otdieleniia Sobstvennoi E. I. V Kantseliarii, 1866), 12-15;

Imperatorskaia Publichnaia biblioteka za sto liet, 365-367; Golubeva and Gol'dberg, V.l.

Sobol'shchikov, 67-69.

69. Catalogue de la section des Russica, ou Ecrits sur la Russie en langues ?trang?res, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg: Acad?mie imp?riale des sciences, 1873).

70. Congr?s bibliographique international (1st: 1878: Paris), Compte rendu des

travaux (Paris: Soci?t? bibliographique, 1879), 545. 71. Gol'dberg and Iakovleva, "Kollektsiia 'Rossika' Gosudarstvennoi Publich

noi biblioteki," 100; Gol'dberg, "Vazhnyi put' rasshireniia informtsionnoi bazy is

toricheskikh issledovanii," 80.

72. Gol'dberg and Iakovleva, "Kollektsiia 'Rossika' Gosudarstvennoi Publich

noi biblioteki," 100; Gol'dberg, "Pechatnye materialy Publichnoi biblioteki imeni

M. E. Saltykova-Shchedrina o voine 1812 goda," 208.

73. Gol'dberg and Iakovleva, "Kollektsiia 'Rossika' Gosudarstvennoi Publich

noi biblioteki," 102.

74. Dorevoliutsionnye izdaniia po istorii SSSR v inostrannom fonde Gosudarstvennoi Pub

lichnoi biblioteki im. M. E. Saltykova-Shchedrina; sistematicheskii ukazatel', vol. 1, comp. A. L. Gol'dberg and I. G. Iakovleva (Leningrad: Gosudarstvennaia Publichnaia

biblioteka, 1982), 6. 75. Dorevoliutsionnye izdaniia po istorii SSSR v inostrannom fonde Gosudarstvennoi Pub

lichnoi biblioteki im. M. E. Saltykova-Shchedrina; sistematicheskii katalog, 2 vols., comp. A. L. Gol'dberg (Leningrad: Gosudarstvennaia Publichnaia biblioteka, 1964

1966). 76. Dorevoliutsionnye izdaniia po istorii SSSRv inostrannom fonde Gosudarstvennoi Pub

lichnoi biblioteki im. M. E. Saltykova-Shchedrina; sistematicheskii ukazatel', 3 vols., comp. A. L. Gol'dberg and I. G. Iakovleva (Leningrad: Gosudarstvennaia Publichnaia

biblioteka, 1982-1986). The publisher Norman Ross is currently preparing a re

print edition.



Article Contentsp. [1]p. 2p. 3p. 4p. 5p. [6]p. [7]p. 8p. 9p. 10p. [11]p. [12]p. [13]p. 14p. 15p. 16p. 17p. 18p. 19p. 20p. 21p. 22p. 23p. 24p. 25

Issue Table of ContentsLibraries & Culture, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Winter, 1995), pp. 1-136Front MatterCreating Culture: The Rossica Collection of the Imperial Public Library and the Construction of National Identity [pp. 1-25]Eisenhower, ALA, and the Selection of L. Quincy Mumford [pp. 26-56]Faculty Involvement in Early Research University Libraries: The Case of the University of Chicago, 1892-1912 [pp. 57-68]Notes & EssaysThe Renewal of the Francke Foundation Libraries in Halle, Germany [pp. 69-81]Review: The Annales Movement and Its Historiography: A Short Bibliography [pp. 82-91]

The Cover [pp. 92-93]Book ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 96-98]Review: untitled [pp. 98-99]Review: untitled [pp. 99-100]Review: untitled [pp. 100-102]Review: untitled [pp. 102-103]Review: untitled [pp. 103-104]Review: untitled [pp. 104-106]Review: untitled [pp. 106-107]Review: untitled [pp. 107-108]Review: untitled [pp. 108-109]Review: untitled [pp. 109-111]Review: untitled [pp. 111-112]Review: untitled [pp. 112-113]Review: untitled [pp. 113-114]Review: untitled [p. 115-115]Review: untitled [pp. 115-117]Review: untitled [pp. 117-119]Review: untitled [pp. 119-121]Review: untitled [pp. 122-123]Review: untitled [pp. 123-124]Review: untitled [pp. 124-126]Review: untitled [pp. 126-127]Review: untitled [pp. 127-130]Review: untitled [pp. 130-132]Review: untitled [pp. 132-133]Review: untitled [pp. 133-134]Review: untitled [pp. 134-135]

Back Matter

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