Hello dear friends. Do you know how to get to the library? The question, of course, is ridiculous, but very important. Indeed, right now I invite you to a unique American repository, where you can find many real treasures of Russian culture.
The US Library of Congress has over 700,000 books, photographs, and manuscripts in Russian and the same number in other Slavic languages from ancient Russia to the present day. Many of them are priceless. The US Central Library is the largest repository of Russian-language publications abroad.
History of Russian America
First of all, the Library of Congress stores documents about the life of Russian America. There were several settlements in the USA founded by Russian sailors. They are not only in Alaska, but also in Hawaii, California, San Francisco. Many documents relating to the founding of the settlements are kept in Washington, from the official discovery of Alaska by the Russians in 1732 to its sale in 1867. Among them there is documentary evidence of Russians visiting Alaska as early as the 17th century (their names have not been preserved, but it is known that they arrived on seven ships from Veliky Novgorod during the reign of Ivan the Terrible).
Collection of Yudin
Reports on the Russian-American campaign to resettle Russians in new territories and the diaries of Russian travelers to America were included in the library’s collection along with the collection of the Russian merchant from Krasnoyarsk Gennady Yudin. Its collection contains more than 80,000 rare books, journals and manuscripts of the 13th-19th centuries, including the first editions of Mikhail Lomonosov and Alexander Radishchev, as well as books on the development of Siberia.
At the beginning of the 20th century, when Yudin’s business went bankrupt, he decided to sell the collection, even turning to Emperor Nicholas II. But not at the first declared price of 250,000 rubles. (at the exchange rate of those years it was almost 120 thousand dollars, or today 3.1 million dollars), nor according to the second – 150 thousand rubles. there were no buyers. As a result, the entire collection goes to the US Library of Congress for 100,000 rubles.
In 1940, librarian Mikhail Vinokurov (a descendant of Russian Orthodox missionaries) went to Alaska on a three-month expedition and brought back tens of thousands of documents related to the history of the Orthodox Church in the United States. Of particular interest are the diaries of Russian priests of the mid-18th – early 20th centuries, which describe in detail the missionary activities of the Orthodox Church in the area.
Photo archive of Prokudin-Gorsky
Much of the great legacy of the Russian photographer Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky is also in the library. At the beginning of the twentieth century, he invented new technologies for color photography and traveled to many cities in the Russian Empire, documenting everyday life. Thanks to him, we know what Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Chaliapin looked like, and what people from different regions of Russia wore. After the revolution, Prokudin-Gorsky left Russia, continuing to work in Europe. He left more than 3,500 color photographs in his homeland, but somehow, in the 1930s, 2,300 of them ended up in Paris.
Subsequently, about 400 negatives were lost, and only after his death did the heirs sell the remaining 1,900 works in the United States. Basically, these are photographs from different regions: the Urals, the Caucasus, Turkestan, the Volga, the Oka, Belarus and others. A separate session is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Patriotic War of 1812. The negatives have now been digitized and are available on the library’s website. In addition to the negatives, the collection includes more than 2,400 printed color photographs.
The fate of the remaining 1200 negatives in the USSR is still unknown. It is believed that among them were photographs of the royal family taken by Prokudin-Gorsky on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov court.
The first printed Russian books
The Library’s Rare Editions Department includes about 4,000 Old Russian books from Yudin’s collection of the 16th-18th centuries. Here is one of the copies of the “Apostle” of 1564 – the first Russian printed book with a release date. This is a book about church services that contains part of the New Testament. Another valuable rarity is the “Ostrog” of 1580 (also included in the “New Testament”). The collection of Russian laws “Law” of 1649 is also kept here.
Library of the Imperial Family
In the 1930s, the Library of Congress purchased 2,600 titles from the Romanovs’ personal library from the New York bookseller Israel Perlstein. In 1925, he visited the USSR and managed to negotiate the purchase of the Imperial Library, which is located in the dungeons of the Winter Palace. According to historians, since there were no diplomatic relations between the countries at that time, Perlshtein was needed as an intermediary.
The collection includes books from the 18th-19th centuries in Russian, English, German and French, many of which contain remarks by the emperor and his family. But the main value is musical recordings: the first editions of the score of Glinka’s opera Ruslan and Lyudmila (1878) and Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Maid of Pskov (1894). In addition, the library contains state documents: the law on the abolition of serfdom, military law and publications of civil law.
Archive of Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninov, one of the greatest composers and musicians of the 20th century, left Russia after the revolution and was buried in New York. In exile, he mourned Russia and even asked the Soviet embassy for Soviet citizenship, but did not wait for an answer. After his death, the widow offered to transfer his archive to the Glinka Museum (the main Russian music museum in Moscow), but received no answer. Then she decided to donate it to the Library of Congress. His personal letters, photographs, awards, musical manuscripts and drafts are now stored here – about 17,000 exhibits in total.
These are the values that are in the possession of the American government. It’s a shame that such things were sold, that they could not find a place in the museums of Russia. Would you like to visit this library?
