Historical Acta Collected and Published by the Archeographic

a five-volume collection of documents on the history of Russia published in St. Petersburg, 1841–43.

The first volume covers the period 1334–1598, the second, 1598–1613, the third, 1613–45, the fourth, 1645–76, and the fifth, 1676–1700. The collection contains valuable historical sources on social, economic, political, diplomatic, and military history and on the history of the Russian church. It reproduces treaties between the grand dukes and the independent princes of the 14th and 15th centuries, charters granted to ecclesiastical and lay feudal lords, decrees to voevodas and police officers, charters of local governments and documents on the collection of state revenues and on prospecting and exploitation of copper and silver mines in the 1660’s and 1670’s. The collection also reprints the law books of 1497 and 1550, the addenda to them of 1550–82 and 1588–97, and legislative acts of the first half of the 17th century.

There are valuable sources on the history of Novgorod (1470–71), on the exile of Prince M. I. Vorotynskii (1564–66), on the Romanovs (1601–02 and 1605), and the messages of Tsar Ivan IV to Maxim the Greek and to the Kirillo-Belozersk monastery. Some documents throw light on the colonization of Siberia in the late 16th and 17th centuries—for instance, E. P. Khabarov’s expedition to the Amur in 1649–51 and the dispatch of N. G. Spafarii’s embassy to China in 1675. The collection reprints excerpts from the investigation of the case of S. T. Razin and documents on the siege of the Solovetsk monastery in 1674 and on the uprising of the streltsy (semiprofessional musketeers) in 1682. However, the collection contains few materials on the condition of the popular masses. The Historical Acta have name and geographic indexes, compiled in St. Petersburg, 1843.