Moscow Society of History and Russian Antiquities

the first Russian historical society for the study and publication of documents on Russian history. The society was founded at Moscow University in 1804. Its members included Moscow University instructors as well as historians, archivists, and experts in the study of early texts, including N. M. Karamzin, N. N. Bantysh-Kamenskii, A. F. Malinovskii, K. F. Kalaidovich, and A. I. Musin-Pushkin.

The society’s activities became more diversified after the Patriotic War of 1812. Its greatest period of research and publication of historical documents, such as chronicles and ancient acts, occurred in the 1840’s, when the society was headed, successively, by O. M. Bodianskii, I. D. Beliaev, A. N. Popov, and E. V. Barsov.

In the 19th century and early 20th, the society brought together many Russian historians, scholars in the study of early texts, and collectors of manuscripts. Its publications included Zapiski i Trudy (Notes and Works), Russkii istoricheskii sbomik (Russian Historical Collection), and Chteniia MOIDR (Readings of the Moscow Society of History and Russian Antiquities), in which were published an enormous number of diverse source materials, as well as research on Russian history. The society’s archives of manuscript documents, mainly on 17th- and 18th-century Russia, are kept in the Manuscript Division of the V. I. Lenin State Library of the USSR. In 1929, the society was officially disbanded.