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ArcheoBiblioBase: Archives in Russia: H-65

Last update of repository: 17 March 2020

Gosudarstvennyi muzei L.N. Tolstogo (GMT)


Otdel rukopisei
[Division of Manuscripts]

Telephone: +7 495 637-75-18

Website: https://tolstoymuseum.ru/about/our-fu...

Opening hours: Tu–Th 11:00–17:00

Head: Svetlana Dmitrievna Novikova (tel. +7 495 637-75-18)


Holdings

Total: over 300,000 units; late 18th–21st cc.
L.N. Tolstoi fond—71,492 units; personal fonds—74; photographs—ca. 26,000 units

The Manuscript Division is the central repository for all Tolstoi’s literary manuscripts, his personal papers, and other materials relating to him and his family. The division is the center for all research and publication work on documents pertaining to L.N. Tolstoi. The writer’s fond contains works of both a literary and theoretical nature together with diaries, notebooks, drawings, posters, sheet music, and numerous inscriptions and dedications in the writer’s own hand on separate sheets, on photographs, on postcards and in books and magazines. There are also books containing marginal notes written by Tolstoi and various materials relating to his biography and his daily life. A large part of the fond consists of letters written to Tolstoi (approximately 50,000) including letters in twenty-six languages (approximately 9,000). The fond also contains police and censorship material from various official departments.
        There are also personal fonds of members of Tolstoi’s family (his wife S.A. Tolstaia; children S.L. Tolstoi, T.L. Sukhotina, I.L. Tolstoi, and L.L. Tolstoi); relatives (T.A. Kuz'minskaia, A.I. Tolstaia-Popova, and S.A. Tolstaia-Esenina); friends and acquaintances (V.G. Chertkov, N.N. Gusev, V.F. Bulgakov, and D.P. Makovitskii); followers of Tolstoi’s teaching (R.A. Butkevich, V.A. Molochnikov, and L.D. Semenov-Tian-Shanskii); members of Tolstoi’s agricultural communes; and literary critics (N.N. Ardens, V.A. Zhdanov, and E.E. Zaidenshnur). There is also a special family fond containing documents relating to Tolstoi’s ancestors, parents, brothers, and sisters.
        The museum holds books containing marginal notes or annotations written by Tolstoi, and books and photographs autographed by him, or with dedicatory inscriptions. There are also drawings by Tolstoi, manuscripts by various writers with his editorial corrections, and recollections of Tolstoi by his contemporaries.
        There are a number of the fonds of official and public organizations that are connected with the writer. These include records of the Moscow Tolstoi Society (Tolstovskoe obshchestvo v Moskve), the editors of the complete works of Tolstoi in ninety volumes (Jubilee Edition), the former Tolstoi Museum in St. Petersburg. Also held here are the administrative records of the museum from the time of its establishment.
        Photographs housed in the museum show the writer at different stages of his life, together with various other prominent figures from his cultural circle, such as I.S. Turgenev, A.P. Chekhov, and V.G. Chertkov, and with the peasants at Iasnaia Poliana (website: https://tolstoymuseum.ru/about/our-fu...).
        The museum also holds a collection of graphics (over 7,000 units). This collection includes portraits of Tolstoi and his friends and acquaintances, illustrations for his works, and other drawings, graphics, and water-colors relating to Tolstoi by I.E. Repin, N.N. Ge, V.I. Surikov, M.V. Nesterov, E.E. Lansere, L.O. Pasternak among others (website: https://tolstoymuseum.ru/about/our-fu...).


Working conditions:
Researchers in the reading room of the museum are normally permitted to use only photocopies of Tolstoi manuscripts. Inventories and other finding aids for manuscript materials are not normally available to researchers who are not involved with publication projects of the museum.

Reference facilities:
The internal reference system maintains a general alphabetic catalogue of all fonds. There are also individual alphabetic catalogues for each fond, subject catalogues for the L.N. Tolstoi fond (arranged systematically according to subject, chronology, topography, and genre of literary production, and with a separate catalogue covering Tolstoi’s diaries and notebooks); catalogues of the writer—™s letters (arranged alphabetically and chronologically); catalogues of the letters written to Tolstoi (arranged alphabetically, according to Russian and foreign correspondents, and chronologically); an alphabetic catalogue of the letters written on Tolstoi’s instructions;catalogues of memoirs and recollections of the writer and documents relating to his life and work (arranged geographically and also by memorial dates [1908, 1910] and so forth); and also inventory registers and opisi of documents.

Copy facilities:
Xerox copies can be ordered, but restrictions apply, particularly to otherwise unpublished materials.


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