Pushkin House: A place where Russian literature lives

Temperature at 18 degrees Celsius, humidity 55%, in a windowless room, so that no sunlight can penetrate and folder covers made of cardboard with neutral pH acidity.

In such special conditions the greatest literary treasures of Russia have been carefully preserved. For 120 years of its existence, the Pushkin House has accepted into its collection more than 700,000 original manuscripts and funds of more than 950 writers, critics, literary critics, as well as the archives of journals from the 19th and 20th centuries, collections of individual autographs and archival materials of artists, musicians, artists, teachers, as well as Church figures.

“The main mission of the Pushkin House is to collect, store, study and publish monuments of Russian literature, from its oral forms (folklore) and Old Russian literature to the present day,” says Lyubov Gerashko, Scientific Secretary of the Manuscript Department. 

“In particular, the Pushkin House is widely known for publishing complete academic collections of works by Russian classical writers: Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Goncharov, Dostoevsky, Nekrasov, Turgenev and others,” she adds.

All of them, as well as other studies and volumes, can be found on their website. 

History of the Pushkin House

The official name of this scientific institution is the Institute of Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences. But, more often, it is called by its first and original name, the Pushkin House. Because, it was Alexander Pushkin and his legacy that launched the history of this institute. 

In 1899, an exhibition dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Pushkin's birth opened in St. Petersburg in the building of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Its most important part were autographs, that is, authentic manuscripts written personally by the author's hand. 

Six years later, the Academy of Sciences decided to create the Pushkin House, where Pushkin's legacy would be collected and stored. December 15, 1905, is celebrated as its birthday.

Without exaggeration, Pushkin is the main name in Russian literature. And not only because he wrote many outstanding poems and prose works, excelling in many themes and

different genres. But also because it was Pushkin who essentially created the modern Russian literary language. He combined the low colloquial speech with the high pathetic style and gave it a place in writing. 

In 1906, the House received its first archive, which was 3,500 volumes of Pushkin's personal library. It was purchased at the state expense from the poet's grandson. 

By the beginning of the 20th century, Pushkin's authentic manuscripts had been scattered in several museums and libraries and large collections were also held in private collections. In bits and pieces, the House began collecting materials related to the name of the poet. And after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, it had to literally save them.

Today, 98% of all known manuscripts of Pushkin are being kept in the Pushkin House in St. Petersburg. These are 1,777 units of storage, which make up 14,500 pages. Drafts and manuscripts of poems and prose works, letters, diaries, drawings. The originals are only given out for viewing in exceptional cases, first of all, for the research work of textual scientists. For everyone else, there are certified copies, which are available in museums and other institutions throughout the country. 

What else is stored in the Pushkin House?

By 1917, the Pushkin House already had a large museum and manuscript collection. After the revolution, it was rapidly enriched with the archives of museums and institutions that were forced to close down, as well as with manuscripts and family heirlooms of those who were leaving Russia.

The Pushkin House staff were assigned to travel to the provinces, in order to save priceless monuments of national culture, mainly concentrated in abandoned noble estates, which were in danger of being destroyed.

Now, a significant part of manuscripts and funds of all Russian classic literature is kept there. This includes old-printed monuments, including Old Believers' handwritten books found in the Russian North. Among them, for example, is a unique collection of autographs of the elder Epiphanius and Archpriest Avvakum, who can be considered Russia’s first writer.

The pride of the Pushkin House is its Phonogram Archive, which contains tens of thousands of sound recordings made during folklore and linguistic expeditions by Russian scientists since the 1890s.

Since 1927, the Pushkin House has been located in the building of the old St. Petersburg Sea Customs House. Initially, the book depository was placed in a safe room with 1.5-meter thick walls, wrought iron doors and bolt shutters. And, by the 200th anniversary of Pushkin in 1999, a separate building was built especially for manuscript storage.

The ground floor of the Pushkin House accommodates a unique library with books from the personal collections of famous writers, scientists and bibliophiles. Climbing the wide staircase to the first floor, you will get to the Literary Museum, where personal belongings, portraits and other memorabilia related to writers are kept. All this together, the manuscripts, books and museum exhibits, makes up the Pushkin House, which is defined in its charter as “the pantheon of Russian literature dedicated to the memory of the greatest Russian poet”.

Originals & forgeries

The staff of the Pushkin House not only watch over the preservation of manuscripts, but also study in detail everything related to works of literature and biographies of writers. It was there that Pushkin studies and the study of Old Russian literature were born. 

The institution's researchers study original manuscripts and reconstruct the creative history of a work. By checking the color of ink, they can even determine when this or that edit was made. 

Over the years of the Pushkin House's existence, there have been amazing cases when skillful forgeries claimed to be authentic and misled even the most experienced specialists.

Vladimir Turchanenko, one of the curators of the Pushkin Manuscript Fund, notes that it is important to distinguish fakes from incorrect attribution, as the latter can lead to erroneous conclusions. 

Turchanenko recalls the case of a letter written in French and signed “Pushkin”: “Some authoritative scholars – I should note that they are not specialists in Pushkin's textology – came to the conclusion that this is Pushkin's autograph.” As a result, the letter was bought and placed in the collection.

Nevertheless, as Turchanenko tells us, Lev Modzalevsky, the first scholarly curator of the fund, managed to prove that the letter belonged not to Alexander Pushkin, but to Count Musin-Pushkin-Bruce, a Freemason and diplomat.

“At the same time, the letter was removed from the number of autographs of Alexander Pushkin and placed in the pseudo-Pushkiniana collection,” he adds.

However, Pushkin did not avoid deliberate forgeries. Thus, according to the curators, a high-profile story happened in the mid-20th century, when the Pushkin House acquired a volume of Walter Scott's ‘Ivanhoe’ with notes allegedly written by Pushkin's hand, including a gift inscription and drawings, from a Moscow pensioner named Antonin Ramensky.

Several well respected experts confirmed the authenticity of the find and, for almost 30 years, the book was kept among the poet's autographs. However, the fake was eventually exposed by Tatyana Krasnoborodko, the current scientific curator of the collection.

Another important part of the Pushkin House staff's work is the compilation of textual and historical-literary commentaries on the texts. Given the size of the collection, such work continues today and makes it possible to find previously unknown allusions and hidden meanings in the texts of the classics.

So, the Pushkin House is not just an archive. It is a place where the very heart of Russian literature and its invaluable history are kept, open for study by new generations of researchers and readers.

‘Gateway to Russia’ is grateful to the Pushkin House for its help in preparing this article.