Library of the General and Main Staff and its Employees (1811—1917)

Abstract

Due to the lack of a comprehensive study of the employees of the Library of the General and Main Staff, this article is the first to provide the most comprehensive list of its leaders and library personnel and to describe them by such criteria as education, military or civilian rank, military experience, scientific publications, historical research, membership in the Imperial Russian Military Historical Society. The primary objectives of this study were: to identify the names of librarians and their assistants, to chronicle their occupation of these positions and to determine the time frame of each of them in their post. The article uses chronological, source and comparative analysis methods. For the solution of the problem we assembled a large representative source base including 68 address calendars, 22 monthly calendars, 10 yearbooks, 7 lists of books received by the Library of the General and Main Staff between 1911 and 1917, as well as pre-revolutionary publications on the history of the General Staff and its book collection.For the first time the author divides into periods the history of the Library of the General and Main Staff in pre-revolutionary period of its existence — from 1811 to 1917. The most important result of the research, new for historiography, is the full reconstruction of the list of librarians and library personnel and chronicle of their posts, which are set out in accordance with the worked out periodization. Within each of the periods, the most important events in the history of the library are indicated, which enables the contribution of librarians and librarians in its functioning and development to be evaluated.