Rare Editions of N. M. Karamzin’s Works in Novosibirsk Libraries

Abstract

Lifetime and rare editions of works of great writers, researchers, public figures are of special cultural and historical value and enjoy the increased attention of the keepers of book collections and visitors of book museum exhibitions. The purpose of this article is to introduce into scientific circulation the rare copies of domestic and foreign editions of works of the historian and writer N. M. Karamzin (1766 – 1826), stored in the Novosibirsk State Regional Scientific Library (NSRSL) and the State Public Scientific and Technological Library of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SPSTL SB RAS). Among them are books from the library of the Kolyvan-Voskresensk mining plants, including those received there from personal collections of mining engineers, copies of the journal “Vestnik Evropy” for 1802-1803 from the collection of V. S. Mikhalkov, a volume of “History of the Russian State” used in one of the oldest educational institutions in Russia – the Smolensk Boys’ Gymnasium, a volume of a lifetime edition of the “History of the Russian State”, which belonged to the historian, archaeographer P. M. Stroev, the compiler of the “Key, or alphabetical index to the “History of the Russian State” by N. M. Karamzin”.Special attention should be paid to the first complete Russian-language edition of “On Ancient and New Russia in its Political and Civil Relations”, written in 1811, addressed directly to Emperor Alexander I and for censorship reasons first published only abroad, in Berlin, in 1861. A copy from the Department of Rare Books and manuscripts of the State Public Scientific Library of SB RAS is unique in that it contains proofreading notes of the historian A. N. Pypin. Relying on this copy of the Berlin edition of N. M. Karamzin’s work and consulting the handwritten copies of it which were at his disposal, he prepared the first complete publication of the text of this manifesto of Russian conservatism in Russia in 1900 as an appendix to his monograph “Social Movement in Russia under Alexander I”. A careful study of valuable publications from the collections of Novosibirsk libraries deepens our knowledge about the book culture of Siberia and, more broadly, about the history of Russian-language book culture, about the history of the formation of Novosibirsk book collections, demonstrates the continuity of these collections in relation to the outstanding book collections of the past.