Archival Scholarship Research Articles

The Russian State University for the Humanities: A New Home for Archival Scholarship in Russia

The Russian State University for the Humanities was founded on March 23, 1991. The Moscow State Historico-Archival Institute (MGIAI), the major archival training school for the Soviet Union, has been incorporated as the founding department of the new university. Iurii Afanas'ev, head of the MGIAI, is president of the new university, which is dedicated to the reform of the educational system in Russia. The university will be governed by an association of state, non-governmental, and international institutions. The author traces the erosion of standards for the study of the humanities after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution and explains the leadership role of MGIAI in the reform or counter-revolution which began under glasnost' and perestroika. New cooperative research projects and funding through fee-for-service educational programs for institutions, organizations, and firms are the first innovations of the new university.

No Defense: Defoe in 1703

Previously unpublished archival material and recent scholarship in legal history provide new information and allow a coherent account of Daniel Defoe's arrest, interrogations, conviction, and release for the seditious libel The Shortest Way with the Dissenters. Details about Nottingham's questioning of Defoe, the costs of the prosecution, and the final decision to send him to the pillory emerge. More significantly, it is now clear that Defoe's case came before the justices at five (not two) Old Bailey sessions, and the full records have come to light. These records and those in the Lowndes papers provide a full account of Defoe's release from Newgate Prison.

Recent Publications on Archives and Manuscript Collections in the Soviet Union: A Selective Survey

Ten years have elapsed since the publication of my general directory of archival repositories in Moscow and Leningrad and six years since its first bibliographical supplement. Space does not allow a full review here of all the finding aids and related reference literature issued in subsequent years. Yet a number of significant new publications deserve attention. A further incentive for this review is the appearance — in the western Ukrainian center of Lviv — of an extensive new directory of Soviet archives and manuscript collections. The appearance of such a long overdue, basic reference tool immediately arouses considerable interest.The publication of this volume in Lviv evokes a long and distinguished tradition of archival development and historical scholarship in Galicia. Yet the inherent problems and logistics of preparing a directory of all-union scope in Lviv might explain some of the problems of the volume, while its issue in Lviv, unfortunately, makes the volume more difficult to obtain in the West. Nevertheless, the breadth and scope of the contribution stand as a tribute to the vision and energy of the author-compilers from Lviv University, Iu. M. Grossman (Iu. M. Hrossman) and V. N. Kutik (V. N. Kutyk). A detailed review of the Lviv directory can here also draw attention to other recently published archival reference aids and recent Soviet archival developments in general background literature and bibliography and in Grossman and Kutik's coverage of specific institutions and their finding aids.