The Fond of the Russian Faculty of Law in Prague from the State Archive of the Russian Federation

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УДК 94(47)

Sergey I. Mikhalchenko,

Bryansk State University, Bryansk, Russian Federation

The Fond of the Russian Faculty of Law in Prague from the State Archive of the Russian Federation

Abstract

The article provides an overview of the fond of the Russian Faculty of Law (RFL) in Prague from the State Archive of the Russian Federation. The faculty, which in 1922-1929 functioned as a higher school, was founded by a well-known lawyer, P.I. Novgorodtsev, and operated on the pre-revolutionary Russian university statutes. There are documents on the history of the Faculty in many archives, but most are stored in the State Archive of the Russian Federation in Moscow (fond Р-5765), where they arrived in 1946 as a part of the Russian Foreign Historical Archive (RZIA) transferred as a gift from Czechoslovakia in the USSR a year before. The "Russian Faculty of Law in Prague" fond is one of two fonds covering the faculty activities. (The other one is the "Russian Student Chapter of the Faculty of Law in Prague" fond Р-5803). This fond includes 1416 items grouped in 4 series. The article reviews the more significant files of the fond. It focuses on the faculty meetings’ protocols, which allow clarify some features of its constitution as a higher education institution, and also numerous personal files of professors and faculty members, including those of famous scientists (A.A. Kizevetter, A.V. and G.V. Florovsky, I.I. Lapshin, K.A. Chkheidze, P.N. Savitsky, V.F. Totomiants, G.D. Gurvitch, E.V. Spektorsky, V.A. Makletsov, D.D. Grimm and others). Official correspondence of the faculty management is of great importance for the history of Russian higher education abroad. Although there are several essays on the Faculty history, some issues of its functioning are not quite cleared up, for instance, its work after the teaching out in 1929. There is stored in the fond a letter signed by the dean, A.A. Vilkov, and the Faculty secretary P.A. Ostroukhov and addressed to the lawyer P.A. Hesse containing detailed information on the circumstances of the faculty at the time. The author concludes that a more extensive use of the fond materials should add to studying of the higher education of the Russian emigration of the first wave.

Keywords

Archival fond, source, Russian Faculty of Law in Prague, Russian emigration, State Archive of the Russian Federation.

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References

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About the author

Mikhalchenko Sergey Ivanovich, PhD in History, professor, director of the Institute for Fundamental and Applied Research, Bryansk State I.G.Petrovsky University, Russian Federation, +7-483-258-93-39, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Grant information:

This publication prepared as a part of the Russian Foundation for Humanities (RGNF) scientific project no. 15-01-00209.

Submitted 10.02.2017, published:

MIKHAL'CHENKO, C. I. Fond Russkogo yuridicheskogo fakul'teta v Prage v Gosudarstvennom arkhive Rossiiskoi Federatsii [The fond of the Russian Faculty of Law in Prague from the State Archive of the Russian Federation. In Russ.]. IN: Vestnik arhivista / Herald of an archivist, 2017, no. 2, pp. 185-196.

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