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Publication: Journals of the Hermitage Council's
Meetings With this book, the State Hermitage Museum inaugurates the Pages of the Hermitage History series of publications put out by the Museum with the support of Interros Holding Company. The first book of the series is dedicated to the publication of the journals of meetings of the Hermitage Council, the special administrative body created in 1917 as a reaction to the downfall of the country's administrative system. Formerly an autonomous department of the Ministry of Imperial Court, the museum after the Bolshevik coup was left to the mercy of fate and had to organize a new system of self-government which as time showed proved to be fairly efficient. The museum's archive contains a unique document of the transitory period of general decline and gradual revival of the state in its Soviet guise, a detailed chronicle of events taking place in the museum and outside it which were put down with disinterested punctuality in the minutes of the museum's collegiate administrative body, the Hermitage Council. These documents spanning the period from 1917 to 1926 shed light on many momentous events in the history of both the Hermitage and the entire country. Two books of the journals of the Hermitage Council's meetings will give the historian and anyone interested in this tumultuous and pivotal epoch of Russian history a unique chance to explore these important sources of miscellaneous information. This publication is unprecedented due to its size, exhaustive coverage and quality of the materials. The book includes Forewords written by the Hermitage Director Mikhail B. Piotrovsky and Galina I. Kachalina, Director of the Hermitage Archive, Journals of the Hermitage Council's Meetings of 1917 (2 meetings), 1918 (59 meetings) and 1919 (52 meetings) and comments which give biographic information on the people who took part in the meetings or are mentioned in the minutes (Galina I. Kachalina, Yelizaveta M. Yakovleva, Yelena Yu. Solomakha, Vadim Yu. Zuyev, Ph.D., History). The book includes portraits of participants of the Council's meetings. Most of the portraits were drawn during the meetings by the museum's senior custodians Ernst K. Lipgart and Alexander N. Benoist. These materials make up the first part of the publication. 1000 copies of the book are printed by the Nauka Academic Printing House. Publishers are now working at the second part of the book which will include the journals of the Hermitage Council's meetings from 1920 to 1926. |
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Copyright © 2011 State Hermitage Museum |
