Archaeographic Expeditions

The Archaeographic Commission (Археографическая комиссия) was set up in St. Petersburg in 1834 by Platon Shirinsky-Shikhmatov, Nikolay Ustryalov, and Pavel Stroyev with the aim of publishing historical and ethnographic materials assembled by Stroyev and others in the provinces of

Imperial Russia The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the List of Russian monarchs, Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended th ...

. The commission was affiliated with the imperial ministry of education and was modeled on an earlier commission based in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

. Its first major enterprise was the Complete Collection of Russian Chronicles, published from 1841 onward. Regional archaeographical commissions were established in

Kiev Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the List of European cities by populat ...

Vilna Vilnius ( , ; see also other names) is the capital and largest city of Lithuania, with a population of 592,389 (according to the state register) or 625,107 (according to the municipality of Vilnius). The population of Vilnius's functional u ...

, and

Tiflis Tbilisi ( ; ka, თბილისი ), in some languages still known by its pre-1936 name Tiflis ( ), is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Kura River with a population of approximately 1.5 million pe ...

. The commission spearheaded efforts to obtain foreign sources on Russian history and sent its emissaries in search of Russia-related documents to the major archives of Europe. After Shirinsky-Shikhmatov the commission's presidents included Avraam Norov (1850–69),

Vladimir Titov Vladimir Georgiyevich Titov (russian: Владимир Георгиевич Титов; born 1 January 1947 in Sretensk, Zabaykalsky Krai, Russia) is a retired Russian Air Force Colonel and former cosmonaut. He has participated in four spaceflig ...

(1871–91), Sergei Platonov (1918–29), Nikolay Likhachov (1929), and

Mikhail Pokrovsky Mikhail Nikolayevich Pokrovsky (russian: Михаи́л Никола́евич Покро́вский; – April 10, 1932) was a Russian Marxist historian, Bolshevik revolutionary and a public and political figure. One of the earliest professio ...

(1930–32). In the 20th century the institution went through several reorganizations and name changes (it was known as the ''Historical-Archaeographic Institute'' and the ''Historical-Archaeographic Commission of the Soviet Academy of Sciences''). The modern archaeographic commission was founded in 1956 by Mikhail Tikhomirov as a branch of the Academy's history department. {{Authority control Palaeography Learned societies of Russia Archives in Russia Russian studies 1834 establishments in the Russian Empire