Russian collections in the museum of russian studies of the imperial kazan university

Abstract

Copyright © 2020 by International Network Center for Fundamental and Applied Research The article reconstructs the process of forming the collection on the Ethnography of the Russian people in the Museum of Russian studies of the Imperial Kazan University. The features of the collection at different historical stages are identified, and the composition of the collections is analyzed. The authors pay special attention to the role of the individual in the acquisition of funds and determining the trajectory of development of this collection. The materials used are extracts from reports on the state and functioning of the Imperial Kazan University, the Museum archive, inventories and the exhibits of the Ethnographic Museum of Kazan University. The authors come to the conclusion that this collection was actually disconnected from the research and educational process and did not have a scientific logic of formation. The main declared task of the collections was not solved: purposeful acquisition for a full and comprehensive representation of the peoples of the Volga region. These problems are explained by the peculiarities of scientific interest of Museum directors, who did not attach much importance to the specifics of ethnographic collections, and the lack of a tradition of keeping records. The authors were able to use museum and archive sources to identify the ownership of one collection (collector – N.L. Shabelskaya), which in Soviet times was designated as "a collection of unknown origin".