From the history of the Russian Archaeological Institute in Constantinople

Abstract

The article traces the fate and provides a brief overview of the 20-year (1894–1914) activities of the Russian Archaeological Institute in Constantinople (RAIС), the first Russian institution in humanities abroad set by the joint efforts of Russian scholars and diplomats. Actually it was on the institute’s crucial work on the study of the history and artifacts of the Byzantine Empire and the countries under its influence that the Institute did contribute strengthening Russia’s cultural influence in the Balkans. In recent years, amid rising interest in the fate of the institute, new archival materials have been introduced into research, e.g. a collection of squeezes, which had been uncovered in the collection of raw documents of the St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences. New archival data reveal more about the collection of copies of Greek inscriptions in the RAIC and the acquisition of Codex Purpureus Petropolitanus, show the role of the director of the Institute, F. I. Uspensky and tell in detail about the plans for the restoration of the RAIC during the Soviet period. A note by academician N. Ya. Marr on the history of the Institute dated from the end of 1926 is published in the appendix.