Archeographic Fieldwork on Study the Old Believers Culture and Heritage in USSR (1940–90s)

The archaeographic discoveries in the Siberia, Ural and in the Central part of Russia have made the significant public reaction in the Soviet Union. The field archaeographic expeditions, where not only the book culture but the traditional values of the Old Believers were studied, played the important role in the 1960–1980-ies in activity of Soviet archeographers. The key role in collection of the Old Believers' cultural heritage belonged to the Institute of Russian Literature at AS of the USSR. As a result from numerous field expeditions, the Antiquarium of Pushkin House has become one of the authoritative centers for concentration and study of manuscript artifacts for Old Russian and Old Believers' antiquity.The employees at Library of Academy of Sciences in the USSR made more than 60 archaeographic expeditions to Karelia, Arkhanhelsk, Volohda, Kirov regions, the Baltic states and Ukraine, as a result of which eight territorial collections were created, almost two thousands of handwritten books, as well as more than one thousand of the first printed books were collected. The scientists from M.V. Lomonosov MSU have not only developed the special methodology for description of early printed books that allowed mostly fully revealing the information opportunities of a specimen as a historical source, detailing and applying the methodology of complex expeditions in practice but making the breakthrough in study of notes in sheets of early printed books. I.V.In the 90-ies of XX century the expeditionary work of Russian archaeographers has become much more complicated since the number of ancient books and manuscripts has decreased among the Old Believers, the travel and other expenses on expeditions have sharply increased, and the financing of field trips has decreased. In the early 2000-ies the tasks of field archeography have largely exhausted themselves. A large-scale digitization of the manuscripts that are stored in Russian state scientific and university centers has begun. In general, in the 30–90-ies of XX century the archaeographers have collected more than 25 thousands manuscripts and printed editions of the XIV – early XX centuries in the USSR and Russia.