Acta of the Archeographic Expedition

Acta of the Archeographic Expedition 

or Acta Collected in Libraries and Archives of the Russian Empire by the Archeographic Expedition of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, a four-volume collection of documents on the history of Russia published by the archeographic commission, St. Petersburg, 1836–38.

The first volume covers the period 1294–1598; the second, 1598–1613; the third, 1613–45; and the fourth volume, 1645–1700. The documents of the Archeographic Expedition contain a large number of sources on the social and economic history of Russia: documents on the collection of state revenue, the search for fugitive peasants, and government ordinances of 1601, 1602, and 1606 on the right of peasants to transfer from one landlord to another. The collection also contains sources on political, military, and church history; letters of the Polish queen Helena to her father, Grand Duke Ivan III, and to her mother and brothers; Ivan Ill’s reply (1503); excerpts from the investigation of I. Bersen-Beklimishev (1525); and the decision of 1550 granting land to 1,000 noblemen in the Moscow vicinity. There are also documents on the election of B. Godunov as tsar, on the struggle against the Polish and Swedish interventions in the early 17th century, on the Smolensk war (1632–34), the wars with Poland between 1654 and 1667, the construction of fortifications on the southern border of the Muscovite state (1637–38), on the church schism, and others. Acta of the Archeographic Expedition is much weaker in presenting sources about popular uprisings. There are just a few documents on the peasant wars under the leadership of I. I. Bolotnikov and S. T. Razin, on the Solovetsk uprising of 1668–76, and on the Moscow uprisings of 1682 and 1698.

V. I. BUGANOV