Russian Imperial Materials
In the years following the Russian Revolution, the Soviet government seized a significant portion of the personal wealth and palace property belonging to the Romanov dynasty. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the government, driven by both ideology and financial necessity, sold off much of the confiscated wealth and property. Notably, key dealers in these transactions, namely Israel Perstein (1897-1975), Hans P Kraus (1907-1988), and Simeon Akimovich Bolan (1896-1972), were all based in New York City. During this period, the New York Public Library emerged as one of the few institutional buyers of nationalized books and manuscripts from Russian Imperial collections. In 1931, the Library made a substantial acquisition, purchasing the majority of the private library of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich (1847–1909), the uncle of the last Tsar. This acquisition marked the Library's single largest procurement of Russian books and photographic materials with Imperial family provenance. Although the majority of these acquisitions occurred before World War II, as recently as 2005, the NYPL continued to expand its collection, acquiring thirty-three items associated with the Romanov imperial legacy. To date, more than 600 titles from the Library's collections can be traced back to an indisputable Imperial provenance.
For more information on the NYPL's Russian Imperial collections see the following materials
- Davis, Robert H. compl. A Dark Mirror: Romanov and Imperial Palace Library Materials in the Holdings of the New York Public Library: A Checklist and Agenda for Research. With a preface by Marc Raeff, and an introduction by Robert H. Davis, Jr. and Edward Kasinec (New York: Norman Ross Pub., 1999).
- Davis, Robert H. Jr., and Edward Kasinec. "Russkaia akvarel' v N'iu-Iorke." Nashe nasledie (Moscow) 6, (1989): 40-41.
- Kasinec, Edward. “Al’bomy est’ zerkalo dushi: o novoi kollektsii Konstantinovichei v N’iu-Iorkskoi publichnoi biblioteke.“ Russkoe iskusstvo 3 (2006): 60-69.
- ----------. "Kak knigi russkikh imperatorov popali v Ameriku", Novyi zhurnal no. 216 (1999): [262]-269.
- ----------. “Kollektsiia Konstantinovichei v Niu-Iorkskoi publichnoi biblioteke.” In Kniazhna Vera Konstantinovna: k 100-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia, edited by M.V. Sidorova, [113]-125. Sankt-Peterburg: Izd-vo “Petronii”, 2007.
- ----------. "Russian imperial and elite provenance books: their afterlife in post World War II New York", Solanus, New Series 20 (2006): [36]-45.
- ---------- and Robert H. Davis, "Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich (1847-1909) and His Library", Journal of the History of Collections 2:2 (1990): 135-142.
- ---------- and Elena Kagan. "Albums are the Mirror of the Soul": on the Konstantinoviches Collection at the New York Public Library", Russian Fine Art no. 3 (2007): 40-49.
- ----------, ----------, and Hee-Gwone Yoo, “Familnaia kollektsiia Konstantinovichei.” Bibliografiia no. 5 (2006): 138-149.
- ---------- and Richard Wortman. “The Mythology of Empire: Imperial Russian Coronation Albums” Biblion 1:1 (Fall 1992): 77-100.
- Pavlova, Germaine. "The Fate of the Russian Imperial Libraries", Bulletin of Research in the Humanities 87:4 (1986-1987): 358-403. [In HathiTrust]
