Materials for Studying Traditional Karelian Culture in the Collection of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera) of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Collections and Collectors

Abstract

The Kunstkamera, founded by Peter the Great as a collection of various rarities in St. Petersburg in 1714, over the time acquired rich collections of ethnographic materials from different parts of the world and became the largest depository of artifacts of traditional cultures of the peoples of Russia. This article examines the history of some of the most important collections of ethnographic materials of the Karelians of the Olonets and Tver regions and of the Russians from the territory of the modern Republic of Karelia and Tver oblast. Most of these materials were gathered at the beginning of the 20th century by the professional photographers M. A. Krukovsky and A. A. Belikov, as well as by some littleknown local historians, such as D. T. Yanovich and M. V. Mikhailovskaya. One of the main objectives of this research was to collect biographical data about these people and to study their activities as collectors of the ethnographic materials preserved in the Kunstkamera collections. These collections contain materials pertaining to everyday life and folk art that reflect changes in the mainly rural folk culture of the Karelians and Russians. The collections can be used for studying these cultural changes and for reconstructing some issues of the past.