Archives of Prince F. A. Kurakin

Archives of Prince F. A. Kurakin

 

documents from the family archives of the Kurakin princes, well-known Russian diplomats and major landowners in the 17th and 18th centuries. Published in ten volumes (1890–1902) under the editorship of N. I. Semevskii and V. N. Smol’ianinov.

The archive contains valuable sources on the history of the foreign policy and social development of Russia: Diary and Travel Notes of Prince B. I. Kurakin (book 1) and his Diplomatic Memoirs (books 2–6, 8); and Memoirs of Travels to Holland and England (1770–72) of A. B. Kurakin and others, as well as the vast business correspondence (books 3, 5–8, 10; with la. V. Brius, A. D. Menshikov, P. P. Shafirov, and others). The documents of this archive were also published in the collections The Eighteenth Century (vols. 1–2, 1904–05) and The Nineteenth Century (vol. 1, 1903). The unpublished part of the archive contains materials on the peasants’ and landholders’ economy in the 18th century, on class struggle, and so on. The Kurakin princes’ archives are kept at the State History Museum, the Yaroslavl Oblast Archive, the manuscript section of the V. I. Lenin State Library, and the Leningrad Division of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.