When Jean-Paul Marat was sitting in the bath reading the latest issue of the newspaper "Friend of the People", which he published, Charlotte Corday stabbed him to death. The revolutionary's blood splattered on the newspaper. Many years later, the owner of this issue was the Parisian antiquarian F.-N. Thibault, known among bibliophiles as "Papa France". He tried to instill in his son Anatole a love for books, for printed publications. Having received a copy of the" Friend of the People " with Marat's blood as a gift from his father, young Thibault (later - writer Anatole France) decided to publish it phototypically in order to preserve the color of this collection. The publication took place in the amount of 50 copies, each of which - a small booklet with dark spots on the pages-is of exceptional value both as the rarest publication undertaken by the writer and as a reproduction of the historical issue of the newspaper 1 . But even such a remarkable publication was only an ordinary one among other exhibits of the Leningrad Museum of Paleography, so valuable, diverse and extensive are its collections, collected by the long-term works of an outstanding scientist of the Academy. Nikolai Petrovich Likhachev (1862-1936). The core of the museum was the Likhachev family library, which was collected by members of this family for three centuries. The earliest owner's inscription on one of the books was made in 1612.2 In the Likhachev house near Chistopol, Kazan province, in addition to books, paintings, engravings, antique porcelain, weapons and even a collection of smoking pipes were carefully preserved. Bibliophile traditions early influenced the formation of the spiritual image of N. P. Likhachev. Later, the hedgehog recalled: "An unusually strong, all-eclipsing love for books began at the age of eight (at the age of thirteen, he already tried to make catalogs); in the 4th grade of the gymnasium, he delved into numismatics, and in the 5th grade, the task for life was determined-the study of history." 3 After graduating from high school, he entered the Faculty of History and Philology of Kazan University. While studying there, his interests did not change. "Disgust-

1 P. N. Berkov. About people and books, Moscow, 1965, pp. 96-97.

2 N. P. Likhachev. Genealogical history of a landowner's library, St. Petersburg, 1913, p. 20.

3 Leningrad Branch of the Archive of the USSR Academy of Sciences (hereinafter referred to as the LOA), f. 246, op. 2, 12.

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a passion for administrative work, a cold-blooded attitude to teaching, and an all-consuming passion for archival and desk research" - this is how he assessed his inclinations in 1884, after graduating from the university .4
When Likhachev and his family moved to St. Petersburg, he turned his house on Petrozavodskaya Street, N 7 (now the Leningrad Branch of the Institute of Soviet History of the USSR Academy of Sciences is located here) into a museum. A historian by training, the owner of the museum became the largest specialist in Russia in the field of auxiliary historical disciplines, and with equal success and dedication he was engaged in research on archeography, numismatics, paleography, sphragistics, iconography, as well as collecting coins, seals, icons and written monuments. In his investigations, he showed amazing energy and perseverance. It combined an interest in different eras, countries, and cities with a desire for a complete selection of different types of sources. Likhachev was characterized by the" nose " of an antique dealer, the ability to accurately distinguish originals from fakes and copies developed by vast experience and the deepest knowledge. He was not deterred even by financial difficulties, and, in addition to his own fortune, he spent two other inheritances on collections .5
About the creation, for example, of his collection of ancient Russian and Byzantine seals, he described as follows:: "I bought everything that was found in Novgorod, Pskov, Kiev. I also knew about everything that was slipping out of my hands. This is in Russia. While abroad, I gradually acquired the collections of Fotians Pasha, Fresnier, and Schlumberger himself, looked through the collections of the British Museum, the National Library, the Athenian Museum, and the Archaeological Museum in Constantinople, and whenever possible bought everything that came to market from the antiquaries of Paris, Constantinople, Vienna, and Venice. Only the Sorlin-Dorigny collection did not fall into my hands and remained inaccessible. " 6 Although Likhachev's unique "Sphragistic Album", in which 1265 prints are reproduced, has not yet been published, the high scientific level of the album, thoroughness and completeness of the collection description allow Likhachev to be considered the founder of Russian sphragistics as a scientific discipline. 7
In 1913, Likhachev transferred his largest collection, the iconographic one, in the amount of 1,497 items to the Russian Museum, since the historical and archaeological materials he collected had already filled all three floors of the house and there was not enough space to accommodate new arrivals. What was there just not there! Babylonian clay tablets and ancient Chinese inscriptions on bone, early Arabic papyri from Egypt and Palmyra tesserae( tablets with signs), tombstones of the first centuries of Islam and Syrian manuscripts, cuneiform writing created over three millennia, stones with hieroglyphs from Egypt, Elam and Cappadocia, monuments of Greek, Latin, Kufic, Hebrew, Samaritan, Old Armenian, Old Abyssinian, Old Persian letters.

The history of the document is one of the most important areas of scientific activity of Likhachev. In its collection of printed and handwritten documents there are orders of popes and cardinals of the XIV-XIX centuries, personal funds of P. I. Bagration, G. A. Potemkin, T. G. Shevchenko and D. N. Bantysh-Kamensky, autographs of the kings of England, France, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, Austria and Poland, letters of the Huguenot leader Admiral G. de Coligny, Cardinal Richelieu, and the famous thinkers of F. де Ларошфуко, Ж. -Ж. Rousseau and Erasmus of Rotterdam, flying editions of the French bourgeois Revolution of the late eighteenth century (5,073 copies), pamphlets of the Fronde era directed against Cardinal Mazarin ("Mazarinades" - 1,600 titles), documents from the archives of the Russian Senate and a number of Russian monasteries, publications of provincial archival commissions and other institutions, materials on the history of Voronezh, Vyatka, Arkhangelsk, Tula, Shuya, Ryazan, Nizhny Novgorod, many of which are missing even in the library of the Archeographic Commission.

The numismatic collection consisted of coins of Ancient Greece and Rome, a number of eastern states, England, France, Sweden, Poland, Russia, etc., with a total of

4 Ibid.

5 I. Y. Krachkovsky. On Arabic Manuscripts, Moscow, 1945, p. 104.

6 State Historical Museum, Department of Written Sources, A.V. Oreshnikov Foundation, letter from N. P. Likhachev dated September 13, 1931.

7 E. I. Kamentseva, N. V. Ustyugov. Russkaya sfragistika i geraldika [Russian sphragistics and Heraldry], Moscow, 1974, pp. 28-30. Likhachev N. P. " Encyclopedic dictionary... Garnet". Ed. 7-E. T. 27, stb. 263-264.

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8. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR O. A. Dobiash-Rozhdestvenskaya considered that the Western fund of the Museum of Paleography (CBM) in the USSR is "absolutely the most valuable collection 1) as a museum for studying the history of books and documents, 2) as a laboratory for scientific research of the most important problems of book and documentary "matter and form" and the skill of the human hand behind them in one of its most complex manifestations." She admired the fact that "starting from the VIII century and up to the new time (XVIII century), the Municipal Unitary Enterprise has a series of thousands of monuments, which in their combination have no price. They are interesting from a wide variety of points of view. " 9 But the subject of Likhachev's special pride was the library, which in the 1930s numbered 80 thousand volumes. Her books, journals, manuscripts, and herself in general have been the subject of special study. Following its history, he tried to summarize his thoughts on bibliophilism, observations on other book lovers and the fate of their collections in the work "Genealogical history of a landowner's library"10 . Its author (this is one of his individual traits) saw in the love of books something hereditary, as if transmitted from fathers to children and inherent (here he was mistaken) exclusively in ancient cultured intelligent families. The preserved family libraries brought Likhachev literally to the touch, and he tried in every possible way to contribute to their preservation .11
After the Great October Revolution, Likhachev joined the ranks of the progressive intelligentsia who sided with the Soviet government, and his museum "as containing particularly important scientific collections, a library, and an archive on history and archeology" was taken under state protection [12] and transferred to the Archaeological Institute [13], then to Petrograd University. one generation of future historians 14 . Of great scientific and pedagogical significance was the processing of Cremona's collection of letters dated 986 - 122715 by a group of students . Likhachev himself took part in the work. For many of the participants in this work (V. V. Bakhtin, V. S. Lyublinsky, E. Ch. Skrzhinskaya, etc.) it was then that their scientific biography began. The head of the group, O. A. Dobiash-Rozhdestvenskaya, rightly wrote that "without this training, all those diplomatic and paleographic studies that later emerged from the ranks of young people who received authentic experience at the museum's charters would have been impossible." 16
Since during the years of the civil war and post-war devastation, due to the cold and damp, Likhachev's collections suffered (especially leather book bindings, clay tablets and paintings), on November 8, 1924, their owner invited a number of scientists to a meeting, among them P. V. Ernstedt, V. K. Shileyko, A. N. Rimsky-Korsakov, V. V. Shileyko, and others. V. Maikov, V. V. Bakhtin and others 17 . The audience came to the conclusion that it is possible to preserve priceless collections only if the museum is transferred to such a more powerful scientific organization as the Academy of Sciences. August 1, 1925 resolution of the General Assembly of the USSR Academy of Sciences Palaeographic Cabinet of N. P. Likhachev (as it was officially called) it was attached to the Academy of Sciences and named the Museum of Paleography 18 . This happened three months after Likhachev was elected a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. "Great erudition, strict critical methods, extreme, sometimes even excessive caution of conclusions-these are the usual characteristics of N. P. Likhachev's historical research. In them, aspiring scientists can see a model of what is called scientific integrity and accuracy, " 19-this is how his new colleagues described his work. Soon he became the director of Municipal Unitary Enterprise 20 .

Transfer of the museum to the Academy of Sciences

8 "Museum of Paleography", L. 1925; "Collection of N. P. Likhachev". Historical essay and review of the collections of the Manuscript Department of the Library of the Academy of Sciences. Issue II. M.-L. 1958; "Guidebook to the archive of the Leningrad branch of the Institute of History". M.-L. 1958; LOA, ff. 246, 217.

9 Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public Library, Department of Rare Books and Manuscripts (hereinafter referred to as GPB), f. 254, 30, l.1.

10 P. N. Berkov. Russkie knigolyuby [Russian Book Lovers], Moscow, l. 1967, pp. 267-274.

11 For example, he purchased the Revyakin family library (F. Shilov. Notes of an old Knizhnik, Moscow, 1965, pp. 95-96).

12 LOA, f. 217, op. 1, d. 3, l. 10.

13 Ibid., l. 1.

14 Ibid., l. 20.

15 "Acts of Cremona of the X-XII centuries in the collection of the USSR Academy of Sciences", Moscow, 1937.

16 GPB, f. 254, d. 28, ll. 1-2.

17 LOA, f. 217, op. 1, d. 3, L. I.

18 Ibid., 4, l. 39.

19 "Notes on the scientific works of N. P. Likhachev". Izvestia of the USSR Academy of Sciences, series VI, vol. XIX, 1925, No. 18, pp. 844-815.

20 LOA, f. 217, op. 1, d. 4, l. 57.

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I strengthened its position, made it easier to resolve economic and financial issues, and improved the library's staffing. Jokers said that in the Municipal Unitary Enterprise - only two employees: the director and the cleaner. In fact, there was also Z. N. Shamonina on the staff, who was engaged in the description and systematization of documents of medieval Europe, which required knowledge of Western European, Latin and Greek languages combined with erudition in the field of paleography .21 The placement of exhibits was unusual: each department of the museum consisted of three parts: an exhibition of samples in showcases; originals stored in cabinets and cardboard boxes; a collection of books, brochures, periodicals and albums illustrating the corresponding groups of originals. This made it possible to study historical epochs and phenomena in many ways, which corresponded to the principle of maximum completeness of sources, their mutual verification, comparison and addition (in this principle Likhachev saw one of the ways to know historical truth 22). The living rooms of the museum did not differ much from the exhibition rooms. Museum value was not only the exhibits, but also the vast majority of things that were in the house: furniture, mirrors, chandeliers, clocks, kitchen utensils, washbasins. So, when during the inventory of 1930, the inventory included an icon that was in Likhachev's bedroom - a family heirloom, the examination found that this Byzantine icon of the XIII-XIV centuries. there is an "exceptional, outstanding monument" 23 .

Likhachev's scientific activity at the Municipal Unitary Enterprise was very energetic. Along with completing his earlier research on Russian sphragistics and Byzantine sigillography, he studied the history of autographs and facsimiles, exagia (interpretation of ancient monuments of the word), cases of falsification of documents , 24 and paid attention to a unique collection in the Municipal Unitary Enterprise library, which contained "many curious, strange and scary stories about how the love of books turned into a love of books for some people". bibliophiles in the indomitable passion for acquiring books, as this passion drove them to complete ruin, theft, fraud, embezzlement, change of religion, and finally to murder " 25 . Such prominent scientists as P. V. Ernstedt, V. V. Struve, V. K. Shileyko, V. N. Beneshevich, as well as beginning and then still young researchers Yu. Ya. Perepelkin, P. N. Berkov, A. P. Riftin, V. S. Lublinsky, and V. V. Bakhtin constantly worked at the museum. In 1927, nine scientific studies were carried out based on the materials of the Municipal Unitary Enterprise alone .26
The doors of the museum were open to all comers. I. E. Grabar, S. D. Balukhaty, I. Y. Krachkovsky, A. E. Fersman, G. F. Tsereteli, B. L. Modzalevsky, M. V. Alpatov, M. N. Kufaev, A. I. Malein, B. Ya. Vladimirtsov, scientists from the USA, England, France, Poland,Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia. The Municipal Unitary Enterprise was visited by writers who created historical novels and novellas, including A. N. Tolstoy, 27 who tried to describe in his "Peter the Great" with maximum accuracy the details of ancient life , furniture, clothing, even the most insignificant ones, down to the buttons on the tsar's caftan. 28 It is interesting that after the publication of this novel, Likhachev sent Tolstoy a letter in which, pointing out certain inaccuracies of a private nature, he noted his knowledge of the material .29
With special goodwill, Likhachev received excursion groups of workers from Leningrad printing houses at the museum, for whom, at their request, exhibitions on the history of bindings were organized in the Municipal Unitary Enterprise, and work was carried out on exhibitions on the history of typeface and calligraphy .30 Collections were replenished mainly through the purchase of printed materials. Among the old Leningrad second-hand booksellers and antique dealers, the director of the museum was a respected guest, and many rare and valuable books migrated to the famous checkered backpack, with which his owner made his "trips" to bookstores and to visit P. N. Martynov, F. G. Shilov, P. P. Shibanov, A. S. Molchanov, S. A. Lvov, P. A. Kartavov 31 . Very considerable funds were spent on the purchase of books, 32 and famously-

21 Ibid., 18, ll. 97, 107.

22 N. P. Likhachev. From lectures on diplomacy, St. Petersburg, 1905-1906, pp. 12-13.

23 LOA, f. 217, op. 1, d. 33, ll. 6-7.

24 Ibid., dd. 9, 12, 18.

25 P. N. Berkov. On people and books, p. 114.

26 LOA, f. 217, op. 1, d. 8, l. 139.

27 Ibid., 6.

28 "Memoirs of A. N. Tolstoy", Moscow, 1973, pp. 211-213.

29 LOA, f. 246, op. 3, d. 292, l. 1.

30 Ibid., f. 217, op. 1, d. 9, l. 41.

31 P. N. Martynov. Half a century in the world of books, L. 1969.

32 LOA, f. 217, op. 1, d. 8.

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Chev never pitied his own people when they ran out of money. In addition, the CBM used the services of large international bookselling firms .33 And in general, the museum's relations with other institutions, including scientific ones, were mainly in the book sphere. Thus, in 1927, 495 copies of Mazarinade were sent to the Marx and Engels Institute from the doublet fund, and in the cover letter Likhachev indicated that he could send another 156 copies .34 During the first five-year plan, an important restructuring of the activity of the USSR Academy of Sciences began, aimed at increasing the role of science, expanding scientific research in all branches of knowledge, and introducing scientific achievements into practice as soon as possible. In the course of perestroika, the structure of the Academy's institutions was also reviewed, the obsolete ones were abolished and the remaining ones were enlarged. Acting Director of the Municipal Unitary Enterprise acad. S. F. Oldenburg proposed in the spring of 1930 to create on the basis of the Municipal Unitary Enterprise a Museum of Books, Documents and Letters with the addition of exhibits from the Library of the Academy of Sciences (BAN), the Asian Museum and the Archeographic Commission, so that it could be both a research institution and a museum of All-Union significance, combining activities theoretical, educational and pedagogical aspects 35 . And in September 1930, the Museum of Paleography was reorganized into the Museum of Books, Documents and Letters .36 Its director was Academician A. S. Orlov, who attracted A. G. Fomin, A. I. Malein, Yu. Ya. Perepelkin, P. N. Berkov, S. A. Anninsky, B. M. Kochakov, and A. Ya. Borisov to permanent work at the museum. A prominent place in the activities of the Museum (since 1931 - the Institute) was occupied by the book study theme: "A comprehensive study of the book, its elements and homogeneous phenomena as a product of social relations and an instrument of social and class struggle" 37 .

As parallel research in auxiliary historical disciplines was steadily expanding, in 1935 the Institute was transformed into the sector of auxiliary historical disciplines of the then newly established Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences. 38 The collections of the former Museum of Paleography, which no longer had a place in the Institute of History, have dispersed. The main part of the Municipal Unitary Enterprise's library was transferred to the Institute of History; literature on book studies, the history of books and printing formed the Library Science Office of the BAN; the State Hermitage Museum received coins, seals, and jewelry that still bear the tag "From the collection of N. P. Likhachev"; the Russian Museum houses an iconographic collection.

The works of Academician N. P. Likhachev preserved priceless cultural treasures for science. He was not only a scientist 39 . His name is on a par with the names of such Russian collectors as N. P. Rumyantsev, A. A. Bakhrushin, P. M. Tretyakov, A.D. Chertkov, whose collections have become the most important part of the state art funds of the USSR.

33 Ibid., dd. 8, 13.

34 Ibid., 8, ll. 145-148.

35 Ibid., d. 24, ll. 29, 35.

36 "Bulletin" of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1931, N 3, p. 43.

37 "Proceedings" of the Museum of Books, Documents and Letters. Vol. 1. l. 1931, p. 1.

38 "Bulletin" of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1936, N I, pp. 97-98.

39 See his works: "Rank Clerks of the XVI century" (St. Petersburg, 1888);" Paper and the oldest paper mills in the Moscow State "(St. Petersburg, 1891);" Library and Archive of the Moscow Sovereigns of the XVI century "(St. Petersburg, 1894);" Paleographic significance of paper Watermarks " (Ch. 1-3). St. Petersburg, 1899; "From Lectures on sphragistics", St. Petersburg, 1899; "The oldest Sphragistics", St. Petersburg, 1906; "Materials for the History of Russian Iconography", St. Petersburg, 1906; "Andrey Rublev's Writing Style", St. Petersburg, 1907; " Historical significance of Italo-Greek Iconography". St. Petersburg, 1911; "Materials for the history of Byzantine and Russian sphragistics". L. 1928, as well as his publications: "Local affairs of 1563-1605". St. Petersburg, 1894; "Boyar list of 1611". St. Petersburg, 1895; "Collection of acts collected in archives and libraries". St. Petersburg. 1895, et al.

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