As we expand our special series on libraries and archives to highlight collections that are easily accessible from the UK or online, Peripheral Histories? editor Hanna Matt spoke to Dr Yuexin Rachel Lin about the Leeds Russian Archive (LRA). The archive is one of the Special Collections at Leeds University’s Brotherton Library. It received Designation status in 2005 from the UK Arts Council, which recognises its holdings as being of international significance. Read on to learn more about the collection, which includes not only a wide range of documents, but fascinating material objects.
How did you get to your current position? What was your journey into working in libraries and archives?
I am one of the lecturers in International History at the University of Leeds and therefore not an archivist, strictly speaking! However, I have worked closely with Richard Davies, Archivist of the Leeds Russian Archive since its creation in 1982. Richard received an MBE in 2003 for services to Anglo-Russian scholarship and has been instrumental both in furthering my own research and in introducing students to the LRA’s rich holdings. My work centres on the Russian refugee crisis after the October Revolution, so emigre materials are especially important. I also teach a research-intensive undergraduate module on the Russian Civil War and supervise related dissertations, so am always on the lookout for English-language sources on Russian history.
Which of the LRA's collections or resources are consulted most frequently by researchers?
The LRA’s crown jewels are probably the literary collections relating to Russia’s emigre authors from the Silver Age. Chief among these are the personal books and papers of Ivan Bunin — the first Russian writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature — which were donated to the LRA in 1983, as well as of Leonid Andreev and his sons, Vadim and Daniil. There are also smaller collections of material from Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva, Aleksei Remizov, Aleksei Tolstoi, Kornei Chukovskii and others, as well as the papers of translators and champions of Russian literaturein the UK such as Elizaveta Fen and David Magarshack. These archives have been used extensively by researchers working on the literary emigration and literary translation, including scholars and institutions in Russia that have reintegrated these writers into the cultural canon. Another significant personal archive is that of railway engineer Iurii Lomonosov, whose pre-1917 career spanned the breadth of the Russian empire from Kyiv to the Chinese Eastern Railway in Manchuria. He was also heavily involved in post-revolutionary railway diplomacy in the USA and Germany, and designed the first mainline diesel locomotive. The LRA holds a large collection of his memoirs, diaries, photographs and papers, which formed the backbone of Anthony Heywood’s biography Engineer of Revolutionary Russia (2010).
Iurii Lomonosov delivering an impromptu lecture in Velikie Luki, 1913. LRA/MS 716/736.
Image credit: Leeds University Library.
For my own research, I have consulted the LRA’s extensive collection of materials from Zemgor, the amalgamation of the Union of Zemstvos and Union of Towns that began life by assisting in the tsarist war effort in WWI and ended up ministering to the welfare needs of Russian refugees after the end of the Civil War. The LRA holds administrative documents, correspondence with the League of Nations, fund-raising campaigns, reports of socio-cultural activities, personal letters, photographs, postcards and ephemera stretching into the 1970s. The archive also possesses important emigre journals and the confidential papers of Vasilii Maklakov, the last pre-October Russian ambassador to France and, subsequently, key advocate for the refugee community in Paris and beyond. These and other individual emigre archives in the LRA are important resources for scholars of refugeedom, humanitarianism and the emergence of Russia Abroad.
In addition, a large proportion of the LRA’s holdings comprises collections relating to various aspects of Anglo-Russian relations, from diplomatic correspondence and military manuals to material objects owned by members of the British community in Russia – including families that moved to Russia to participate in economic modernisation – and memoirs by British governesses. Some of these go as far back as the 17th and 18th centuries.. More recent highlights include official papers, photographs, diaries, letters and personal recollections from British soldiers and diplomats who were involved in the intervention during the Civil War, although a greater quantity of such material can be found in the Liddle Collection, also at the University of Leeds. There are also collections from British relief workers who organised humanitarian assistance to Russia in WWI and during the 1921-1922 famine, and to refugees after the Civil War.
Bilingual Chinese-Russian text on extraterritoriality in China, based on a law introduced by the Chinese Ministry of Justice on 5 August 1918. LRA Zemgor Collection 136.
Image credit: Yuexin Rachel Lin, taken 20 July 2023.
Are there any hidden gems in the collections? What has rarely or never by used by researchers?
Apart from the rich seam of Zemgor material, researchers interested in humanitarian aid may wish to look into the personal archive of Muriel Paget, who was involved in a dizzying range of relief activities both before and after 1917, in the metropole and the Russian imperial peripheries. Her work encompassed the establishment of the Anglo-Russian Hospital in 1915, the provision of medical aid and food relief in the Baltics and Eastern Europe in the 1920s, famine relief in Russia in 1921-1922 and care for British subjects unable to leave Soviet Russia in the 1930s. The LRA has boxes upon boxes of documents relating to Paget and her initiatives, many of which have not been fully explored.
Imperial visit to the Anglo-Russian Hospital, Grand Duke Dmitrii Palace, Petrograd, May 1916. Empress Alexandra is seated in the middle of the second row, with Lady Muriel Paget to her right. LRA/MS 781/6. Image credit: Leeds University Library, Caught in the Russian Revolution: The British Community in Petrograd, 1917-1918
Histories of Russian, Soviet and Eastern European scholarship in Britain could also be written based on the LRA’s collections of material from the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies and its predecessor organisations, the Study Group on the Russian Revolution, the Association of Teachers of Russian, and the correspondence of John Simmons, pioneering Slavonic librarian at the Bodleian in Oxford.
Speaking personally, some of the material objects held by the LRA have been especially exciting for my research and teaching. I am still mystified by a collection of slightly creepy dolls, wrapped in tissue paper, that I uncovered in the personal archive of Eric Hayes, who served in the Siberian Intervention and was briefly imprisoned. My students particularly enjoyed a hands-on session with Soviet revolutionary ceramics, a very impressive grant of nobility to George Baird by Alexander II and Ivan Bunin’s Nobel Prize certificate and medal.
Dolls from the Eric Charles Hayes collection. LRA/MS 783/56.
Image credit: Yuexin Rachel Lin, taken 7 September 2023.
Does the LRA have any digital collections?
Only the pre-digital print catalogues of the Andreev, Bunin, Lomonosov and Zemgor collections have been digitised, not the full contents of any LRA collections. In 2017 the LRA commemorated the centenary of 1917 with an exhibition titled Caught in the Russian Revolution: The British Community in Petrograd, 1917-1918. The exhibition catalogue is available in PDF format and can be obtained by contacting the LRA.
What are the main challenges of managing the archive?
Maintaining an archive is no easy task and there is always ongoing cataloguing or organisational work to be done. It can be tricky to find volunteers with not only a strong grasp of Russian, but also the fortitude to read Russian handwriting. From a lecturer’s perspective, one main challenge is to accommodate a student’s interest in Russian history while taking into account their language skills. This often involves getting students to use English-language material creatively or to explore visual sources, which can be intimidating.
Does the archive engage in any public outreach activities (for example, exhibitions, work with educational or other public institutions, or organise public-facing events)?
The LRA’s Bunin holdings have proved the most fruitful in terms of public outreach, especially in Russia. Scanned material from the collection was displayed at an exhibition at the House of Russia Abroad in Moscow in 2020 to mark the 150th anniversary of the writer’s birth. It has also been extensively used in a hefty volume published in the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Literaturnoe Nasledstvo (Literary Heritage) series. Another instalment in the series is planned for Bunin’s wife, Vera Muromsteva-Bunina, whose archive is also held by the LRA. In addition, LRA material has been used in public exhibitions at Leeds University, including the aforementioned Caught in the Russian Revolution.
Ivan Bunin’s Nobel Prize for Literature certificate. LRA/MS 1066/1349a-1349b.
Image credit: Leeds University Library.
Is there anything you wish more people knew about the LRA?
The sheer volume and breadth of material at the LRA is truly remarkable! It is also complemented by other parts of the Brotherton Library’s Special Collections, such as the Liddle Collection on the First and Second World Wars, the Arthur Ransome Archive and the Alf Mattison Collection. As mentioned above, parts of the Liddle Collection involve materials from the British intervention in the Russian Civil War. Ransome (1884-1967), better known for his series of children’s books Swallows and Amazons, was a newspaper correspondent in Russia during the 1917 revolutions and Civil War, married Trotsky’s personal secretary, and was briefly involved in British intelligence. Mattison (1868-1944) was a British socialist and therefore part of a movement deeply interested in Soviet Russia. Taken together, these collections capture multiple facets of the British perspective on the early Soviet period.
Further information:
PDF catalogues are also available for several of the collections:
Yuexin Rachel Lin is a Lecturer in International History at the University of Leeds. Her research interests centre on the Russian Civil War on the Sino-Russian frontier, specifically its humanitarian impact on the Chinese diaspora and Russian refugees. She maintains an online repository of Chinese-language sources on the Russian Revolution, Shots Across the Amur that is currently on hiatus.