Frank A. Golder: Collector Extraordinaire and Cultural Liaison in Revolutionary Russia

Abstract

On the centennial of the Russian Revolution, the article recounts the remarkable experiences of an American eyewitness to the Revolution: historian Frank A. Golder (1877–1929). Golder is best remembered today as the man responsible for amassing the extraordinary Russia and East European collections housed at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives at Stanford University. He was in St. Petersburg in 1914 when Russia entered the Great War; he was in Petrograd in 1917 when the February Revolution brought an end to the Romanov dynasty; he was in Soviet Russia in 1921– 1923 as a famine relief worker, a collector of books, periodicals, and manuscripts, and a political observer of Lenin's government; and he was in the Soviet Union for extended visits in 1925 and 1927, recording the changes in Soviet society after Lenin. Golder kept a detailed diary and was a prolific correspondent and thus left behind extensive documentation of his Russian sojourns. These record his personal efforts to reestablish Russian-American cultural ties suspended during Russia's time of troubles, to serve as a link and a lifeline. The article describes Golder's connections to artists and intellectuals in the Russian capitals and focuses on two cultural institutions: the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Rumiantsev Museum Library (today the Russian State Library) in Moscow.

Keywords

• golder
• hoover
• rumiantsev
• stanford
• ara
• shchukin
• vladimirov
• benois
• oldenburg
• vinogradov