‘Big Encyclopedia’ is a universal book, which was widely popular in Russia in the late 19th — early 20th centuries. It was published by the St. Petersburg book-publishing association ‘Prosveshchenie’ [‘Enlightenment’] together with the Bibliographic Institute, located in Leipzig and Vienna. The institute published Meyer’s Dictionary, one of the main German encyclopedias, which served as a model for Sergei Yuzhakov’s dictionary.
The encyclopedia from the collection of the museum is an abridged Russian translation of the fifth edition of Mayer’s dictionary, which is supplemented by numerous original articles on Russian history, culture, social sciences and law. “Big Encyclopedia” is considered to be the only Russian encyclopedic publication in many volumes produced under one chief editor, Sergey Yuzhakov, a well-known sociologist and publicist. His works were published in such magazines as “Otechestvennye zapiski” [“Patriotic Notes”], “Vestnik Evropy” [“Herald of Europe”] and “Russkaya Mysl” [“Russian Thought”], and was close to the underground movement.
Among the authors who prepared materials for the Russian edition were many representatives of liberal professorship, scientists, and public figures. Each thematic section was supervised by the best experts in their field. For example, the department of Old Russian literature was headed by Alexander Borozdin, the author of the famous monograph on Protopope Avvakum, and the linguistic department — by the linguist and literary scholar Dmitry Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky. Yuzhakov edited the sociological materials.
Texts for the encyclopedia were also written by the academician and linguist Alexey Shakhmatov, historians Mikhail Rostovtsev and Evgeny Tarle, politician Pavel Milyukov, writers Vladimir Korolenko and Alexander Kuprin. Sergey Yuzhakov was responsible for all translations of the German dictionary materials into Russian, as well as the overall preparation of the publication. This distinguishes the “Big Encyclopedia” from other similar multi-volume dictionaries, which were edited, as a rule, by a whole team of professionals.
Attention is also paid to the high typographic quality of the publication. It includes about 10 thousand illustrations in the text and another thousand illustrations in the appendix — lithographs, maps, plans and engravings.
The encyclopedia from the collection of the museum is an abridged Russian translation of the fifth edition of Mayer’s dictionary, which is supplemented by numerous original articles on Russian history, culture, social sciences and law. “Big Encyclopedia” is considered to be the only Russian encyclopedic publication in many volumes produced under one chief editor, Sergey Yuzhakov, a well-known sociologist and publicist. His works were published in such magazines as “Otechestvennye zapiski” [“Patriotic Notes”], “Vestnik Evropy” [“Herald of Europe”] and “Russkaya Mysl” [“Russian Thought”], and was close to the underground movement.
Among the authors who prepared materials for the Russian edition were many representatives of liberal professorship, scientists, and public figures. Each thematic section was supervised by the best experts in their field. For example, the department of Old Russian literature was headed by Alexander Borozdin, the author of the famous monograph on Protopope Avvakum, and the linguistic department — by the linguist and literary scholar Dmitry Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky. Yuzhakov edited the sociological materials.
Texts for the encyclopedia were also written by the academician and linguist Alexey Shakhmatov, historians Mikhail Rostovtsev and Evgeny Tarle, politician Pavel Milyukov, writers Vladimir Korolenko and Alexander Kuprin. Sergey Yuzhakov was responsible for all translations of the German dictionary materials into Russian, as well as the overall preparation of the publication. This distinguishes the “Big Encyclopedia” from other similar multi-volume dictionaries, which were edited, as a rule, by a whole team of professionals.
Attention is also paid to the high typographic quality of the publication. It includes about 10 thousand illustrations in the text and another thousand illustrations in the appendix — lithographs, maps, plans and engravings.
