The letters of a person, in which his era is reflected, are no less interesting than the letters of great figures in literature, art, science or politics. In relation to the 20th century, such representatives include Regina Mikhailovna Grinberg, head of the Ivanovo Youth Folk Theater in the 1950s—1990s, and Dmitry Aleksandrovich Krainov, Doctor of Historical Sciences, head of the Upper Volga expedition of the Institute of Archeology of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1959—1994), whose archives are kept at Ivanovo State University. The Grinberg Foundation contains several thousand letters addressed to outstanding poets and playwrights, actors and directors, theater critics and theatrical figures, art critics, public and political figures, relatives, acquaintances, and ordinary viewers. More than 800 documents of the epistolary genre are stored in the Krainov fund. Among them are messages to scientists from archeological luminaries (including academician B.A. Rybakov), employees of the Upper Volga expedition, museums and local historians. Large blocks are letters from relatives, from former prisoners of the Gulag, with whom Krainov worked together in the camp theater. Information about the letters of these prominent representatives of culture and science is introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. The results of the review of the content of the letters allow us to say that they are an important source for recreating the way the creative and scientific intelligentsia lived in the second half of the 20th century.
For citation:
Kostyleva E.L., Tochenov S.V., Chervyakov A.I. Documents of the epistolary genre in the museum and archival foundations of Ivanovo State University, Ivanovo State University Bulletin, Series: Humanities, 2022, iss. 2, pp. 102—112.