How a group of books gave birth to a discipline: Guidebooks, excursions and literary kraevedenie in early twentieth-century Petersburg

Throughout the 1990s, Russian publishing houses have been regularly reprinting old guidebooks, excursion primers, and other descriptions of St. Petersburg. Works originally written, in some cases, as early as the eighteenth century have suddenly reappeared in editions of fifty or even a hundred thousand copies. Although foreigners occasionally purchase these volumes, most readers appear to be Russian: the books are not available in translation and generally do not contain lavish illustrations.;This dissertation attempts to explain the current fashion for republishing old descriptions of Petersburg by looking at both the books themselves and the role that they have historically played in Russian culture. Discussion focuses on the first thirty years of the twentieth century, a period in which a real renaissance took place in the study of St. Petersburg. Chapter One examines the phenomenon of republication itself, advancing the idea that the descriptions now appearing represent a kind of "canon." They served as the foundation texts for several small early twentieth-century movements, all of which ultimately coalesced to form the modern discipline of Petersburg studies (peterburgskoe kraevedenie). Chapter Two briefly discusses the guidebooks to St. Petersburg written in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Chapter Three looks at the World of Art movement, one of the first groups to argue for renewed study of Russia's northern capital at the turn of the century. Chapter Four examines post-revolutionary efforts to study and preserve the landscape of "old Petersburg." Chapter Five looks at the excursion movement from its origin in the pedagogical experiments of the turn of the century to the great age of the Petrograd Excursion Institute. Chapter Six discusses excursion primers, the special guidebooks created to assist young pedagogues interested in using the excursion technique. Chapter Seven describes the kraevedenie (regional studies) movement of the 1920s. Chapter Eight looks at a number of books that are typically classified by Russian researchers as works of literary kraevedenie , including works by N. P. Antsiferov and E. Gollerbakh.