Documents from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI) on A.D. Rotnitsky, Oldest Employee of the Literary Fund of the USSR

УДК 94(47)+930.253

DOI 10.28995/2073-0101-2017-4-284-296

Antipina V. A.

Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI), Moscow, Russian Federation

Documents from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI) on A.D. Rotnitsky, Oldest Employee of the Literary Fund of the USSR

Abstract

Ariy Davidovich Rotnitskiy (1885–1982) was a public figure and a longtime employee of the Literary Fund. The Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI) stores documents associated with his name. Among most important of those are two albums autographed by 146 participants of the I All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers. Documents of the Literary Fund (fond 1566) reflect the main activities of A. D. Rotnitskiy: identification of the sick and elderly writers’ needs and planning effective measures to help them; organization of writers’ funerals, reburials, perpetuation of their memory and preservation of their graves. They also provide data on everyday life of Soviet writers, which is not to be found in other sources. Rotnitsky's correspondence with writers pertaining to work and personal matters is poorly deposited in the collections of the RGALI: it is fragmented and scattered in different fonds. The best preserved part of his correspondence is that with M. V. and L. A. Yamshikova; it allows to flesh out details of the writers’ life and A. D. Rotnitsky’s professional activities. There are materials on the Moscow Society of Theatre Writers and Composers (1904-1930), an organization dealing with copyright protection and performances royalties; the All-Russian Society of Theatre Writers and Composers (1929-1933), an association concerned with creative process and copyright protection; the Directorate for Copyright Protection under the Organizational Committee of the Soviet Union of Writers (1933–1973), an organization collecting royalties for usage rights to art pieces and author's fees (from 1934 under the Soviet Union of Writers, in 1938 renamed the All-Union Organization for Copyright Protection).

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Keywords

Archive, source, history of everyday life, history of Russian literature, literary process, Union of Soviet Writers, I All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, Literary Fund of the USSR, A.D. Rotnitsky.

References

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About author

Antipina Valentina Alekseevna, PhD in History, Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, deputy head of department, Russian Federation, Moscow, +7-926-387-49-61, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Submitted 18.02.2017, published:

ANTIPINA, V. A. Dokumenty RGALI o stareishem rabotnike Literaturnogo fonda SSSR A. D. Rotnitskom [Documents from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI) on A.D. Rotnitsky, oldest employee of the Literary Fund of the USSR]. IN: Vestnik arhivista – Herald of an Archivist, 2017, no. 4, pp. 284-296.