COLLECTING BY THE ETHNOGRAPHIC SECTION OF THE STATE INSTITUTE OF MUSICAL SCIENCE (1921–1931)

The article is based on materials from the Sector of Documents and Personal Archives Department of the Russian National Museum of Music (Moscow). The author carried out a review of the collecting activities of the Ethnographic Section of the State Institute of Musical Science, one of the largest scientific institutions in Russia in the post-October period. The most important types of this work are described, including: the receipt of material in stationary conditions; attracting outside organizations and individual collectors from the periphery; and making expeditions. The article describes the Section’s links with other organizations and individual researchers and outlines the various goals of its folklore expeditions.
The author assesses the activity of the Ethnographic Section, which has declared itself a fullfledged unit, capable of leading the country in collecting and studying musical folklore. The Section has covered a wide range of diverse stylistic traditions, brought together a large number of specialists to collect material, and created a large collection of phonograms. For the first time, the question of creating a centralized repository of sound recordings was raised, which ultimately led to the creation of the State Phonogram Archive of the USSR Academy of Sciences. These activities were complemented by scientific research: the study of literature, manuscripts, archival materials, pre-revolutionary phonogram collections and their cataloging.