Formation of encyclopedia editions system in pre-revolutionary Russia: a historical analysis

Russia occupies one of the leading places in the world encyclopedistics, being an owner of many largest encyclopedic editions whose uniqueness shows, first of all, in their pithiness and thematic variety of material. The study of encyclopedic editions which appeared in Russia in the late 18th - early 20th centuries and the systematization of the domestic encyclopedistics experience to see tendencies and prospects of its development became the purpose of the article. Interest in dictionary and encyclopedic editions is connected with acceleration of the rate of life, importance of free orientation in the accruing flow of information and acquisition of profound knowledge without which intellectual progress of the personality and society is impossible. Materials of the Russian State Historical Archive and articles of scientific, literary, social and political journals (Otechestvennyye zapiski, Russkaya mysl', Sovremennik) became the information base for the preparation of the article. The aspiration to fix a complete and urgent knowledge about the world, society and the person within one scientific and universal work, later called encyclopedias, has always existed. The beginning of the 18th century was especially significant for Russia: not only trilingual, etymological, Church Slavonic dictionaries appeared, but also the Academy dictionaries and encyclopedias which were based on the Old Russian "azbukovnik" and dictionaries were created. Leksikon Rossiyskiy istoricheskiy, geograficheskiy, politicheskiy i grazhdanskiy [Russian Historical, Geographical, Political and Civil Dictionary] became the result of all the intellectual efforts and a certain milestone of Old Russian lexicons. In the Russian state the demand for reference and encyclopedic editions increased considerably in the first half of the 19th century: there was not only an increase in book products in general, but also the growth of the quantity of reference and encyclopedic literature. These editions became a standard for domestic encyclopedistics. In the 1820s, S.I. Selivanovsky's Encyclopedic Dictionary began to be printed. In the 1830s, A.A. Plyushar's typography began to create the future Encyclopedic Lexicon which should have united all the scholarly elite of Russia. The special "encyclopedic boom" was connected with the publication of such a large encyclopedic edition as F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron's Encyclopedic Dictionary. A conclusion is made that the 18th century in Russia can be considered an era of the pledging of the basis of Russian encyclopedistics, when necessary internal prerequisites for the encyclopedic business development, combined with the impact of external factors, were created. The works of Russian scholars of the 18th-19th centuries reflect the formation of the encyclopedic paradigm as an integral part of Russian culture. This paradigm was realized in the works of scholars of the beginning of the 20th century.

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