Tavriia Learned Archival Commission

Tavriia Learned Archival Commission [Таврійська учена архівна комісія; Tavriiska uchena arkhivna komisiia]. A gubernial archival commission established in 1887 in Simferopol to collect, study, and preserve historical and archeographic documentary materials and to protect monuments of antiquity in Tavriia gubernia. The commission’s permanent chairman was A. Markevich. Among its approximately 300 members were prominent scholars, such as Vasilii Gorodtsov, Ahatanhel Krymsky, Yulian Kulakovsky, and Nikolai Veselovsky. The commission conducted archeological excavations in the Crimea and the Black Sea littoral region, established the Simferopol Museum of Antiquities (1887), and published 57 volumes (1887–1920) of its Russian-language serial Izvestiia Tavricheskoi uchenoi arkhivnoi komissii, which contained the texts of almost all the 419 lectures delivered at its 260 meetings. In 1920 the commission’s valuable historical archive (10,000 items) was transferred to the Crimean Central Archive (later the Crimea Oblast State Archive). In 1921 its museum holdings became part of the Tavrida Central Museum (now the Crimean Regional Studies Museum) in Simferopol, and the Russian Commissariat of Education took over its functions regarding the protection of monuments. In 1923 the commission was transformed into the Tavriia Historical, Archeological, and Ethnographic Society, under which name it published three additional volumes of Izvestiia (1927–9). In 1929 the society ceased to exist. P. Nikolsky’s detailed description of the senate files in its archive was published in 1917.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]