Abstract

While organizing All-Russian Archaeological Congresses, Chairman of the Moscow Archaeological Society Count A.S. Uvarov entered into a complicated bureaucratic relationship with the Ministry of Public Instruction, which was reflected in the business correspondence between him and officials. Textual analysis of Uvarov’s letters to D.A. Tolstoy and B.A. Perovsky allows us to reconstruct his dialogue with the authorities and to consider some aspects of the history of organization of a new form of scientific cooperation, Archaeological Congresses, which subsequently became a permanent institution that united Russian scholars in the study of monuments of the past. The Congresses held between 1869 and 1914 were the institution that introduced the initial forms of organization of the scientific and historical community and gave an impetus to the development and differentiation of historical science. The process of the organization of the Archaeological Congresses was complicated and rather long. It took about five years from taking the decision to convene a Congress of Russian archaeologists to the grand opening of the first forum. The research on archival documents allows us not only to introduce new sources and to complement the history of the Moscow Archaeological Society, but also to explain why such a long period of preparation of the first Congress was needed. Thanks to the use of a communicative approach to A.S. Uvarov’s correspondence with government representatives, the focus of studies of the history of scientific communities is shifted to consideration and analysis of the nature of contacts and interaction between people who represented these communities. The main aim of the article is to reveal the role of the leading personality in the process of formation of professional identity and institutional structure of scientific communities at different levels, as well as to evaluate the cognitive possibilities of the communicative approach to the study of scientific communities in post-reform Russia. Communicative approach, aimed at comprehension of forms, content and development of public communication, contributed to the study of a man of science, his everyday world, private forms of communication, emerging intellectual networks and ties between scholars.