Scientists from SPbPU and the University of Konstanz completed the project "Peter Struve and His Library at Polytechnic University

Researchers at Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University and the University of Konstanz (Germany) have completed a joint project to collect and analyze materials related to the life and work of Peter Struve, outstanding public and political figure, economist, historian, philosopher, and editor of numerous literary and political publications.

Peter STRUVE showed himself most vividly in Russia and Germany. He is associated with the Polytechnic University not only through years of scientific and teaching activities - in 1919, his personal library was transferred to the university. Since then, about 8 thousand volumes with unique inscriptions are stored in the library fund of the university.

The project, in which researchers from SPbPU and the University of Konstanz took part, was financially supported by a CCP Synergy grant from the Institute for International Relations (Germany) and was aimed at the book and bibliographic preparation of historical and philological analysis of materials related to Peter Struve, based on the collections of the repositories of the two universities. Scientists conducted extensive work on research and digitization of materials from the libraries of the Russian and German universities. The result was creation of a digital platform, which comprised selected resources from archives, collections, websites, and other sources about the life and work of Peter STRUVE. The launch of the online resource was timed to coincide with the 150th anniversary of his birth. 

As one of the ideologists of the project notes, Director of Center of Information Library Systems of the SPbPU Information and Library Complex Natalia SOKOLOVA, the project’s tasks included selecting the most important items for digitization and making them available to a wide audience. “In the future, on the created Internet platform we plan to build unified access to a variety of materials related to the life and work of Peter Berngardovich STRUVE, who was a real man of the world. Peter STRUVE lived in many countries, but the contribution he made to the development of cultural and social life in Russia and Germany is especially significant. One of our tasks is to preserve and transmit unique collections, books, inscriptions, and manuscripts to the next generations, to make these materials available for study and further research,” commented Natalia SOKOLOVA.

The project dedicated to the prominent public figure Peter Struve is not the only study that St. Petersburg Polytechnic together with German universities has launched to integrate the information and library complex in the global digital space of science, education, and culture. For example, in partnership with the Leibniz University of Hannover, SPbPU is implementing a project to create networks of linked scientific data based on university repository collections. The possibility to conduct this kind of research is another example of established partnerships and productive international cooperation of Polytechnic University with universities, organizations, and companies in Germany.

Prepared by the SPbPU International Office

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Work on the project “Peter Struve and His Library at Polytechnic University” was carried out during the year 2020. Despite the coronavirus pandemic, which significantly affected the progress of the work, the research was completed on time. From the side of SPbPU, the working group included Alexander PLEMNEC, director of the Information and Library Systems Center of the Information and Library Complex, Natalia SOKOLOVA, curator of the rare book fund, Nina SURATOVA, head of the Information and Library Complex Department, and Roman PANOV, head of the SPbPU History Museum. Maria ZHUKOVA, a researcher at the Center for Cultural Studies (ZKF), and Innokenty URUPIN, a researcher at the Department of Slavic Studies, took part in the project on behalf of Konstanz University.