S. V. Devyatov The Moscow Kremlin as the  Residence of State Power  (from Historical Studies)

Abstract: One of the many aspects in the comprehensive scientific-historical study of the Moscow Kremlin is the history of its establishment and functioning as the Russian government’s residence. The article examines the several lines of study of the Kremlin residence in the XIX–XXth centuries. Many documental sources and historical descriptions of the Kremlin from previous centuries were published and became available to researchers during the XIXth century and created a base for the systematic research of the Kremlin history. The most significant contributions in the XIXth century to the study of the Kremlin and to the publication of its sources was made by those researchers, who by their professional positions had access to the Kremlin archives as, for example, the historian I. E. Zabelin. The Soviet period in the study of the Moscow Kremlin had its own specific particularities, most significantly, the closure to scholars of practically all archives, which is consequently reflected in the quality of the period’s scientific studies dedicated to various aspects of the history of the Moscow Kremlin. Up to today many documents of the Kremlin’s Soviet period not only are not described, but are not even registered in the archival repositories. In the conditions of the extremely difficult process of source elicitation, even incomplete and fragmentary memoir materials become the object of historiographical research. At the turn of the XXth century the process of introducing new documents on the history of the Moscow Kremlin began, which thus placed the study of the Kremlin residence on a new level.

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