It was 25 March 1839 when one of the first historical societies in Russia was created in Odessa under the name of the Society for History and Antiquities, under patronage of M. S. Vorontsov, the governor of New Russia and Bessarabia. Among the organizers were the warden of the Odessa educational district Dmitriy Maksimovich Knyazhevich, Aleksandr Skarlatovich Sturdza, Andrey Yakovlevich Fabr, Mikhail Mikhaylovich Kir’yakov, professor of Richelieu Lyceum Nikolay Nikiforovich Murzakevich, and others. M. S. Vorontsov became the Society honorary president and D. M. Knyazhevich became its president.

Emperor Nicholas I’s decree of 14 November 1839 made Grand Prince and heir Alexander Nikolayevich the august patron of the Society. The same decree ordered annual allotment of 5,000 rubles in paper money from the state treasury for the Society’s needs. The Society was also granted the right to make archaeological investigations in the whole South Russia: in the state lands upon the permission from local administration, in the private upon the consent of the owners.

The Society’s aims were put as follows:: …a) to collect, describe and store all remains of antiquity which are discovered in South Russia or have connection to it;
b) to do searching, analyzing and interpretation of documents and acts concerning the history of the aforementioned country;
c) to make critical examination of the information from the ancient authors about these regions and their attractions, and to find their present sites;
d) to prepare supplies for future history of the country by means of collecting true facts about its present state in regard to geography and statistics;
e) to investigate studiess that have the same topic and are published in Russian and foreign languages and to discover the state of their credibility;
f) to publish the results of the above works by means of printing them for the public view.*

The Society assembled a large museum collection soon after due to the excavations, donations and purchasing; its growth became especially quick after the Most High order of 1847 for the Ministry of State Property to send antiquities, which did not go to depositories in St. Petersburg, to the museum of the Society. In 1858, museum of the Society was united with the Odessa Municipal Museum of Antiquities, which was established in 1825 by I. A. Stempkovskiy and I. P. Blaramberg. A large and valuable library was gradually collected in the Society in the same way.

Among the members of the Odessa Society for History and Antiquities there were well-known scholars whose works made important contributions to domestic science. The role plaid by Odessa as a centre of archaeology in South Russia rose since the foundation of the New Russia (Odessa) University (in 1865). The University’s scholars F. K. Brun, V. N. Yurgevich, N. I. Kondakov, P. V. Bekker, A. I. Markevich, F. I. Uspenskiy, E. R. Shtern and others took active part in the work of the Society and contributed to the museum development.

During the period of its work, the Society has collected enormous material on the north Black Sea archaeology, which made the museum widely known in Russia and beyond its frontiers. From 1844 to 1919 it issued 33 volumes of Zapiski Odesskogo obshchestva istorii i drevnostey (Proceedings of the Odessa Society for History and Antiquities), which contained articles in archaeology and history, published documents and archaeological sites, informed about the results of field researches. Every volume has appendix of transactions of the Society’s meetings containing important information about the type of the collections and isolated finds acquired by the museum. Apart from the Proceedings, the Society printed three volumes of a catalogue of ancient terracottas in the museum collection and ceramic wares from Feodosiya, a description of Oriental coins, antique maps and plans that were stored in the museum.

From the first days of its existence onwards, the Society paid especial attention to the Tauric peninsula both because it had been a separate independent kingdom shortly before and because it had been the place, most known by the ancient writers,and more than the other places preserved monuments worthy of investigation.

Publishing the editions by the Odessa Society for History and Antiquities in the Internet, we will contribute to preservation and spreading of the heritage from this in all respects outstanding organization. Thus the present students of the Crimea, who prepared this digital collection, will pay their most respectful tribute to services of their predecessors in the field.

Volume 1 (1844)				Volume 2 (1848)				Volume 3 (1853)
Volume 4 (1860)				Volume 5 (1863)				Volume 6 (1867)
Volume 7 (1868)				Volume 8 (1872)				Volume 9 (1875)
Volume 10 (1877)				Volume 11 (1879)				Volume 12 (1881)
Volume 13 (1883)				Volume 14 (1888)				Volume 15 (1889)
Volume 16 (1893)				Volume 17 (1894)				Volume 18 (1895)
Volume 19 (1896)				Volume 20 (1897)				Volume 21 (1898)
Volume 22 (1900)				Volume 23 (1901)				Volume 24 (1902)
Volume 25 (1904)				Volume 26 (1906)				Volume 27 (1907)
Volume 28 (1910)				Volume 29 (1911)				Volume 30 (1912)
Volume 31 (1913)				Valume 32 (1915)				Volume 33 (1916)