Commissions for correction of liturgical books and Synodal printing houses

The article is devoted to the history of correcting liturgical books in Russia at the end of the 19th — beginning of the 20th century. Earlier it was believed that in this period the correction of liturgical books was implemented by efforts of the commissions created specifically for this purpose. This assumption was based on the analysis of memoir sources. However, it was not possible to establish with certainty the results of the activity of the commissions, which had been working on liturgical texts since 1869. When referring to archival materials of Synodal printing houses, it was revealed that in the second half of the 19th century, a whole series of revised editions of liturgical texts had been initiated. For most of these publications, it was possible to identify archival materials describing the program and concept of the corrections. Since the community of the Synodal printing houses staff used to be a relatively closed corporation, the information on these publications did not become publicly known. The memoirs do not reflect that part of the printing houses’ activity, so the concepts built on the basis of memoir sources did not take them into account. Thus, the history of the correction of liturgical books in the 19th century should be seen solely as a result of the activity of printing correctors and projects of synodal printing houses. The activity of the 19th-century commissions occupied a peripheral place in this process.