ABSTRACT
In tsarist Russia, the institutional self-representation of scholarship found its most adequate expression in the celebration of anniversaries of academic establishments. Jubilees of learned organizations were occasions when Russian scholars painted on a single canvas the symbolic world in which they situated themselves. Ironically, rather than obliterating time in the eternity of 'science' the most ambitious manifestation of the self-historicizing drive of Russian scholars had rendered their professional existence temporal in its essence. Institutions of literary scholarship took a very active part in the process of academic self-historicizing. The institution that strove to become otdelenie russkogo iazyka i slovesnosti's supposed counterpart in Moscow was obshchestvo liubitelei rossiiskoi slovesnosti (OLRS). OLRS emerged at Moscow University in the 1810s as a learned society devoted to the refinement of Russia's language and literature. In organizing events OLRS systematically identified itself with 'Russian literature', usually on the grounds that most Russian writers were also at some point members of OLRS.
