The Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopaedic Dictionary (, abbr. ; 35 volumes, small; 86 volumes, large) is a comprehensive multi-volume encyclopaedia in Russian. It contains 121,240 articles, 7,800 images, and 235 maps. It was published in Imperial Russia in 1890–1907, as a joint venture of Leipzig and St Petersburg publishers. The articles were written by the prominent Russian scholars of the period, such as Dmitri Mendeleev and Vladimir Solovyov. Reprints have appeared following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. History In 1889, the owner of one of the St. Petersburg printing houses, Ilya Abramovich Efron, at the initiative of Semyon Afanasyevich Vengerov, entered into an agreement with the German publishing house F. A. Brockhaus for the translation into Russian of the large German encyclopaedic dictionary (de) into Russian as , published by the same publishing house. Initially, it was supposed to be limited to the translation of this publication, but only with a more detailed presentation of issues related to Russia. It was supposed to release only 16-18 volumes. The first eight volumes (up to the letter "B"), published under the general editorship of Professor Ivan Efimovich Andreevsky, were almost literal translation with a slight adaptation for the Russian reader. These volumes caused a lot of complaints about the quality of the translation, and the overall management of the publication also left much to be desired. So, the journal "Northern Herald" noted: "There are too many significant shortcomings. There is too little effort, love, and, what is stranger, not enough impressive edition, both literary and purely scholarly!" (1890. № 4. - pp. 76-77), and the journal "Historical Bulletin" added to this that the Encyclopaedic Dictionary was "carelessly and unsatisfactorily compiled. The very language of the articles is heavy and in places wrong. The translation is immediately visible, and it is far from a professorial one, but a gymnasium, awkward, literal" (1890, No. 5. - p. 454). After the death of Professor I. E. Andreevsky, the editorial office was headed by Academician Konstantin Konstantinovich Arseniev and Professor of St. Petersburg University Fyodor Fomich Petrushevsky, which marked a new period in the encyclopaedia's history. Starting from the 9th volume, the translated material fades into the background, there is much more factual and statistical material. Particular attention is paid to geographical articles, the editorial states: "Russian cities are located absolutely everything, with the addition of more townships, villages and villages with over 3 thousand