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The Pushkin House (), formally the Institute of Russian Literature (Институ́т ру́сской литерату́ры), is a research institute in St. Petersburg. It is part of a network of institutions affiliated with the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The idea won support from all sides and was welcomed by Grand Duke Constantine Constantinovich. It was understood that the Pushkin House would be housed in a purpose-built Neoclassical edifice, or Odeon, but the idea failed to materialize owing to a lack of funds.
In 1907 Vladimir Kokovtsov, Minister of Finance, came up with the proposal to acquire a huge collection of Pushkin manuscripts and memorabilia amassed in Paris by Alexander Onegin from 1879 onwards. The negotiations dragged on until Onegin's death in 1925, but the bulk of his collection eventually ended up in Russia.
In 1927 Pushkin House moved from the crammed rooms in the Kunstkamera to the magnificent neo-Palladian Customs House, built after Giovanni Francesco Lucchini's designs in 1829–1832 and situated just around the Strelka.Its dome was actually intended to counterbalance that of the Kunstkamera and "to provide a look-out from which a signal was sounded when ships approached". Quoted from The Companion Guide to St Petersburg (2003), by Kyril FitzLyon, Kyril Zinovieff, Jenny Hughes, p. 331. It was to the original Kunstkamera rooms that Alexander Blok referred in his last poem To Pushkin House, celebrating Pushkin's heritage as a gleam of hope during the chaos and confusion of the post-revolutionary years: Reference Guide to Russian Literature, ed. by Neil Cornwell, Nicole Christian. Taylor & Francis, 1998. Page 175.
The Pushkin House remained open during the Siege of Leningrad, although most of the staff and manuscripts were evacuated to other cities. Following the war the institute continued, employing such scholars as Boris Eikhenbaum and Dmitry Likhachov.
The Pushkin memorial houses in Mikhailovskoye, Trigorskoye, Tsarskoe Selo, and on the Moyka River are also affiliated with the Pushkin House. Encyclopaedia of St. Petersburg
| 1910–1922 | acad. Nestor Kotlyarevsky |
| 1922–1924 | Corresponding Member USSR Academy of Sciences B.L. Modzalevsky (acting) |
| 1924–1925 | acad. Nestor Kotlyarevsky |
| 1925–1929 | acad. Sergey Platonov |
| 1929–1930 | acad. Pavel Sakulin |
| 1930–1931 | Corresponding Member Academy of Sciences of the USSR N.K. Kozmin (acting) |
| 1931–1933 | acad. Anatoly Lunacharsky |
| 1934 | Lev Kamenev |
| 1935–1936 | Maxim Gorky |
| 1937–1948 | acad. P. I. Lebedev-Poliansky |
| 1948–1949 | Doctor of Philosophy L.A. Plotkin (acting) |
| 1949–1955 | Corresponding Member USSR Academy of Sciences Nikolay Belchikov |
| 1955–1965 | acad. A. S. Bushmin |
| 1965–1975 | Corresponding Member USSR Academy of Sciences V. G. Bazanov |
| 1975–1977 | Doctor of Philosophy F. Ya. Priyma (acting) |
| 1978–1983 | acad. Alexei Bushmin |
| 1983–1987 | Doctor of Philosophy A.N. Jesuitov |
| 1987–2005 | Corresponding Member RAS N. N. Skatov |
| 2006–2007 | Ph.D. Yu.M. Prozorov (acting) |
| 2007–2017 | Corresponding Member RAS V. E. Bagno |
| since 2017 | Doctor of Philosophy V. V. Golovin |
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