Great Russian Encyclopedia
The Great Russian Encyclopedia (GRE; , БРЭ, transliterated as "Bolshaya rossiyskaya entsiklopediya" or academically as "Bolšaja rossijskaja enciklopedija") is a universal Russian encyclopedia, completed in 36 volumes, published between 2004 and 2017 by "Great Russian Encyclopedia, JSC" (, transliterated as "Bolshaya rossiyskaya entsiklopediya PAO"). It is released under the auspices of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) after President Vladimir Putin signed a presidential decree №1156 in 2002. The complete edition was released by 2017. The chief editor of the encyclopedia is Yury Osipov, the president of the RAS. The editorial board has more than 80 RAS members , including the Nobel Prize laureates Zhores Alferov and Vitaly Ginzburg. The first, introductory volume, released in 2004, is dedicated to Russia. Thirty-five volumes were released between 2005 and 2017, covering the range from "A" to "Яя" ("Yaya"). The RAS plans to publish an updated version every five years, although it may not be issued in print after the first edition. The encyclopedia was sponsored by the government with the explicit goal of replacing Wikipedia. Personnel and management. Contributors. The "GRE" print version has many contributors eminent in their fields, such as Nobel Laureate physicist Zhores Alferov, theoretical physicist and  astrophysicist Vitaly Ginzburg. Editorial board. Yury Osipov, a mathematician, President of RAS (1991-2013), is the "GRE" Editor in Chief and Chairman of the Scientific Editorial Board. Managing editor is , journalist, editor and cultural figure. Also in the scientific editorial board are or were: , Sergei I. Adian, Zhores I. Alferov, Alexander F. Andreev, Dmitry V. Anosov, Vladimir I. Arnold, Nikolai Bahvalov, , Evgeny Velikhov, , , Mikhail L. Gasparov, Vitaly L. Ginzburg, Georgy S. Golitsyn, , , , Yuri I. Zhuravlev, , Viktor P. Ivannikov, , , Sergei P. Karpov, , , , , , , Gennady A. Mesyats, , Sergey P. Novikov, Yuri S. Osipov, , , Yuri V. Prokhorov, , Alexander Y. Rumyantsev, , Victor A. Sadovnichii, Alexander  S. Spirin, , Valery A. Tishkov, , Ludvig D. Faddeev, Vladimir Ye. Fortov, , , Vitaly D. Shafranov, Dmitry V. Shirkov. Boris A. Babayan, , Michael V. Kovalchuk, , Dmitry O. Shvidkovskiy . Alexei D. Bogaturov, Sergey V. Chemezov, Vladimir V. Grigoriev, Alexei I. Komech, D. L. Orlov. Edition summary. Publication schedule and contents of volumes: Electronic version. From April 2016, an electronic version of the "Great Russian Encyclopedia" is available, with 12,000 articles at launch. Criticism. One criticism of the encyclopedia is that it is an unnecessary prestige project in the era when all major encyclopedias went online.