The article is devoted to the history of the transfer of the book collection of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society (founded in 1887) to the academic Library of the State Museum of History of Religion. The authors managed to trace the fate of the collection by gathering documents in archives (Moscow RAS Archive, St. Petersburg branch of the RAS Archive, the archive of the Institute of History of the Material Culture, the Orientalists' Archive of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts). Published documents allow to reconstruct main stages of the history of the transfer of the book collection (1920–1954), as well as to trace the dynamics of its qualitative and quantitative composition.