Вторая половина 2ой мировой войны

The Second Half of the 20th Century (1946 - 1995)

In the post-war years the structure of the Public Library developed through the further differentiation of sections and subsections according to the nature of their activities. The scholarly research and methodological departments developed especially quickly due to the library's new role as a basic methodological centre for the Russian republic. From the mid-1950s the scholarly work carried out by the library has become an ever more prominent element in its daily life and this has led both to the creation of relevant research departments and to an increased level of qualifications among the staff. Working in the library at present are six doctors and 86 candidates of science in various fields of learning. The overall size of the library staff has also grown considerably. Today it numbers more than 1,500 people.

The Round Hall ofthe Russian book stocks. 1955

The way the library grows is naturally determined by the needs of the time. In the post-war years the tasks it faced became significantly more complex and the demands put upon it grew. As early as 1949 the numbers of users, visits and books issued were over twice the pre-war 1940 figures.

At that point by government decision the library was given the building of the former Catherine Institute, constructed in 1804-06 to the design of Giacomo Quarenghi. That made it possible to open new reading rooms and to set up new book repositories. The problem of storing the growing stocks has in general been one of the most pressing throughout the library's history. The question of constructing a new building was raised as early as the 1920s, but only half a century later did the Council of Ministers of the USSR take the decision to commission a design. The New Library Buildingon Moskovsky Prospekt.Today the new library complex under construction opposite the Victory Park metro station on Moskovsky Prospekt is nearing completion and its entry into service should resolve many of the library's problems. The years since the war have not altered the Public Library's position within the national network of book repositories. The 1960s and 1970s were marked primarily by a strengthening of its role as a methodological and research centre for librarianship in the country. The 1976 statutes defined it as the national library of the Russian Federation fulfilling functions of significance to the whole Soviet Union. The break-up of the USSR in December 1991 again raised the question of the Public Library's place in the new scheme of things. The Lenin Library in Moscow, which had formerly fulfilled the role of national book repository for the whole Soviet Union, lost its former status and by President Yeltsin's decree was transformed into the State Library of Russia. On 27 March 1992 another presidential decree was issued "on the National Library of Russia". This role was now officially allocated to the Public Library in St Petersburg in recognition of its distinctive place in the nation's historical and cultural heritage. The new status was reinforced by the "Temporary Regulations for the National Library of Russia" adopted by the federal government, which substantially expanded the library's rights and possibilities as the focal point for the country in its field of activity. The library obtained increased independence to determine the form of its activities and its direction of development. This applied to both scholarly matters and financial questions, including dealings with parties abroad. Moreover, the library has been entrusted with representing Russia's interests at an international level. The Principal Book Repository in Russia (1795 - 1813)On 27 May 1795 Catherine II gave her formal approval to a design for the building of the Imperial Public Library submitted by the architect Yegor Sokolov. Her officials began to implement the decision within days. Three issues of the St Petersburg Gazette carried an announcement inviting tenders. Building materials were acquired, workers hired and funds made available from the treasury by Catherine's verbal command. Construction of the first building in Russia specially intended to house a library began as early as June 1795. The site chosen lay in the very centre of the capital, at the junction of Nevsky Prospekt and one of the main cross streets, not far from the imperial palaces and closer still to the busy shopping complex of Gostiny Dvor.The idea of creating a public library had long been in the air. The eighteenth century had developed the tradition of book-collecting which went back deep into Russian history. Libraries became a customary feature of aristocratic and wealthy houses. But private collections could not really help to accelerate the formation of a Russian intelligentsia made up of "enlightened nobles" or further the expansion of the stock of educated men which the state required in ever-growing numbers. The problem was not solved either by the appearance in the first half of the century of libraries attached to the Academy of Sciences, Academy of Arts and other state institutions. It is not surprising, therefore, that Catherine II, always sensitive to the currents of the age and regarding herself as the heir to and continuer of Peter the Great's reforms, did not fail — in the words of one of her most enlightened contemporaries, Mikhail Antonovsky —"to turn her perspicacious eye to an important source of popular education as yet not found in Russia, that is state public libraries or book repositories open to all." D.-A. Atkinson. Palace Square.1803-1805As Catherine conceived it, the national library was to become a symbol of the might of the Russian state, the creative character of the Empress's aspirations and her fidelity to the ideals of the Age of Enlightenment. Like "the finest public libraries" in Europe which preserved archives of national printed publications and outstanding literary works, the new library was intended to become the repository for all Russian books and manuscripts. But this idea also incorporated something that was new in principle, something that was taken up and reinforced by subsequent generations of Russian librarians. In the eighteenth century the national libraries of the European states did not seek to serve readers; they were cut off from the hurly-burly of life beyond their walls. The national library of Russia, by contrast, was conceived and organized not only as a book repository, but also as a generally accessible library — and in this, according to Alexei Olenin, one of those most involved in its creation, lay its originality. It was founded "for the benefit of lovers of learning and enlightenment" and intended for "the social enlightenment of Russian subjects". Its establishment undoubtedly marked the start of a new chapter in the history of scholarship, culture and education in Russia. The Public Library in St Petersburg became in effect the second Russian university and almost all those who brought glory to Russian science or made immortal names for themselves in literature, art, and the humanities over the following century and more could be said to have been its graduates. The setting up of the library took almost twenty years (1795-1814). Catherine herself oversaw the construction of the building, receiving regular reports about how the work was progressing and making decisions about the future of an institution which one of the early documents quite justifiably called "Catherine's library". The Empress's Cabinet (the office which administered her purse and property) provided funds for the constmction on her spoken instructions, later confirmed in writing. In July 1796 Catherine took a second look at Sokolov's designs and it was decided to incorporate an observatory into the library building as envisaged in one of the projects. The Empress donated a telescope which had belonged to the famous British astronomer Sir William Herschel for the use of future Russian stargazers. Mikhail Antonovsky, who is noted not only for his activities as a librarian, but also as a publisher (Russia is indebted to him for the appearance of Generalissimo Suvorov's celebrated book The Science of Winning), recollected as well that "for the necessary relief of the mental tension that arises from the reading of serious books" the library project also featured "a most pleasant garden" with a pool. The Empress gave her last instructions on the issue of funds for the library in October 1796, a month before her death. Catherine II was also directly involved in the formation of the library's stocks. On her orders in the summer and autumn of 1795 the Zaiuski brothers' book collection was transported from Warsaw to St Petersburg — on carts as far as Riga and then on to the capital by ship. This collection formed the nucleus of the Public Library's foreign-language stocks. According to Catherine's original concept, the collection brought from Poland was to be combined with others already at the disposal of the Imperial Court — the Hermitage Library and the personal collections of Voltaire, Diderot and the president of the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences, Johann Korff. As things turned out, however, this plan was destined to be realised only in the 1860s when the Hermitage Library and the books which once belonged to the two great Frenchmen finally came into the Public Library. The Imperial Public Library in St Petersburg was the first state library in Russia. Its chief, binding purpose was the creation of "a complete collection of Russian books" — meaning in this context all books produced from the moment printing began in Russia as well as books published in Russian beyond the frontiers of the Empire. In addition it was intended that the "complete Russian library" include books about Russia published in foreign languages. One consequence of Catherine's death and the succession of her son Paul I was a change in the composition of the Cabinet. Vasily Popov, who had organized the constmction of the building and the sorting of the books, was removed from his post. The work was now entrusted to people who had no interest in making Catherine's idea become a reality. With the creation of a national library under threat the situation was saved by Count Alexander Stroganov, a noted Russian states man and patron of the arts who had been one of the authors of the Plan for a Russian Public Library in St Petersburg submitted to Catherine II as far back as 1766. In January 1800 Count Stroganov was appointed Chief Director of the Imperial Libraries. As Olenin observed, it was due to his efforts and persistence that the Imperial Public Library "preserved its existence". Stroganov saw to it that the books were sorted out more quickly and he also defined the scope of the institution: "We are talking about a state library," he pointed out, "and in that sense alone, and in no other, it is imperial. The Junction of Nevsky Prospekt and Sadovaya Street. Aquatint. 1800s." The Count persuaded Paul I not to take the building on Nevsky Prospekt away from the library —it had its faults and inadequacies, but in 1800 work there was nearing completion — and set himself the goal of opening the library "for public usage" in the very near future. The change of ruler that came with the murder of Paul I and the accession of his son Alexander I favoured the achievement of this goal. The heady days of promise at the start of the new reign should also have seen the opening of the Public Library. The Count's plans were regarded sympathetically by members of the Unofficial Committee — the small group of young friends of the new Emperor which was influential in his early years on the throne. Alexander himself, at Stroganov's insistent request, purchased and donated to the Public Library the collection of manuscripts which had been assembled by Piotr Dubrovsky, a former official at the Russian embassy in Paris and a passionate bibliophile and collector. During the French Revolution Dubrovsky had managed to save part of the papers stored in the archives of the Bastille. He also laid his hands on fifth- to thirteenth-century manuscripts from the libraries of the ancient monasteries of Saint-Germain and Corbie. He collected up to 8,000 examples of writing by notable French figures (including letters and state papers signed by almost all the kings from Louis XI onwards). In various parts of Europe Dubrovsky also acquired manuscripts and letters by Erasmus, Leibniz, Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire and other great scholars and writers of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Besides this, his collection included Old Slavonic and Eastern writings. Due to his reputation as "a hunter after such rarities" many Russian writers and scholars also presented Dubrovsky with some of their own manuscripts — among such donors were the noted poet Gavrila Derzhavin, the historian Vastly Ruban and the writer and translator Pisarev, who gave the collector material relating to the Russian enlighteners and dramatists Denis Fonvizin and Yakov Kniazhnin. The acquisition of this remarkable collection led in 1805 to the creation of a special manuscript "depot" or department within the Public Library. Before Stroganov's time came to an end, this department was enriched by some of the most precious surviving early Russian manuscripts. These included the oldest currently-known dated Russian book the Ostromir Gospel of 1056-57, which was found in Catherine II's wardrobe after her death (it is a known fact that in her final years the Empress was intensively engaged in collecting and studying material on Russian history) and the celebrated Lavrentyevskaya Chronicle of 1377, the oldest extant copy of the Russian Primary Chronicle which begins with the world-famous Tale of Bygone Years: "From whence came the Russian land, who was first to begin ruling in Kiev..." From the very moment of its establishment this new Russian repository for ancient manuscripts also grew through the donations of private individuals. Alexander Yermolaev, the first Russian palaeographer and a scholar with a profound knowledge of the Early Russian epic The Lay of Igor's Host, who was appointed assistant librarian in 1810, presented the library with a copy of the Ipatievskaya Chronicle. A collection of Russian and Slavonic manuscripts was donated "for the benefit or interest of lovers of Russian antiquity who visit the library" by the senior mining official Piotr Frolov. Among other donors who enriched the library's stocks over the years were the academicians Vastly Severgin, Yakov Za-kharov, Adolf Kupfer, Bernhard Dorn and Piotr Keppen, the maritime explorers Ivan Krusenstern and Ferdinand Wrangel, most Russian writers, the Glazunovs — a family of book-dealers, and the merchants Mefody Shumilov and Ivan Laptev. Gifts came in from abroad as well: from the Bosnian priest Tverdkovic, from the Serbian writers Buich and Zuban, from the poets and representatives of the Czech renaissance Jan Kollar and Vaclav Hanka, and from the Warsaw-based linguist Samuel Linde. Relations also began to be established early with the oldest libraries and universities in Europe. In 1808 Stroganov chose a man to help him with the running of the Public Library. Alexei Olenin (1763-1843) was appointed Assistant Director and after the Count's death in 1811 he succeeded him as Director. Olenin was a remarkable character — President of the Academy of Arts, a talented draughtsman, a historian with a knowledge of modern and ancient languages, a lover of literature and art and a patron of poets and artists. Yet even that is not a full list of his merits and accomplishments. He deservedly occupied a prominent place in Russian culture and learning for a period of almost half a century. Vastly Kliuchevsky, the celebrated Russian historian whose words carry especial weight, wrote: "For fifty years — until 1843 — it is difficult to recall a major event or major figure in the field of Russian public enlightenment without Olenin also coming to mind. While he was not a great star, he somehow managed to cast his ray of light on every bright contemporary phenomenon in that sphere of our life." And if Count Stroganov had "preserved the existence" of the Public Library, it was Olenin who breathed real life into it: he opened it up to readers, gave them the opportunity to use the library's stocks, to work in the reading room and to become acquainted with its treasures. Olenin's time as director has been called the childhood of the Public Library. There are good grounds for the comparison. One should only add that it was in this "childhood" that the library acquired many of the things which would promote its subsequent development and success, that Olenin laid the foundations on which the Public Library stands even today. He did more than merely adhere to Catherine's original intentions — he developed and enlarged upon them. He took real steps towards the creation of a generally accessible library which would combine the aims of preserving its stocks and enlightening the public. In 1809 Olenin published the first manual in Russia on the organization of library stocks and catalogues (The Trial of a New Bibliographical System/or the St Petersburg Public Library). In 1811 he devised a new stmcture for the library, separating the books in Russian into a department on their own. This organization of a distinct Russian section emphasized the national character of the Public Library. In 1810 Alexander I issued a special decree ordering that the new institution be opened "for general use" and confirming the Regulations for the Administration of the Imperial Public Library. This was the first law in Russia dealing with the running and maintenance of a library. The Public Library was to be funded by "monies from the state treasury" with special sums being allocated in advance for the purpose. Emperor Alexander I's Visitto the Public Library on 2 January 1812The Regulations also reaffirmed the main principles for the organization of the library's work which had been formulated at its foundation — keeping an archive of Russian printed matter and preserving the nation's manuscript heritage while adhering to an indispensable condition: "the receiving of visitors and the provision to them of all necessary information". The Regulations also laid down the duties of the librarian and the curator of manuscripts, determined the size and structure of the library's staff. The Public Library was transferred from the auspices of His Majesty's Cabinet to the Ministry of Public Education, which provided a boost to its intended enlightening activities. The social atmosphere in which the Public Library began to operate was fully defined by the words which adorned its first statutory Regulations: "for general use ... without distinction between persons". In August 1814 Olenin wrote: "The tme aim of an open book repository lies in anybody, no matter who he is, being able to request for his own use any kind of printed books, even the most rare,... and to make use of them for no charge, with the sole restriction that he cannot take them home." At Olenin's insistence a clause was inserted in the 1810 Regulations requiring that the library receive two free statutory copies of everything produced on Russian printing-presses. This provided a radical solution to the problem of how to ensure a complete and regular influx of Russian books and other publications. "Just as a tree receives its initial vegetative strength through its roots, so the growth of this book repository is based on and ensured by the law which brings it two copies of new products of the book-printer's art from all over our country" — those words from a report by Olenin were written with not just the past but the future in mind.

The stormy events of 1812 delayed the opening of the Public Library. The imminent threat to St Petersburg prompted the authorities to remove from the capital "all the manuscripts and the best books". Loaded onto a brig and accompanied by the assistant librarian Vasily Sopikov, the library's treasures set off along the inland waterways towards the north. After crossing Lake Ladoga in a storm the brig and its crew spent the winter on the River Svir not far from Lodeinoe Pole.

Olenin for his part was convinced that the Russian national library was the proper repository for all material "concerning the history of our country" and he sought to ensure that it preserved for posterity orders and communiques issued to the Russian army, the "flying sheets" carried by wartime despatch riders, the newspapers issued in the territory occupied by the French and the handwritten accounts of those who participated in or witnessed battles or partisan skirmishes and raids. The creation of a collection of books, posters, albums, leaflets and manuscript material on the struggle against Napoleon accorded with the patriotic sentiments of the other librarians as well. They were in no doubt that this war would go down as "the most celebrated in the chronicles of the world". Time proved that their work was not performed in vain. The very first visitors to cross the threshold of the Public Library showed a strong interest in Russian history and above all in accounts from the time of the "Patriotic War". One of the library's published reports said: "... most often they read descriptions of the feats of our heroes, above all those who distinguished themselves in the last war. The demand for such books was so great that the librarians were unable to satisfy all the visitors because the books in question had been given out to other readers." The New Temple of Enlightenment in St.-Petersburg (1814 - 1842)

The grand opening of the Public Library took place on 2 (14) January 1814. Noteworthy among the more than 200 people who attended the ceremony were the poet Gavrila Derzhavin, the painter Orest Kiprensky, the philologist Alexander Vostokov and the architect Vastly Stasov. There were quite a number of ladies present, including members of the Women's Patriotic Society whose activities Olenin encouraged. After a brief address by the Director, the secretary of the library Alexander Krasovsky read out "A Discourse on the Benefit of Human Knowledge and on the Need for Public Libraries in any Well-Ordered State". This speech (the outline of which had been drawn up by Olenin) was devoted to the brief history of the Public Library and pointed out the "originality" of this institution for Russia. Next to rise was the poet Nikolai Gnedich. A lively, emotional man who took an active stance in defence of the Russian language and Russian literature, he gave an impassioned speech on "the factors retarding the success of our literature". The celebrated Russian fabulist Ivan Krylov read out a fable entitled The Divers which he had written especially for the occasion.

The opening of the Public Library which coincided with what Pushkin called the time of "glory and delight" was recorded in all the St Petersburg newspapers. The poet and critic Piotr Pletnev wrote that all men and women whose "Russian hearts beat stronger on hearing the word Motherland" had perceived the event as "a glorious occurrence" important for the future of the country. The library remained a popular topic in subsequent years too. The papers described it as "a tmly national repository" and noted that any reader "had free entry to it, whatever title or rank he may have held."

Andrei Martynov. Nevsky Prospekt. 1820s.

The library was open for both "usage" and "viewing". From the outset it also functioned as a museum — the visiting public were introduced to its printed and handwritten treasures and shown the halls of the building, while the staff sought to enhance the tour with commentaries on the character, history and significance of the articles on display. In the early years between 500 and 600 people used the library annually. Those who applied to do so were a very mixed bag in terms of origin and social status: scholars, civil servants, military men, clergymen, merchants, members of the lower middle class and students of civil and military colleges. Raznochintsy (representatives of the legally undefined group of varied non-noble, non-peasant origin who mainly did "white-collar" work) and "free men" accounted for roughly 11 % of all the library users in 1816-19. The "new youth" came into the reading room with interests shaped, as has already been said, by the "social excitement after the Napoleonic Wars". Notable library users at this time included the future Decembrist Wilhelm Kiichelbecker, the mathematician Nikolai Lobachevsky and the explorer Fiodor Litke. In 1817 the library's records noted the appearance of the first female readers.

Vasily Sadovnikov. Panorama of Nevsky Prospekt. 1830-1835

The Olenin years, in the course of which over 15,000 library cards were issued and some 100,000 volumes given out to readers, also saw the first attempts to analyse reading patterns, the range of subjects which interested users of the library and the demand for works by particular authors (Lomonosov, Karamzin, Derzhavin, Krylov, Zhukovsky, Gnedich, Batiushkov, and others). The same period was marked too by the inception of a reference and bibliographical service within the library as members of staff began to select literature systematically in response to readers' requests (books, for example, on the history of the 1812 War, Suvorov's campaigns in Italy and Switzerland, or public education in Russia).

It was said of Olenin that he divided his time and efforts between service and friends. Almost the whole of St Petersburg literary and artistic society gathered at his house on the Fontanka Embankment and at his dacha in Priiutino. Olenin's "salon" was attended by poets and writers — Alexander Pushkin, Vastly Zhukovsky, Piotr Viazemsky, Nikolai Karamzin and Gavrila Derzhavin; painters and sculptors —Vladimir Borovikovsky, Karl Briullov, Alexei Venetsianov, Ivan Martos, Vastly Demuth-Malinovsky and Orest Kipren-sky; the architect Vastly Stasov and many other creative people. It was through Olentn's network of friendship that the library acquired the services of the fabulist Ivan Krylov, the poets Nikolai Gnedich and Konstantin Batiushkov, the man of letters Mikhail Lobanov, the poet and schoolfriend of Pushkin Anton Delvig, and the novelist and playwright Mikhail Zagoskin. To work in the Manuscript Department, Olenin invited the outstanding Russian philologist and poet Alexander Vostokov and also Alexander Yermolaev, a pupil of the Academy of Arts then only beginning his career, but already a talented authority on Russian chronicle-writing and Russian manuscript books. Karamzin consulted Yermolayev when writing his monumental History of the Russian State. Both Pushkin and academician Piotr Keppen would turn to him for help in interpreting the text of The Lay of Igor's Host.

At the request of Stroganov and Olenin, the book-dealer Vastly Sopikov, a member of the merchant class, was taken into state service at the library. Sopikov had become famous for his knowledge in the field of Russian bibliography and the book trade. He was entmsted with managing the Russian stocks and the library saw to the publication of his major work An Essay in Russian Bibliography which the author per-spicaciously believed "will be a classic not only in Russia but also in foreign parts". Sopikov's work contained "an accurate and thorough description" of books published in Russia from the introduction of printing to the beginning of the nineteenth century and still remains a valuable handbook for librarians and bibliographers today.

Olenin had great respect for the staff of the library. He listened to their opinions and was convinced that those who served in this "temple of enlightenment" (as Piotr Pletnev called the Public Library) should be educated people well-versed in languages, literature, art and the sciences. In his choice of candidates for the post of librarian Olenin was motivated by his kindness and well-known generosity but also by commercial considerations. At his request appointments to the unpaid position of honorary librarian were offered to the bibliographer and book-expert Vasily Ana-stasevich, the journalist and publisher Nikolai Grech, the mining engineer Piotr Frolov — "a collector of Russian antiquities", Archimandrite loacinth (Nikita Bichu-rin) — the founding-father of Russian Sinology, and the historian and expert on Siberia Grigory Spassky.

The uniform of a fourth-grade

civil servant. 1834

Probably no other period in the history of the Public Library has produced such a quantity of stories and tall tales as Olenin's. There were, of course, some reasons for this, primarily the figure of the Director himself who managed to gather around him many talented, extraordinary people whose behaviour could at times give rise to talk. Thus, for example, in his memoirs Vasily Sobolshchikov (who entered the library as a scribe and was later transferred to sorting out the collection of prints) described the librarians of Olenin's time as "parasites". Yet one of those "parasites" — Ivan Krylov whose work at the library generated an especially large number of legends and anecdotes — kept track of the statutory copies coming into the Russian department. He compiled registers of the books which had not been delivered and prepared material from which Olenin made inquiries that were sent both to the "originators" and to the censorship authority.

Krylov sought to achieve a comprehensive collection of Russian books in the Public Library and to that end he carried out a bibliographic search exploiting his long-standing connections with book-dealers. Through his agency, for example, the publisher and bookseller Alexander Smirdin enriched the Russian Department with several rare editions. Krylov also made helpful suggestions regarding the arrangements for keeping books in the Russian Department and the method of serving library users. (Some of the slips of paper he inserted into the books sent out from stock to the reading room still survive today.) Together with Sopikov he compiled the first catalogue of Russian books, drew up bibliographies requested by ordinary readers and state institutions — on the War of 1812, Suvorov's campaigns, and St Petersburg, as well as lists of the books which users requested from the Russian Department for the printed reports of the Public Library. Yet in doing all this, Krylov nevertheless remained true to himself with an eccentric pattern of behaviour resulting from a disregard for accepted standards in public service and society generally and a lack of mobility caused by obesity and advancing years: by the time he left the library in 1841 he had celebrated his 73rd birthday.

The "patronal haven for men of letters", as Dmitry Filosofov, a prominent figure in the cultural life of the turn of the twentieth century, described the library, was an inseparable part of Olenin's "salon". He encouraged the literary and scholarly endeavours of his staff and took a very active interest in them. Under Olenin particularly, the library generated a special cultural atmosphere which appealed to staff and users alike. When Gnedich conceived the idea of rendering Homer's Iliad into Russian, Olenin was the first to come to his assistance and he proved a subtle interpreter of the text. Gnedich's translation, which Pushkin called "a great feat", became the common cause of the library. Apart from Olenin, the librarian Dmitry Popov with his knowledge of Greek, Alexander Yermolaev with his grasp of the chronicle tradition and the genealogist Maxim Semiganovsky all contributed to the poet's work, and even the reputedly lazy Krylov learnt Greek in order to help. Assistant Director Sergei Uvarov gave useful advice regarding the metre of the translation. Something like tableaux vivants were staged in the hall of the library, with all those interested participating, in pursuit of the precise translation of Homer's text. Olenin's directorate also saw collective work to produce a commentary on the Lavrentyevskaya Chronicle and preparation for the publication of the Russian chronicle collections. From 1812 a society formed under the auspices of the library worked on the compilation of a concise Slavonic-Russian dictionary, a project which, sadly, never came to fruition.

Anton Delvig, while assistant librarian for the Russian stocks (a position which he had determinedly sought, working for over a year without remuneration), devoted his free time to gathering together in the library what his friend Pletnev termed "the most precious treasures for the demands of intellectual life". Delvig served here from September 1820 to May 1825, a period when he was almost constantly in fine creative spirits. The collective work on Homer's epic and the cult of the Ancient World which Olenin encouraged found reflection in his poetry. Delvig greatly valued his position at the library and would probably never himself have tendered his resignation. The true reasons for his departure, and also for Olenin's unexpectedly harsh attitude towards him, never became known to contemporaries.

The scope of a library's activity and its influence on society depend axiomatically on the state of society itself. This became obvious even in Olenin's time when conditions in the Public Library's "environment" were in almost constant flux. Before the second decade of Alexander's reign was out, the celebratory gatherings on 2 January to mark the anniversary of the library's opening had lost their sparkle. The court was no longer interested.

The enlightened part of Petersburg society was unhappy with the official character of the proceedings and the preponderance of members of the highest four classes of the Table of Ranks and not below. Printed reports of the library's activities ceased to be produced. The demand for annual catalogues of what had been read by the users of the Imperial Public Library and lists of visitors also disappeared. After the Decembrist Rebellion of 14 (26) December 1825 which accompanied the accession of Nicholas I, a monarch with a passionate belief in drill and military discipline, Olenin' s manner of living and of running the library were already quite clearly out of step with the court. Although the number of users continued to grow, albeit slowly, in the 1830s, the library's influence on society and indeed its own condition fell in some respects far short of the original plans and intentions.

Olenin was a product of Catherine's era and he had outlived his time. Already an old man, suffering from a number of ailments and in part also from lack of understanding, he continued to concern himself with the well-being of the Public Library. His small, frail body contained a heart that was kind, generous, and even courageous. At a time when the whole of St Petersburg stayed at home for fear of cholera, Olenin did not abandon the library, demonstrating an astonishing sang-froid. "Of all living beings," Vladimir Odoevsky wrote in 1831, "virtually the only one I saw was Olenin — with a huge greatcoat over his shoulders, port-wine in his hands, a cigar between his teeth, 'cholera' on his lips, and yet with calm in his heart... He acted splendidly and helped the sick with all his might; I have been twice as fond of him from that time onwards." In 1833 Olenin managed to bring a major construction project to completion. A splendid edifice was built onto the block on the comer, consolidating the library's prominent position on Nevsky Prospekt and the adjacent Alexandrinskaya Square. The Arrival of Dmitry Buturlin as Director (1843 - 1849)

After Olenin's death in 1843, Nicholas I chose as his successor Dmitry Buturlin (1790-1849), a senator, privy councillor and member of the State Council. A former field officer with the Russian army who had participated in many campaigns and battles, Buturlin was also a student of military history. But he is remembered by posterity not so much for his works on history or the feats of arms which brought him medals and awards as with sorrow as Russia's supreme censor and a symbol of the censorial terror which afflicted the country in the 1840s. "Buturlin takes the stage with hatred for word, thought and freedom, preaching boundless obedience, silence and discipline," is how the noted literary critic Pavel Annenkov recollected that time. Buturlin was a member, and later chairman of the secret committee which Nicholas I founded in 1848 "for the ultimate surveillance of the spirit and direction of works printed in Russia". (This body came to be known as "the Committee of 2 April" or the Buturlin Committee.) In his biased scrutiny of matter that had already passed through the ordinary sieve of censorship, Buturlin displayed such energy and zeal in discovering pretexts for taking exception to works that, in the words of the censor Alexander Nikitenko, it was becoming "impossible to write and print anything whatsoever." Buturlin would, it seems, even have censored the text of the Gospels, and only the great familiarity of those particular works hindered him from doing so.

Buturlin's activities as director of the Public Library (1843-49) have not received such unmitigated condemnation, although, here too, negative opinions prevail. The librarians and public were put off above all by the innate "dry self-importance of his manner", his strict habitual expectation of absolute obedience and his tendency to issue orders and reprimands. According to Vladimir Stasov, son of the architect and one of the staff, under Buturlin the library "turned into something like the arsenal where every uniform was supposed to be under its proper number." Stasov's view was shared wholeheartedly by Ivan Bystrov, who had been taken on to assist Krylov and received his first lessons in bibliography from the fabulist. Not wishing, as he put it, to play the role of Molchalin (a character in Griboedov's Woe from Wit who constantly humbles himself), Bystrov resigned from the library. Vostokov was unable to bear the director's abrupt manner and without protesting against his blatantly unfair dismissal he also left. The "rough despot", as Stasov called Buturlin, acted in such a way that not a trace remained of the friendly atmosphere of Olenin's time.

Yet, for all the extremity and harshness of the measures which Buturlin introduced, it must be admitted that some of them were dictated by the state of the library (immense stocks of unsorted books and manuscripts, the lack of inventories or catalogues of these works, confusion about duties and responsibilities, failure to observe service regulations and hours of attendance in the library). It was under Buturlin that the first catalogue of the Manuscript Department appeared. Afanasy Bychkov, who worked in the library from 1844, produced an inventory of the Church Slavonic and Russian manuscripts which scholars acknowledged to be exemplary. The work of cataloguing books in the Russian and History Departments was continued. Notable advances were made in describing and organizing the collection of prints. "Responsible curator" appeared in the halls where the stocks were kept and relative order was established with regard to the location of the books. Buturlin introduced the first experimental quotas for inventorizing publications, taking as a basis the amount of work he himself could perform in a day. Yet the fact that he turned all the librarians into "pen-pushers", as Vastly Sobolshchikov put it, did not mean an end to blunders and curious incidents. The ways of Nicholas I's chancery met with a fair degree of passive resistance when applied in the library.

The users of the Public Library were especially inconvenienced in Buturlin's time: the working hours of the reading room were reduced and subscriptions to new foreign newspapers and periodicals were at first limited and then cancelled altogether (after the events of the revolutionary year 1848, Buturlin preferred to "put up the shutters" on this "little window on Europe"). The noted economist and public figure Vastly Bervi-Flerovsky accused Buturlin of deliberately neglecting the Social Sciences and Law Department and of creating uncomfortable conditions for those wishing to work in the library. Its reputation was not enhanced either by the fact that Buturlin combined the functions of scourge of the press and head of an establishment intended for public enlightenment. The Political Spring in Russia (1850 - 1859)

Buturlin's death in the early hours of 9 (21) October 1849 came in the last days before a political spring in Russia. Soon the country embarked on a series of changes so significant that they became the dividing line between two eras. It was a period of upheaval in the Public Library too. The 1850s with what Stasov described as their "highly promising shift of minds" brought not only a growth in stocks and numbers of users but also an obvious change in the character of readers' interests. Young people were using the library — mainly students and pupils in secondary education (in 1855 they accounted for 34% of all readers). Many of them belonged to the raznochintsy, but there were also representatives of the increasingly significant "third estate". "Usage of the library has spread a great deal recently," wrote Nikolai Dobroliubov who was a regular visitor. The library played a special part in the life of many a Russian man of letters who rented a corner somewhere in one of St Petersburg's slums. Such people would sit in the building for hours on end, not only enjoying access to the books at no expense, but also soaking up the warmth and light. In this period the inconveniences in the library were reduced, while a few more comforts were provided — and the reading public were quick to appreciate the difference.

Reflecting on the change which took place in the Public Library in the 1850s, Vastly Sobolshchikov wrote in his Memoirs of an Old Librarian: "Reading is an important indicator of public life and the library, being a place for reading, is the most convenient instrument for observing the movement of intellectual activity in society over a given period of time." At this time the librarians became especially aware that their establishment was not simply a museum of antiquities, a place of refuge for a small body of readers, but a very important facility or, as the periodical Otechestvennye zapiski (Notes of the Fatherland) put it, one of "the most powerful tools" for public enlightenment. It was now insufficient to be merely a repository of rare works and historical curiosities. The Public Library, which the periodical Sovremennik (The Contemporary) saw as "the prop of Russian scholarship", could not get away with giving its readers "yesterday's news". Although the visitors' interest in the great legacy of the past remained alive, it began to a significant extent to fade into the background. Not intellectual diversions, but practical branches of learning — mathematics, technology, the natural sciences, political economy, law and the art of warfare — "occupied almost exclusively the minds of the new generation."

"A reader should know what the library has in the field which interests him and be able to obtain everything he requests" — that is how the new director, Modest Korff (1800-1876), formulated the aim of the reforms being carried out in the library. Korff, who was appointed in October 1849 after Buturlin's death, called the library "a monument to the glory of the nation", but at the same time he stressed that it should serve as "a vital source in the cause of public education".

In this period Afanasy Bychkov, who had been made head of the Russian Department, and his assistant, the noted bibliographer Vladimir Mezhov (who served in the library from 1851 to 1866), were engaged in a lively correspondence with the censors' office and other institutions, seeking effective implementation of the law giving the library a statutory copy of each and every new publication. Their efforts bore fruit: by 1864 roughly 90% of everything that had been published in the Russian language had been collected in the library and it held unchallenged first place for the completeness of its stocks of Russian printed matter.

Readers' demands had also changed with regard to foreign works, the character of new additions and the rate at which they were obtained. Prince Vladimir Odoevsky, a writer and music critic with an encyclopaedic range of interests, was assistant director at this time. He determined the guidelines for the selection of foreign books and — in accordance with readers' wishes — he gave preference to physics, chemistry, mathematics, geology, medicine, administrative law, finance, economics, and technology (notably shipbuilding and railway engineering).

Grateful Russian society in turn concerned itself with the condition of the national book repository. In the 1850s donations of both books and money began to come in from all over Russia. Among those who sent books were the great lexicographer Vladimir Dahl, author of The Dictionary of the Living Russian Language, the prominent surgeon Nikolai Pirogov, the historian Nikolai Kostomarov, the astronomer Vasily Struve and the natural scientist Eduard Eichwald. Suffice it to say that in that one decade the Public Library received roughly thirty times more books and manuscripts as gifts than in the whole first half of the century. The library requested and obtained a law by which packages addressed to it were carried free of charge. The names of donors were entered in a special register; they were reported in the press and a full list was published in the library's annual report. In terms of social status and profession, these benefactors were very varied — a fact which reflected a desire across the classes for a flourishing Public Library. Donations also arrived from abroad, "from all ends of the educated world".

Russian society's interest in the activities of the national library was also demonstrated by the attention which the reading public devoted to its annual reports. After publication was resumed in 1851, many Russian newspapers and periodicals (including Otechestvennye zapiski, Sovremennik, Biblioteka dlya chteniya, Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti, Russky invalid, Russkoe slovo and Moskvitianin) regularly carried reviews of these reports. Moreover, each year no fewer than five or six articles and paragraphs appeared dealing with the library, its structure and the organization of its services. Many of these pieces were written by the "opinion-makers" among the raznochintsy intelligentsia and young students, such as Nikolai Chemyshevsky, Nikolai Dobroliubov and Dmitry Pisarev.

Literati, scholars and public figures took an interest in the renewal of the library's stocks, its precious "intellectual capital", as Chernyshevsky put it. They were also concerned about the question of access and the range of facilities offered to users. Among the innovations which met with approval were the introduction of duty specialists in the reading room, the establishment of an "information desk", the appearance of the first printed catalogues and guides, the provision of information about newly-acquired books and manuscripts, the setting aside of a room for the study of rare publications and works of fiction, and the organization of exhibitions, general and specialized tours of the library. The working hours of the reading room were extended (from 10 in the morning through to 9 at night, which was not usual in other European libraries).

Up until the middle of the nineteenth century the Public Library had no special room set aside for users to work in; a mere 60 or so places were provided around the building. The flood of new users and the expansion of stocks led to a situation in which, as Korff wrote, "there was no room left either for the books or for the readers." Pisarev recollected that one often had to read standing up and leave serious work for home. The situation had become so serious that it demanded radical action coupled with persistent efforts to obtain the necessary funding. Sobolshchikov was entrusted with designing and constructing a proper reading hall in collaboration with the architect Ivan Gornostayev.

The new order came to the Public Library somewhat ahead of the advent of reforms in Russia generally. This was an expression of Korff's far-sightedness, his flexibility and his feeling for what was new. It was his assertion that the library should be useful not just in moral terms, but in economic ones too — meaning the creation of conditions for the dissemination of scientific and technical knowledge among the "third estate". In the 1850s the library became a place of importance "not only to specialist scholars, but also to all classes without exception of educated, and even simply literate society" — Otechestvennye zapiski stated in 1857.

Stefan De Ladveze.

Emperor Nicholas I's Visit

to the Public Library. 1853

At Korff's suggestion, the Public Library was transferred to the auspices of the Imperial Court. The funds allocated for its upkeep were almost doubled and its financial position was consolidated. Besides this, the library's new subordination was in Korff's opinion more in keeping with its intended purpose — to be "a complete literary and scholarly monument of the Russian Empire" — and indicated the library's special status as the principal book repository in Russia. The new document on the administration of the Public Library adopted in 1850 expanded and developed the Statutes of 1810 and 1812. It set out the duties of the library's director and his assistants, gave the director the right to manage the funds allocated and introduced the institution of honorary members and honorary correspondents. Korff succeeded in expanding staff numbers somewhat and obtained the right to take on "non-staff workers" (who were paid on a voluntary basis).

This enterprising director not only disposed of the constant headache which the numerous duplicate copies of books had caused Olenin and Buturlin, but even succeeded in doing so in such a way that the library benefitted greatly. (The use of doublets for exchange or sale was already envisaged in the 1810 Statutes. With this in mind, Olenin had given orders that duplicates be kept in a separate room and not mixed with the primary copies.) Korff organized the sale of duplicates in a grand manner that Olenin could not even have dreamt of. Catalogues were printed and sent out to different parts of Russia and abroad. Public auctions were held with tea served from samovars as were preliminary viewings of the books on offer with entry granted "to all decently attired persons of either sex". Tenders for books could also be made by post. Two sorts of catalogues were produced: comprehensive ones including banned publications (these were distributed to a chosen few on Korff's responsibility) and catalogues for "other people" in which the details of the undesirable works were blotted out with "opaque printer's ink".

The Baron Korff Room.

Half-tone from a photograph

by F. Korobov

Korff's administrative talent, his ability to get everyone working for goals which he set, revealed itself especially strongly with the creation in the 1850s of a separate Rossica section containing foreign books about Russia. Although this was a breach of his usually conservative attitude towards Olenin's legacy, Korff was still in many ways following a course already mapped out by his predecessors and in effect achieving a long established goal to bring together everything that had been printed about Russia in all languages.

Korff himself had long been engaged in bibliographical searches on Russian history and by the time he came to the library he had already accumulated extensive records. (When Pushkin sought Korff's help in finding material on Peter the Great's time, he was struck by the wealth of his former schoolfellow's knowledge.)

The creation of the Rossica department occupied a special place in the director's plans. It lay at the centre of his concerns and actions and prompted a whole series of special undertakings: the gathering of preliminary material for an intended definitive catalogue of works about Russia; the sending out of this material for consultation to Russian and foreign scholars, universities and learned societies; journeys abroad made by Korff. and other members of staff; links with Russian and foreign bibliophiles and book-dealers; the mobilization of all the librarians in search of books.

Purchases, exchanges and donations were all used to build up the collection. Each year between a thousand and two thousand titles came into the new department. These acquisitions included many rare or unique publications dealing with the history of Russian foreign relations. Material about the Crimean War (1853-56) comprised a distinct element within the collection.

Korff regarded the regeneration of the Public Library as the finest achievement of his life. He himself wrote: "Out of the chaos of a library that called itself public, but in effect took the form of a gigantic storeroom without light or life, Korff has managed to create a house of learning which, if still not the richest in the world, certainly comes first for organization, and especially for that liberality and hospitality with which it welcomes and satisfies the needs of its numerous visitors from the greatest magnate to the bonded serf, from the noblest lady to the lowliest midwife." And indeed he was right. If he did earn himself a lasting place in Russian history, it was largely due, as Dmitry Filosofov rightly observed, to his efforts to breathe new life into the Public Library in the 1850s.

Yet in speaking of these changes for the better, we should immediately recall that they were the fruits of collective endeavour. It was once quite rightly said that "Korff possessed to the highest degree the ability to utilize the thoughts and powers of his assistants." Bychkov worked zealously to build up the Russian department and insistently impressed upon Korff the prime importance of this task. Odoevsky as assistant director busied himself with the organization of the stocks and the acquisition of new foreign books. Sobolshchikov who had devoted much effort to the creation of the Rossica section, in 1859 wrote and published the first Russian-language guide to librarianship, The Organization of Public Libraries and the Compilation of Their Catalogues, a work which became known across Europe. In keeping with the new spirit of the times he spoke out decisively in favour of the democratic reorganization of the Public Library, which, he believed, should become a true "haven for all those seeking information and not a secret temple of learning, as was formerly the case". The function of historiographer and compiler of the library's reports was carried out in this period by Vladimir Stasov who was also entrusted with organizing exhibitions in the art section (works of the Russian school of engraving, for example, or engraved portraits of Peter the Great). Stasov was actively involved too in the compilation of a systematic catalogue of the Rossica department and in sorting out the prints in the art department. From 1850 the staff of the library included Kaetan Kossovich, one of the first Russian scholars of India and the author of a number of works on Oriental studies. Apart from managing the Oriental department, he was also resposible for editing the scholarly works published by the library and introducing visitors to its organizational structure and its priceless treasures.

For all the significance of the changes which took place in the 1850s, that decade nonetheless represented, to use Filosofov's expression, the "Middle Ages" in the history of the Public Library. The "Modern Era" arrived in the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth and the difference between these two eras was of the same magnitude as that between the light provided by the gas-jets which appeared in the library in 1851 and the electric lighting which was installed there forty years later. The "Modern Era": the Second Half of the 19th Century (1860 - 1899)

In post-reform Russia, a country moving towards a new level of civilization, the existence of the Public Library ceased, as one of the Russian periodicals stated, to be necessary only to a small group of specialists and became so "for the immense majority of ordinary mortals". Trends which were in essence only taking shape in the 1850s — the appearance of readers from the "unmonied strata of St Petersburg's population", changes in patterns of demand for books, the accelerated growth of stocks, and that increased interest shown in the most varied circles in the activities of the national library, something which Afanasy Bychkov described as "the vigilant monitoring of society" — all became pronounced phenomena towards the turn of the century. By the late 1890s the number of library users had increased almost sevenfold over the 1850s figures, the number of visits ninefold. In 1860, three thousand cards entitling the holder to use the library were issued, in 1899 the number was 16,500, in 1913 —27,500. In 1860 readers made 18,500 separate visits to the library, in 1899 — 137,000, in 1913 — 194,000.

The principle of unrestricted access repeatedly proclaimed in the documents of the Public Library had in practice been interpreted in different ways depending on the current historical circumstances. But in the Russia of Alexander II's reforms the last barriers between the classes which still existed in Korff's time were eliminated.

Peddlers on the Field of Mars.

Photograph. 1895

"The class of visitors to the reading room," Sobolshchikov wrote, "forms, as if by magic, a reflection of the transformations taking place in the population of St Petersburg. At present one finds there many persons from those classes of society which ten years ago seemed not to know of the existence of the Public Library."

In the social composition of the library's readership people of merchant, petty bourgeois or peasant origin were becoming an increasingly prominent element. The number of female library users grew noticeably: 18% by the late 1890s, 28-30% in the 1900s. The largest group of users were students: at the beginning of the twentieth century they made up 33%. By 1910 three-quarters of those receiving secondary or higher education in St Petersburg visited the library. While for them it acted as a second university, for Russian scholars it was a real research centre.

As in the first decades of the library's existence, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the majority of scholars made use of its stocks. There was now an especially large number of specialist readers (engineers, technicians, doctors, topographers, agronomists and teachers), while the uniform of the civil service became a less common sight.

The formal, museum-like festiveness of auctions, exhibitions and guided tours gave way to a practical workaday system. The library was returned to the Ministry of Public Education. One new feature which appeared in the 1880s was the recruitment of women as "non-staff workers"; the first to join the library were Josephine Stark and Lydia Zakorina. (By late 1917 more than twenty women were working in the Public Library, some of them — Yekaterina Lappa-Starzhenetskaya, Vera Struleva, Lydia Olavskaya — graduates of the pioneering Bestuzhev higher educational courses.)

In the changed conditions of Russian life, the user now became the most important figure in the library. It was therefore expected, as the memorandum "on the meaning of the title Librarian1'1 prepared by Bychkov explained, that the librarian would serve the reader with "useful advice and instructions" and not be a passive curator and registrar of the stocks. He was supposed to be up to date on current scholarship, competent in bibliography and aware of the state of the book market.

The laying of the foundation stone

for the reading hall designed by

Yevgraf Vorotilov.

Photograph by Karl Bulla. 1896

Afanasy Bychkov, who became director in 1882, following Korff's immediate successor Ivan Delianov, invested much energy in solving the most urgent problems — increasing the funding and the staff, and also the construction of a new extension. His policies were continued by Nikolai Schilder (director, 1899-1902) and Dmitry Kobeko (1902-18).

The Public Library drew readers with the completeness of its stocks and the regular and efficient way in which they were kept up to date. In the first half of the nineteenth century no more than 5,000 volumes were added to the library's stocks each year; in the 1850s this figure grew fivefold; in the 1890s eightfold and in the 1900s ten- to twelvefold. By 1913 the total stocks had passed the three million mark and the library was among the foremost in the world. Almost one third of all the books were in the Russian language. The development of book-publishing in Russia (the noted Russian bibliographer Nikolai Rubakin linked the appearance of "a flood of books" with the domestic changes that had taken place) stimulated the influx of books and other publications because of the law requiring a copy to be supplied to the library. In this period too the library kept a keen eye on its receipts of Russian printed matter in order to ensure comprehensiveness. The curators of the Russian Department, Vladimir Lambin and Vladimir Saitov, took up the cause pursued by Krylov, Sopikov, Bystrov, Bychkov and Mezhov, by defending the library's interests in the struggle against negligent publishers, censors and bureaucrats. Through their efforts, by the end of the nineteenth century the Public Library was in possession of the most complete collection of Russian books in the country. The Public Library could also boast Russia's richest collection of manuscript books and separate autograph manuscripts, documents and deeds. The fact that by the early twentieth century the Manuscript Department possessed autograph manuscripts by the Russian writers Pushkin, Herzen, Goncharov, Gri-boedov, Lermontov, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Nekrasov and Saltykov-Shchedrin and handwritten scores by Glinka, Balakirev, Borodin, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov suggested that the library was coping splendidly with its role as custodian of Russia's cultural heritage.

Positive changes were also taking place with regard to the expansion of foreign language stocks. While the humanities continued to represent the lion's share (more than 70% of the allocated funds were spent in that field) the significance of the natural and applied sciences was growing. Limited funds prompted the library to seek other means of acquiring books. Prominent among these, as before, were donations. Between the 1860s and the 1890s the library received some 300,000 volumes from voluntary benefactors, and some 200,000 more in the first decades of the twentieth century. There was probably not a single major figure in the Russian academic world who failed to help. Dmitry Mendeleev, Nikolai Miklukho-Maklai, Sergei Platonov, Alexei Shakhmatov, Vladimir Obruchev, Ignaty Krachkovsky, Nikolai Zinin, Ivan Pavlov and Semion Vengerov all made contributions. They not only donated books, but also willingly acted as consultants in the selection of books from abroad, the creation of catalogues and the description of manuscripts.

The library maintained lively scholarly links with practically all Russian universities, institutes, learned societies, archive commissions and museums, receiving books from the world's centres of learning and major book repositories. The growth of its prestige was also assisted by a tradition which went back to its very beginning: the majority of the staff were "men of learning". This was true not only under Olenin and Korff, but also in the decades that followed.

Among those who worked here were the historian and economist Pavel Sokolovsky whose works on the history of the Russian mral commune are still studied today; Nikolai Chechulin, an eminent authority on eighteenth-century Russia; Ernest Radlov, the historian of philosophy (pupil and friend of Vladimir Solovyev); the natural scientist, philosopher and literary critic Nikolai Strakhov; the entomologist Fiodor Keppen; the Orientalists Avraam Garkavi and Vastly Smirnov; the ethnographer Silvester Batromaitis; the archaeographer, literary historian and ethnographer Leonid Maikov; the expert in early Russian literature Chrysanth Loparev; the literary historian, bibliographer and scholar of historical sources Vladimir Saitov; the outstanding Russian palaeographer Nikolai Likhachev; the Byzantinist Afanasy Papado-poulo-Kerameus; Vladimir Bank, an expert on libraries; and Dmitry Abramovich and Ivan Bychkov, both archaeographers and literary historians. Many of them were elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences and were full or honorary members of learned societies and institutions at home and abroad. In the course of the nineteenth century a number of different scholarly schools formed within the walls of the Public Library through research into its printed and manuscript treasures — Greek and Western European palaeography. Oriental studies and the study of Voltaire.

In the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, the library served more palpably than before as a barometer of the public mood. In one of his reports William Hughes (Yuz), who had charge of the reading room, accurately observed that almost all those convicted of political crimes in St Petersburg had been users of the Public Library. Hughes was referring to the early 1880s, but in the following decades, which witnessed a mass upsurge of self-awareness, it still held true. Many members of the last prerevolutionary "intake" of librarians differed from their predecessors in that they overtly displayed their social sympathies and antipathies, allowing themselves to be drawn into religious, philosophical and political disputes and taking part (not always legally) in a variety of political organizations. This applies above all to Alexander Braudo, the head of the Rossica department, who had a wide range of connections in opposition circles; to Dmitry Filosofov, one of the creators of the World of Art magazine and a friend of Zinaida Gippius and Dmitry Merezhkovsky; to Anton Karta-shov, head of the Theological department, one of the leading lights of the revival in religious philosophy and a future minister in the 1917 Provisional Government; and to Georgy Fedo-tov and Alexander Meyer, one-time members of the social-democratic movement, who then in the early twentieth century created a new philosophical doctrine. The events which sent shudders across the whole of Russia such as Bloody Sunday on 9 January 1905, the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 or the collapse of the Empire naturally affected all those connected with the library, users and staff alike. The Pre-Revolutionary Years (1900 - 1917)

View of Nevsky Prospekt and

the Admiralty. Photograph. 1910

The hundredth anniversary of the opening of the Public Library was marked by a ceremony on 2 (15) January 1914. As in Olenin's time, the official character of the isstivities which almost entirely excluded the wider public — scholars, writers, public figures and ordinary library users — evoked criticism from "the left". Although, as Dmitry Filosofov remarked, "civilian dress outnumbered the uniforms" (of those in state service), officialdom predominated at the event and that was what determined the atmosphere.

The library was presented with a royal charter granted by Nicholas II. Formal congratulations arrived from all comers of the country: from libraries, book repositories, museums, archives, universities and learned societies, about three hundred in all. Friends from abroad also sent greetings on the occasion. Newspaper and periodicals, including those in the provinces, devoted articles or photographic coverage to the library. "The vigilant monitoring of society", which Bychkov had written about in reference to the 1850s, was still operating in the following decades. In total, between 1795 and 1917, according to figures which are far from complete, some 3,000 publications devoted to the Public Library appeared. To borrow Vladimir Stasov's words: "Here is clear evidence of the position which the library occupies in the cultural movement in our country, and of its composition, and of the personalities who have managed and who now manage its treasures."

View of Nevsky Prospekt

from Lejeune's restaurant.

Photograph. 1910

From the outset the library combined the function of collecting and preserving printed and handwritten works with that of providing access to them without payment. The principle that readers should be served free of charge was never breached at any time. The level of education and the state of librarianship in Russia prompted the Public Library to be simultaneously the treasury of the nation's books, an open university and a centre of scholarly research. Russia's "Great Library" had made a considerable contribution to the development of enlightenment and learning. But while there was a marked unanimity in the assessment of its past achievements, the directions which its future development should take became a matter of dispute. These arguments mirrored the positions of the various political forces. When Lenin in exile learned of the forthcoming jubilee from Russian newspapers, he wrote the article "What can be done for popular education" which formulated Social Democratic attitudes and stressed the issue of access to the Public Library. While Lenin expressed outrage at the attempts of the overweeningly protective administration to preserve "our rich public libraries from the mob on the street", an entirely different position was taken by Mikhail Menshikov, a highly influential Russian journalist and leading writer on the Novoe Vremya (New Age) newspaper. In an article entitled "The Great Library", he said much that was positive, and justly so, about the institution in which "the majority of the educated Russian public spent their youth and mature years". But he regarded the democratization of the Public Library and the growth of its role in the self-education of young people as a threat to the country's future: "Seats of education such as schools and libraries should not be abandoned to plundering by the mob," he declared. Menshikov proposed that the library assume the function of directing reading in the character of guardian of the status quo.

The Reading Room. 1910s.

The opinions of liberal circles close to the Constitutional Democrats were expressed by Dmitry Filosofov. The articles he wrote about the history of the library are of great value. They are not only brilliant pieces of writing, but also contain neat characterizations of various figures and periods. Filosofov gave his support to further "rational democratization" of the Public Library's activities. "The library," he wrote, "exists for the reader and our wish is that, as it enters the second century of its existence, the library will maintain closer contact with the reader,... so that it turns from a state institution into a truly national one."

The February Revolution of 1917 changed many accustomed aspects of life in the national book repository which immediately dropped the word Imperial from its title and became the Public Library of Russia. By the middle of the year, new draft statutes which would allow the library's activities to be brought into line with the principles proclaimed by the new authorities had been drawn up and examined in various ministries and in the State Duma. This draft, produced by a team including the academician Vladimir Vernadsky, envisaged the library being run by a director appointed by the decree of the Provisional Government in tandem with the library council. The functions and composition of this council were considerably expanded, such that, although it remained as before a consultative body attached to the director, on a number of issues it now had the deciding say. A truly principle change was that persons of either sex could be taken onto the staff — prior to this women had worked in the library only on a non-staff basis. The suggestions contained in the draft were put into practice quite quickly, although legally the statutes were not adopted by the appointed day, 1 November 1917. The October revolution intervened.

For the first few days after the Bolshevik seizure of power, the library remained closed. A general meeting of the staff voted to join the protest strike being held in Petrograd's institutes of learning and education and refused to acknowledge the new authorities. But this resistance did not last long. As in other organizations a commissar appointed by the new government appeared in the library. The Period of the Civil War and Building a Socialist Economy (1918 - 1940)

At the end of January Dmitry Kobeko was removed from the position of library director, and three months later, on 22 April 1918, the People's Commissariat for Education approved another new set of Statutes for the Public Library.

In many respects this document implemented the suggestions of the draft drawn up under the Provisional Government, but on the issue of democratizing the administration of the library it went further still. Collective management became the guiding principle. The post of director became an elected one (the first elected director was Ernest Radlov who had effectively been in charge since 1916). The post of government commissar was retained. The considerably expanded council, with an orientation under the new conditions primarily towards the establishment of links with scholarly, educational and other organizations, proved in general to be ineffective. The statutes did, however, enshrine in legislation the library's status as national book repository with an even greater range of tasks: it was now expected to afford all possible assistance to public education and the development of knowledge among the broad masses of the population.

The years of the First World War, the revolutions and the Civil War which followed left their mark on the library. The number of users dropped sharply, to almost a tenth of the pre-war figure.

The character not only of the readership, but also of the librarians changed. Specialists who had gone into emigration were replaced by many unqualified workers. The supply of new books declined, while acquisitions from abroad virtually ceased altogether. The main sources of new stocks in this period were the collections of former government institutions, palaces, public organizations and private individuals who had left the city. After the revolution the Public Library absorbed the libraries of the State Council, the State Duma, theMinistry of Justice, the Theological Seminary and St Sophia's Cathedral in Novgorod, the Kirillo-Belozersky and Solovetsky Monasteries, the editorial archives of Russkoe slovo and Russkoe bogatstvo, the personal libraries of Professor Boris Nikolsky (lawyer, poet and literary critic), the above-mentioned Dmitry Filosofov, Pavel Miliukov (historian and politician, leader of the Constitutional Democrats), Count Ivan Tolstoi (former Minister of Public Education), Pavel Viazemsky (head of the Chief Administration for the Affairs of the Press) and Ivan Shishkin (artist), the collections of Vladimir Adariukov (art expert, collector of prints), Platon Vaksel (musical critic and composer), Konstantin Voensky (historian, head of the archives at the Ministry of Public Education), Yelizaveta Vodovozova (writer), Alexander Pypin (historian of Russian literature), Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (the composer) , Vastly Sergeevich, the collection of the Society of the Lovers of Ancient Literature, and many others.

The problem of making rational use of these riches led to the establishment of a large number of branches which were intended first and foremost to reduce the excessive demand on the reading rooms of the city's main library.

The collection of the Free Economic Society, for example, grew into the Library of National Economy; the World Literature publishing house's stock of books provided the foundation for a foreign publications branch; while in the Taurida Palace, meeting place of the State Duma, the stock of books assembled for that body formed the basis for another library. In 1929 a specialist anti-religious branch began operating with stocks drawn from the Department of Cults (formerly the Theological Department) within the Public Library and from the library of the Theological Academy. Some branches were created from scratch and their stocks were assembled from duplicate copies and acquisitions made by the library itself. All these establishments, however, from the country's first Youth Library (created in the Shuvalov Mansion on the Fontanka Embankment in 1925) upwards, took the form of mass reading halls born of the passing spirit of the time. They accorded poorly with the status of the Public Library and in 1946 were abolished.

One branch destined to endure for a long time was the Plekhanov House created under the auspices of the Public Library in 1928. It was organized and headed by Rosalia Plekhanova-Bograd, the widow of the founder of Russian Marxism, and immediately became the most important centre for scholarly analysis of the theoretical legacy left by that prominent thinker.

By the late 1920s the system giving the library a statutory copy of all publications which had been dismpted by the war was back in full operation and was the main source of new stocks. Purchase as a means of acquiring new works published within the country was of no practical significance whatsoever for a long period due to an almost complete lack of funds. It became financially possible again only in the mid-1930s. Things were even more difficult with regard to the acquisition of foreign literature. The limited amounts of currency available were used chiefly on subscriptions to periodicals, mainly those in the fields of technology and economics. The spirit of industrialization which seized the country at that time resulted in a certain one-sidedness in the library's thinking and this was reflected in acquisition policy.

In the 1920s and 1930s considerable changes took place in the stmcture of the library. The tendency, established as far back as Korff's time, to divide the institution up according to branches of learning into departments, each of which was, as Korff himself observed, "a separate, self-contained library", had proved itself inefficient and was now replaced by a system of functional departments: acquisition, processing and storage of stocks, reader services and bibliography. The new system did not exclude the possibility of organizing departments on the basis of language or type of document (e.g., manuscripts) or separating off what had already long been autonomous parts of the Russian department — maps, sheet music, prints.

From the mid-1920s, with the increasing ideological clampdown in the country, access to certain works started to be restricted on political grounds and what was known as the "forbidden" special stock began to be formed. At first not especially significant, it grew tremendously in the years of mass repressions. In the period 1935-38 alone more than 49,000 items were transferred there from the ordinary stocks. In organizational terms this process led to the creation of a Special Storage Department within the library structure.

At that same time the reading premises were divided into "general" and "research" rooms. The arrangement of specialized halls was established which in general terms still exists today with separate rooms for socio-economic literature, belles-lettres and art; the natural sciences and medicine, physics and mathematics, chemistry and technology. Rooms were set aside for the reading of periodical publications — newspapers and journals — and for work with the cartographic stocks. The same course was followed in the development of the information and bibliographical service.

In the 1930s the exchange of books between libraries became a firmly established practice. In the last year before the war the stocks of the main book repository in Leningrad were already being utilised by more than 1,500 other libraries in the country. Gradually such links were also set up with institutions abroad — among others with the New York Public Library and the German Gesellschaft ftir die Forderung der deutschen Wissenschaft (1926) and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris (1927). In 1929 proposals came in from no less than 27 libraries around the world, including Bulgaria, Sweden, Norway, Italy, Cuba, Finland and Japan. Particularly close relations were formed with Britain, France and Germany. As a result in the decade 1931-41 exchanges brought some 42,000 printed articles into the Public Library, almost twice the number of books purchased in the same period.

Never, even in the most difficult times, did research work in the Public Library cease, although in the 1920s it was generally of a rather sporadic nature and many interesting studies were then not continued. This period in the library's history is memorable for its association with such major scholars as Dmitry Abramovich, Vladimir Beneshevich, Ivan Bychkov, Nikolai Derzhavin, Vladimir Maikov, Vladimir Saitov, Ernest Radlov and Olga Dobiash-Rozhdestvenskaya. Some of them had entered the library before the revolution. Only the fortunate among them lived to enjoy a peaceful and well-deserved retirement. The library suffered greatly from the mass repressions of the 1930s which directly affected many of its staff. Among the victims were Dmitry Abramovich, Alexander Meyer, Lydia Olavskaya, the director Mechislav Dobranitsky, and, just a little earlier, Vladimir Anderson, the former commissar of the library. Yet the hardest times of all still lay ahead. The Years of the Great Patriotic War (1941 - 1945)

The war with Nazi Germany which began on 22 June 1941 and the 900-day siege of Leningrad that followed will remain forever the greatest sorrow in the history of the National Library of Russia. In the first months of the war more than 50 members of the staff joined the fighting forces; 138 died in the terrible winter of 1941-42; the number of workers fell to about 200, a quarter of the peacetime figure. They were left to carry out an immense amount of work under incredibly difficult circumstances. But, for all that, throughout the entire war, including the period of the siege, the library never ceased to serve its readers.

As during the war against Napoleon in 1812, the most valuable parts of the collection — manuscripts, incunabula, other early printed books, Russian books from the sixteenth century and the "Golden Age" (the first quarter of the nineteenth century), the Rossica stocks, Voltaire's library, the Plekhanov House archives and more — were packed for evacuation in an exceptionally short time and taken away to the town of Melekess in Ulyanovsk region. The large group of staff members who accompanied the books managed to preserve these priceless treasures intact in totally unsuitable conditions and in October 1945 these works were returned to Leningrad.

Measures were also taken to protect the valuable stocks left behind in the beleaguered city. The Central Reference Library, print collections, the reading room auxiliary library and also the main catalogues were moved to the lower floors and the cellars. An air-raid defence group formed from the staff lived on the premises and kept constant watch. The library also made a substantial contribution to saving people whose strength had been drained by hunger. In the hardest period about 200 people received treatment in the infirmary set up in the library buildings.

The front of the library

during the Siege of Leningrad

In January 1942 the library lost its water supply — the heating had ceased to function even earlier — and the last of the reading rooms was closed. Up until January 1944 visitors worked in the small rooms belonging to the administration. A few figures demonstrate better than anything that there really was a need for the library to keep functioning. During the siege 9,229 readers made use of its stocks and they were given more than half a million books. In all, throughout the war years, 42,597 people visited the library. In 464,000 visits they were given almost one-and-a-half million different printed items. In 1941-42 more than 10,000 books were provided for use in military units and hospitals.

The members of the staff

unloading firewood. 1943 г.

The library also responded instantly to the requests of the military commanders tackling the problems of organizing life in a fighting, besieged, starving city. Various pieces of information and books were provided on a very wide range of subjects: the construction of defences and roads over frozen bodies of water, various methods of camouflage, field surgery, substitutes for foodstuffs and so on.

When electricity and heating were restored following the lifting of the siege, the number of users immediately increased. On 1 November 1944 the large reading hall reopened after restoration work while the branch attached to the Palace of Pioneers and the Library of Local Economy resumed their work. Efforts began to fill the gaps in the library's stocks which had inevitably arisen because publications were missed during the siege.