Destinies of editions about the Russian-Japanese War in the collections of pre-revolutionary military libraries

Abstract

The relevance of the topic is due to the great role of military-historical literature and libraries as its repositories in forming the historical memory ofthe people, which is important for ensuring the spiritual security of the country. The article is the first to examine publications on the Russian-Japanese War of 1904-1905 from the book collection of the “House of Officers of the Novosibirsk Garrison” of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, got from other military libraries. The purpose of the article is to identify the fate of military libraries. Research tasks are: 1) to calculate the number of publications on the Russian-Japanese War in the book collection of the “House of Officers...”; 2)to reconstruct their repertoire; 3) to determine libraries which collections they were originally included in. The study methodologically bases on historic, objective, systematic principles, localization of historical facts. Methods used are that of source studying, comparative and statistical. The work is done on a wide representative source base, constituted from pre-revolutionary publications of the “Houses of Officers...,” periodicals, regulatory and legal documents of the military department. 21 catalogs of officer libraries were analyzed, confirming the presence of issues on the Russian-Japanese War in them. As a result of the study, 92 pre-revolutionary works in 100 copies dedicated to the Russian-Japanese War were revealed in the library of the House of Officers. For 66 of them in 71 copies the former ownership of 18 military libraries was established. Their repertoire was reconstructed. The results show that the First World War, which destroyed the personnel of the Russian army, became an involuntary cause of the ruin of ­military libraries, having left them without supervision in the places of the previous quartering of troops and deprived them of officers - enthusiasts of ­librarianship. The revolutions of 1917, radical transformations of Soviet power and the Civil War completed the ruin of the tsarist army military libraries, which ceased to exist as independent book collections. The study has expanded the understanding of the state role in military-historical works’ dissemination and military libraries’ collections replenishment.