Knowledge is Power: The Story of the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia

Abstract

This article focuses on the history of national encyclopaedia publishing in Soviet Russia, which was similar to the national encyclopaedias of France, Great Britain, the US, and the pre-revolutionary Russian Brockhauz – Efron Encyclopaedic Dictionary. The Soviet enterprise was an attempt to create an encyclopaedia combining universal knowledge and ideological values. Every revolution starts with a new understanding of reality and public access to a certain type of knowledge, for which encyclopaedias are emblems. The history of encyclopaedia publishing in Soviet Russia demonstrates how difficult and even dangerous encyclopaedias are in times of social transition and political strife. Encyclopaedias were claimed to reshape their users’ mentality and change their habits: they represented a newly established social order based on a monopoly over knowledge and power. Two editions of the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia are used to illustrate the transition from new, revolutionary, and sometimes even provocative content to an entirely institutionalised enterprise with a measured dose of truth, strict censorship, and a system of checking and double-checking. The total financial dependence of encyclopaedia publishers, editors, and contributors on the state turned the encyclopaedia into an additional tool in the communist education of Soviet citizens.