Library Activity within the Supreme Council of National Economy of the USSR: at the Origins of the State Scientific Library (1918—1927)

Abstract

One of the first large libraries, created in Russia after the 1917 revolution, was the State Scientific-Technical and Economic Library (SSTEL) of the Scientific and Technical Department of the Supreme Council of the National Economy of the RSFSR (from 1923 — of the USSR). The library was organized June 17, 1918. N.P. Gorbunov, the Chairman of the Collegium of the Scientific and Technical Department, took the most important part in its formation. By 1924, the library holdings consisted of 80 000 books, among which were the country’s only full sets of Russian and foreign journals, books on technology, engineering, exact and natural sciences. The richest acquisition of the State Scientific-Technical and Economic Library became the large library of the former Society for the Advancement of Experienced Sciences and their Practical Applications named after Kh.S. Ledentsov, housed in a specially equipped library building. The “Ledentsovskaya” library became the Central Department of SSTEL, and its location near five Moscow Universities made it the center of attraction for students-readers. The SSTEL success in 1922—1926 was associated with the active work of its Head, M.V. Panov, as well as the support of Academician V.N. Ipatyev, the Chairman of the Collegium of the Scientific and Technical Department of the Supreme Council of the National Economy. In 1923—1926 in the Supreme Council of the National Economy appeared and began to dominate another library center, the Central Library of the Supreme Council of National Economy, headed by the intellectual revolutionary L.A. Schlossberg. Having received its status of the main one in the system of the entire Supreme Economic Council, the Central Library, like SSTEL, absorbed many of the book collections, inherited from the abolished institutions of the tsarist time. September 13, 1927, on the basis of these two libraries, there was established the unified State Scientific Library of the Scientific and Technical Department of the Supreme Council of National Economy, which existed then, under the leadership of various People’s Commissariats and Ministries, until October 1958.