Lenin Library Research Articles

Stalin’s Library: A Dictator and his Books By GeoffreyRoberts. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022, viii + 259 pp. $30.00. ISBN 978‐0‐300‐17904‐0

Taking advantage of a fascinating source base, Stalin's Library surveys for the first time in English the dictator’s notes and scribblings that he left on the margins of hundreds of volumes from his private book collection. In this work, Geoffrey Roberts argues persuasively that such notes are critical for any thorough appreciation of Stalin as thinker, insofar as his comments were extemporaneous, unrehearsed, and not subject to subsequent editing or censorship. In many senses the “unvarnished truth,” they shed light on how the general secretary reacted to some of the most important ideas in the books that he read. Building on work of Russian researchers such as Boris Ilizarov, Roberts contends that Stalin’s marginalia reveals him to have been a self-made intellectual of sorts—a voracious reader with the ability to assimilate and retain enormous amounts of information on a huge variety of subjects. Stalin’s Library finally puts to rest Lev Trotsky’s famously dismissive appraisal of Stalin as an intellectual mediocrity. Aside from surveying Stalin’s interaction with his favorite books, Stalin’s Library also examines how Stalin intervened as agent, referee, editor, and publisher in the broader realm of Soviet mass culture. Aside from editing famous political tracts such as the 1938 History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course, the dictator shaped dozens of other volumes ranging from his own collected works to the belle lettres. Although elements of this latter story have been discussed in a variety of other English-language monographs, never before have they been assembled together for such a sweeping treatment. Stalin’s Library reinforces the impression created elsewhere that Stalin was a polymath of sorts with seemingly limitless time, energy, and concentration. According to Roberts, over the course of a quarter century in power Stalin accumulated a library containing some 25,000 books. After his death, this collection was broken up, with those volumes containing marginalia and underlining being transferred to the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute (IMEL) for safe keeping (some 400 volumes in all). Of the rest, those belonging to other collections were returned (73 long-overdue books were sent back to the Lenin Library alone!) and everything else was divided among the IMEL library and other important research collections. Roberts’s reconstruction of this collection leads him to agree with earlier Russian studies of Stalin’s library by Ilizarov, Roi Medvedev, Dmitrii Volkogonov, and others that Stalin was an avid reader with eclectic tastes. Although his library did not contain some of the volumes that past biographers like Adam Ulam, Robert Tucker, and Edvard Radzinsky have imaged him reading (titles like Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince, Sergei Nechaev’s Catechism of a Revolutionary, and Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf), it did include a surprising array of banned books by Trotsky, Nikolai Bukharin, Grigory Zinov'ev, and Lev Kamenev. Stalin’s massive literary holdings included the expected classics, such as Saltykov-Shchedrin and Gorky, as well as foreign authors such as Victor Hugo. That said, most titles bearing traces of Stalin’s marginalia were non-fiction, and all were Russian. According to Roberts, the majority of Stalin’s notes in the margins of these books were of a spontaneous, emotional nature, with underlinings and exclamations like “yes-yes” and “NB” alternating with “nonsense,” “hah-hah” and “piss off” (p. 99). Less frequently, Stalin engaged with the material that he read with more lengthy commentary and critique. Unfortunately, the fact that this marginalia is impossible to date with any precision makes such notes difficult to contextualize or connect to specific episodes in their author’s life. More straightforward is Roberts’s analysis of about one hundred typescripts and publisher’s galleys that the general secretary vetted for publication between the 1920s and early 1950s. Referring to Stalin as “The Editor in Chief of the USSR,” Roberts contends that Stalin was surprisingly effective at providing authors with the feedback necessary to bring their work into alignment with the official line. That said, Roberts does not go as far as people like Alexei Yurchak to suggest that Stalin’s editing had assumed a hegemonic quality within Soviet mass culture by the time of his death in 1953. A survey of hundreds of titles rather than a close analysis of a smaller selection of canonical classics, Stalin’s Library has more to say about the breadth of the general secretary’s reading tastes than it does about the depth of his intellectual engagement with specific issues. For more on the latter, readers should consult Erik van Ree’s The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin (2002) and his supplementary articles, as well as a recent volume by the present reviewer and Mikhail Zelenov entitled Stalin’s Master Narrative: A Critical Edition of the Short Course on the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course (2019).

The literary museum and the Korolenko family

The article discusses the professional ties and personal friendship between V. Korolenko and V. Bonch-Bruevich, examining their correspondence dating back to 1892. Upon Korolenko’s death, Bonch-Bruevich, later to become director of the State Literary Museum, continues his correspondence with Korolenko’s daughter Sofia, discussing primarily, but not solely, the writer’s archive. Even though the family decided to entrust Korolenko’s archive to the Lenin Library, which boasted more appropriate preservation facilities than the Literary Museum, Bonch-Bruevich and Sofia Korolenko would exchange letters for many more years, enjoying each other’s trust and friendship. Bonch-Bruevich would support Korolenko’s family. After Bonch-Bruevich passed away, followed by Sofia two years later, the correspondence between the Literary Museum and the Korolenko Museum in Poltava continued until 1960; the letters were written by Evgeny Balabanovich, director of Chekhov Museum affiliated with the State Literary Museum, and his counterpart in Poltava, Lyubov Geishor, who ran the Korolenko Museum. The earliest letter quoted in the article dates from 1892, while the latest discovered epistle comes from 1960.

Introduction

Introduction

ПЕРВОПЕЧАТНЫЕ ТРАВНИКИ ГЕРМАНИИ ИЗ СОБРАНИЯ РГБ: НА ПУТИ К МАССОВОЙ ЛИТЕРАТУРЕ

Early printed herbals have a special place in the 15th-century book production as they were popular both with academics, including medical scientists and pharmacists, and with the common reader. The popular response to the mass production of herbal books made possible by the invention of printing left textual and linguistic evidence in the form of handwritten marginal notes. In the present study, six copies of illustrated herbals printed in Mainz by Peter Schoeffer in 1484 and 1485 are compared as to the subject, language and function of the marginal notes found in them. Five of these books are from the Rare Books Department of the Russian State (former Lenin) Library, the sixth copy from the Moscow University Library is used to enable better comparison. The analysis has shown that the types of marginal notes vary significantly depending on the owners’ social status, interest, background, and on the time and region. Marginal notes in Latin or Greek are considered from the point of view of their thematic (content) and chronological (dating) characteristics. As the result of many centuries of natural science, herbals were an important source of professional knowledge for academics, including medical scientists and pharmacists, of the time. Thematically, linguistically and paleographically, marginal notes of this type can be ascribed to professionals or students of natural sciences. Notes made considerably later than the incunabula era can in fact only be explained by an academic interest on the part of the reader (some notes date after 1700). Marginal notes made in German and, judging by the handwriting, dating closer to 1500 reflect work of common medical practitioners or even of lay readers, who used their herbals to cope with practical problems of their everyday life. These German marginal notes are of high interest as a source for German language history, as they contain synonymous names of plants, additional to those used in the printed text. The analysis of their form, dialect, and distribution proves that they offer valuable lexical material (regional names) in the semantic field usually scarcely documented in medieval literary texts. Those descriptions, which are indicative of region or dialect, show a distinct Southern German origin of their authors.

Office for People’s Education at the Lenin Library (USSR State Library) (1926-1930)

The history of establishment and dissolution of the Office for People’s Education - that succeeded the Russian State Library for People’s Education established on the initiative of prominent pedagogue and bibliographer V. I. Charnolusky - is discussed. The shady role of People’s Commissariat of Education (Narkompros) and the Lenin Library that undertook the Office’ staff, collections and card catalogs, is revealed.

Reagan at Reykjavik: Forty-Eight Hours That Ended the Cold War

<i>Reagan at Reykjavik: Forty-Eight Hours That Ended the Cold War</i>

The Staff of the Lenin Library on the Frontlines of the Great Patriotic War

Review of the Publication "The Russian State Library in the years of the Great Patriotic War: the Frontline”

Training of the Lenin Library Staff during the Great Patriotic War

During the Great Patriotic War (1941—1945) of the staff training in the State Library of the USSR of V.I. Lenin continued on the base of its resources, though and in smaller volume, than before the War. The lecture system was replaced by seminars. This form of education allowed the Library to continue its activity on highly professional level.

Escaping Lenin's library: Library and Information Science education in independent Ukraine

This article examines historical developments and current trends in Ukrainian library education. It gives a synthetic overview and comparison with US library education, based on a review of the Ukrainian literature, a survey of Library and Information Service (LIS) curricula and interviews with senior figures in Ukrainian LIS education. Ukraine became an independent state only in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Previous to independence, Ukraine's LIS education was integrated within the Soviet system. After independence the system evolved slowly, but with the recent Orange Revolution, reform efforts have increased pace. Ukrainian LIS education remains more vocational than in the US, with a two-year non-degree certificate as the most common training, and a four-year bachelor's degree offered by elite institutions. One emerging trend in LIS education stresses the new opportunities for librarians and information professionals opened by Internet technologies. Another is part of a more general shift, inspired by a new Ukrainian higher education law, stressing the country's independent culture and formalizing standards for different degrees. LIS education has now reached a turning point, as reformers grapple with the limited resources, power of inertia, and remnants of Soviet culture in their efforts to meet current challenges and prepare a new generation of information professionals.

Escaping Lenin's library: Library and Information Science education in independent Ukraine

Summary This article examines historical developments and current trends in Ukrainian library education. It gives a synthetic overview and comparison with US library education, based on a review of the Ukrainian literature, a survey of Library and Information Service (LIS) curricula and interviews with senior figures in Ukrainian LIS education. Ukraine became an independent state only in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Previous to independence, Ukraine's LIS education was integrated within the Soviet system. After independence the system evolved slowly, but with the recent Orange Revolution, reform efforts have increased pace. Ukrainian LIS education remains more vocational than in the US, with a two-year non-degree certificate as the most common training, and a four-year bachelor's degree offered by elite institutions. One emerging trend in LIS education stresses the new opportunities for librarians and information professionals opened by Internet technologies. Another is part of a more general shift, inspired by a new Ukrainian higher education law, stressing the country's independent culture and formalizing standards for different degrees. LIS education has now reached a turning point, as reformers grapple with the limited resources, power of inertia, and remnants of Soviet culture in their efforts to meet current challenges and prepare a new generation of information professionals.

Pashkov Dom, Publishing House of the Russian State Library, Seeks Partners and Recommendations for Translation Series

ABSTRACT Pashkov dom, publishing house of the Russian State Library (formerly the Lenin Library) is seeking partners and recommendations of significant foreign works for its translation series “Biblioteka budushchego: zarubezhnyi opyt” (The Library of the Future: Foreign Experience). Contact information is provided.

The Red Horse

Having just come to university, I was anxious not to miss any lectures. And so every Tuesday and Wednesday, when they started early, I was half asleep in the Metro on my way to the faculty. As the train moved out of Lenin Hills Station, I opened my eyes, hearing voices speaking in a foreign language, and glanced across at the people opposite. There were five of them: two girls and three boys, chatting non-stop. I did not know the language, but it sounded very beautiful. They were in their early twenties. One of the girls had incredible eyes, emerald green, huge, constantly moving, playing and laughing. She noticed that I was staring at her, and became even more excited, like a good actress who is aware of her attractions for the audience. Each time, as she turned her head from side to side talking to her friends, her glance would linger on me slightly longer. I just could not take my eyes away from her. Even her friends noticed my gaze: looking at me, they exchanged a few words and laughed warmly. I hardly noticed the stations passing by, until the whole group stood up to get out at Lenin Library Station. The girl with the eyes hesitated for a moment, smiled at me, and followed the others. My stop was next, but I half-thought of running after them to see where the girl went, and perhaps even to talk with her. But then I thought of the lecture I would miss, and anyway she was probably with her boyfriends and it was not for me that she had been performing. I could not concentrate on my lectures and seminars that day. Finally I decided to confess to Golovakha. He was my closest friend, and he had recently saved me from my former roommates by telling me how idiotic they were and suggesting that we should write a letter to the faculty authorities requesting that we be allowed to share a room together. He, with his usual businesslike approach, asked me which station the girl had gotten off at. When he heard that it was Lenin Library, he immediately said that the girl was almost certainly a student at the University, since that station was in the University area, the time was the time when lectures started, and she was together with a group of young people. Now, if she was a student, according to his calculations of probability I was bound to run into her again within the next two months. I never doubted his judgment, and I felt much better. Soon all of us were sharing a room in the dormitory. That is, myself, Golovakha, Mishutka, and Yosio Sato. Trying to recruit people for our room, we selected Mishutka for his huge nose. It was his main asset, and he constantly picked it; his other attractions were that he was not entirely stupid and that he recognised straightaway the leading role of Golovakha and myself. Yosio Sato we found at the first Young Communist League meeting. Being a foreigner, he did not have to attend, as we did, but he came out of curiosity, and we noticed the ironic expression in his usually impassive Japanese eyes as he watched the proceedings around him. Golovakha's two months were coming to an end, but the girl was nowhere to be seen. I often wandered aimlessly around the University precinct and waited at the entrances of various faculties. Winter was setting in. One late November evening-it was about six o'clock, Golovakha was at his relatives; Yosio Sato in the library, and Mishutka was picking his nose even more than usual-I went to take a shower. The dormitory showers were disgusting: huge rooms with no partitions, bleak walls, cold concrete floors. Standing on a bench and rubbing myself with a towel, I tried to conceal my private parts from at least a dozen people around me. It was, I remembered, exactly two months before that day that I had seen her. I pulled on my trousers. I was shuffling in my slippers along the corridor when the front door of the building opened, letting in a blast of cold air and Vladimir Shestakov, one of my few friends in this place. With him was the girl with the green eyes and her girlfriend from the Metro. …

Introduction: Centrifuge and Fragmentation

seismic changes inaugurated by desovietization not only recast entire framework of Russia's cultural priorities, production, and reception, but ultimately revised fundamental concepts of what constitutes culture... This introductory material is available in Studies in 20th Century Literature: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol24/iss1/2 Introduction: Centrifuge and Fragmentation Helena Goscilo University of Pittsburgh seismic changes inaugurated by desovietization not only recast entire framework of Russia's cultural priorities, production, and reception, but ultimately revised fundamental concepts of what constitutes culture. reduction, then withdrawal, of formerly guaranteed state subsidies, a steady barrage of nationwide financial crises amidst announced transition to a market economy, increased contacts with West, and emergence of New Russians as an influential (and highly controversial) quasi-class resulted in comprehensive rethinking and reformation in all spheres. Seventy-year-old habits and fulfilled expectations died a slow but, in several cases, violent and irreversible death. As centralized, government-sponsored model of culture, with its sacrosanct hierarchies and huge organizational networks, ceded to a dizzying welter of discrete, smaller-scale enterprises, seemingly unassailable institutions within traditional structures teetered and crumbled. Literature, art, film, music, theater, and ballet lost not only official sponsorship, but also status and audiences. Under impact of widespread disillusionment with ideology, elimination of censorship, and an initially uncritical receptivity to Western forces, popular culture rapidly dislodged High Culture. axiom the bigger they are, harder they fall acquired vivid life as state publishing houses foundered, mammoth subscriptions to major literary journals evaporated, country's premier libraries and museums (e.g., Lenin Library in Moscow, Hermitage in St. Petersburg) verged on collapse and curtailed their services, Bolshoi Theater broadcast desperate appeals for foreign aid, and film industry shrank to point of near-evanescence. Formerly lionized writers at both extremes of political spec1 Goscilo: Introduction: Centrifuge and Fragmentation Published by New Prairie Press 8 STCL, Volume 24, No.1 (Winter, 2000) trum (Rasputin, Solzhenitsyn, Limonov) proved irrelevant to those cultural developments that galvanized media and urban population. Russian culture of 1990s, in a sense, reflected vagaries of Yeltsin's presidency in its ever-shifting parade of figures and entities enjoying shortlived glory in fickle but tirelessly focused spotlight. (Mark Lipovetsky's article identifies major currents in readership-poor Russian literature of 1990s, while Mikhail Gnedovskii' s article on prize-winning museum in Krasnoiarsk, Siberia, addresses phenomenon of creative vitality on periphery.) Media Might and Pop on Top While Culture as conceived during Soviet era dwindled into an endangered species, new genres overran cultural market, which catered to a steadily growing appetite for visual stimulation and light entertainment, as well as enthusiasm for outsized gesture and violation of cherished taboos. Pulp fiction garnered millions of readers; glossy magazines flooded kiosks and bookstalls; television shows responding to a taste for confessional, scandalous, and voyeuristic thrived; flamboyant, extravagant, and highly publicized receptions, parties, and presentations became a dominant urban form (often dubbed tusovka); sales of pirated recordings, videos, and software grew into a multi-million dollar industry; cafes and privately owned restaurants, clubs, galleries, beauty salons, and countless small businesses materialized almost overnight, altering face of Moscow and transforming it into Cellular-phone City. exclusive Central House of Literati (TsDL), jealously guarded citadel of Moscow's literary elite, became a ruinously expensive culinary haven affordable only to New Russians. While internationally renowned, landmark museums struggled to survive, Marat Gel' man' s modest-sized, programmatically irreverent gallery drew visitors and media coverage with such tongue-in-cheek shows as The Art of Kompromat and, to commemorate Pushkin's bicentennial this year, Fak iu, Danthes!-a title and rhetorical position calculated to shock while eliciting Pushkin-empathy. (The article by Helena Goscilo in this issue analyzes role of glossies during decade.) apparent replacement of monolithic state conglomerates by diverse multiplicity was partly illusory, for nineties witnessed birth of sizable private empires wielding incalculable influence: 2 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 24, Iss. 1 [2000], Art. 2 http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol24/iss1/2 DOI: 10.4148/2334-4415.1473

Psychoanalysis in the Soviet Union: On the History of a Defeat

Until the mid-twenties, psychoanalysis enjoyed lively growth in the USSR: the State Psychoanalytic Institute and the International Solidarity Children's Home attached to the Laboratory of the Psychoanalytic Institute were founded, and a plethora of original and translated literature on psychoanalysis was published. The state publishers produced a complete collection of Freud's works. And then, suddenly, nothing! Not a trace was left of the Psychoanalytic Institute; and Gorky, along with his collection of rugs, replaced the children in the house at International Solidarity. The Russian psychoanalytic school was destroyed, and the books were forbidden. For a long time Freud's works were under ban in the Lenin Library, so that to read Freud, one had to bring from one's place of employment an "affidavit"—authenticated with a round official seal—that it was necessary to read this or that book. The situation has now begun to change, but not all of Freud's books have yet been moved from the special stacks to public access.

Bakhtin's Legacy and the History of Science and Culture: an Interview with Anatoli Akhutin and Vladimir Bibler

Bakhtin’s Legacy and the History of Science and Culture: An Interview with Anatolii Akhutin and Vladimir Bibler Daniel Alexandrov and Anton Struchkov1 Daniel Alexandrov: Let me begin with the following introductory remark. You, Vladimir Solomonovich [Bibler], have been schooled as a historian. However, it is philosophy, not history, that has turned out to be your vocation and creative destiny. You, Anatolii Valerianovich [Akhutin], were educated in chemistry. Then you devoted much time to the history of science, especially to its philosophical aspect. Thus, your professional interests also concentrate, first and foremost, upon philosophy in the classical sense. Neither of you specializes in the history of science per se, still less in Bakhtinian scholarship. Your own cultural and historico-scientific studies proceed from the logic of your philosophy and belong to the latter’s context. Accordingly, the work of Bakhtin is significant for you not as a neutral “object of research,” but as an occurrence of philosophically congenial thought. For a long time such “philosophical congeniality” has been-and it continues to be—the “adhesive” that binds together the members of your group specializing in diverse fields: historians, culturologists, philologists, psychologists, teachers. The logical foundations of that philosophy, which you name “the logic of the dialogue of logics” or “the dialogic ontology of culture,” are explicated in detail mainly in your own works, Vladimir Solomonovich. [End Page 335] But one may also conceive of all the group’s work over many years, including highly specialized studies, as the detailing and thematic trial of its common conception. Therefore, before we turn to the main topic of our conversation, I would like to ask you, Anatolii Valerianovich, for a brief account of the history of your circle. Anatolii Akhutin: We do indeed shoulder a rather long history-nearly thirty years. Notwithstanding that our present-day (official) status—that of an independent creative group entitled “Dialogue of Cultures”—has been conferred on us quite recently, the history of our circle actually begins with seminars that go back (as a noticeable social phenomenon) to the so-called thaw in the days of Khrushchev. In this respect, we share the common destiny of a number of trends formed in those days that maintained the vitality of philosophical thought under the conditions of its methodical suppression. After the Czechoslovakian events of 1968, all these seminars dispersed and retreated into...private kitchens, or smoking-rooms of certain institutions (such as, for example, the State Lenin Library), or even into back-streets. 2 The seminar conducted by V. S. Bibler also shifted to conditions of domestic, almost underground, existence. At that time, its membership was somewhat different than now. Thus, Lina B. Tumanova was among us, a remarkable philosopher whose works still remain unpublished. (An active member of the movement for the defence of human rights, she was arrested by the Committee for State Security [KGB] in 1984; afterwards, however, when it became known that she was incurably ill, they set her free several months before her death.) The distinguished culturologist Leonid M. Batkin (well-known today as a political scientist) has actively participated in our seminar for many years. A student of Descartes’s philosophy, Yakov A. Lyatker (now in the USA), has also been the seminar’s longtime member (and its “chronicler”). Two disciples of Mikhail B. Turovskii, Vladimir V. Silvestrov (died in 1990) and Leonid S. Chernyak (now in the USA), have been in close collaboration with us. In other words, as usual in Russian history, “already some are not, and others are far off....” Parenthetically, this history of “back-street circles” and “kitchen seminars,” i.e., the real history of philosophical thought in the post-Stalin USSR—a rich and by no means insipid story that harbors [End Page 336] many surprising discoveries—has not been written as yet and is not likely to be written in the foreseeable future. We “insiders” are unlikely to do this, for our time is devoted to other commitments or simply devoured by the humdrum of life here. On the other hand, the perverted logic of Soviet life is too cunning for an objective view from without. The point is not so much the lack of relevant documents...

Perestroika and Soviel Libraries

Perestroika and glasnost' have affected all aspects of Soviet libraries. Library censorship has been largely abolished. Greater democracy has allowed the formation of library associations and influential staff councils in libraries. There are new approaches to many issues - library education, reader services, ethnic minorities, classification, library history, comparative librarianship. Libraries independent of the state have been set up. But the introduction of market economics, galloping inflation and the breakdown of old administrative structures are causing great uncertainty, especially over funding. Some libraries are being closed down, and many libraries are introducing paid services. Acquisitions, interlibrary loans, exchanges, and national bibliography have been affected by new commercial priorities. Librarians' salaries are low, and not keeping pace with inflation. Policy documents have been issued by the Lenin Library in Moscow, the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library in St. Petersburg and by non-governmental organisations, but all have been overtaken by the pace of change in the USSR. The future of Soviet libraries is uncertain.

View from the Lenin Library. The Changing Shape of Soviet History

View from the Lenin Library. The Changing Shape of Soviet History

Computerization in the Lenin Library

MICHAEL HEANEY, BA, MA, ALA, is an Assistant Librarian in the Department of Catalogues at the Bodleian Library. He has contributed articles to several journals of Slavonic studies. The Lenin Library embarked on a large-scale automation programme in 1968. Automated systems for new accessions, SDI in special subject areas, reader services, inter-library loans and duplicates exchange form the first stage of an integrated system covering all the Library's operations. To date there have been delays in implementation, and the development of inter- library co-operation will possibly result in major revision of the Library's plans. This survey of the automation programme collates the information published in the Library's annual reports and in Soviet books and journals.

A public right to know

I believe it is, or was, the case that libraries in the Republic of South Africa do not stock copies of Black Beauty; nor children's stories about little black rabbits and little white ones. Similarly, it is said to be impossible to get Darwin's Origin of the Species in the so called ‘Bible Belt’ region in the USA; and I have no doubt that it would be provocative—and also futile—to request a copy of, say, Animal Farm from the Lenin Library in Moscow.

Three Russian National Libraries: An analysis of Soviet studies

Founded in 1862, the functions of the State Lenin Library were, as stated in the exhibition to mark the 1970 IFLA Council in Moscow, to act : (I) as the central library of the U.S.S.R.; (2) as a state depository of printed publications and manuscripts; (3) as the leading scientific and research institution in the field of library science, bibliography and the history of printing; (4) as a centre of recommendatory bibliography; (5) as a methodological and consultative centre for the libraries of the U.S.S.R.