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Nikolai Rubakin’s Library for Revolutionaries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Alfred Erich Senn
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Extract

For almost forty years the private library of Nikolai Aleksandrovich Rubakin, located first in Baugy-sur-Clarens and subsequently in Lausanne, Switzerland, served as a major fund of Russian books in Western Europe, and it attracted many of the great figures of the Russian Revolution. Rubakin in turn welcomed every new reader; his motto, imprinted on his bookplates, declared: “Long live the book, a powerful weapon in the struggle for truth and justice.” Upon his death in 1946 the Soviet Union inherited the collection, variously estimated at 80,000 to 100,000 volumes, and its departure represented a great blow to East European studies in the West.

Type
Notes and Comment
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , September 1973 , pp. 554 - 559
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1973

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References

1. The books are now located in the Lenin Library in Moscow. Rubakin's archive, subsequently purchased by the Soviet government, is in the Manuscript Division of the same library, fond 358, and is referred to in this article as RA/carton no./unit no. See Ivanova, L. M., Sidorova, A. B., Charushnikova, M. V., “Arkhiv N. A. Rubakina,” Zapiski Otdela rukopisei, 26 (1963): 63–150 Google Scholar. Rubakin has been the subject of three books in recent years: Razgon, L. V., Pod shifrom “Rb” (Moscow, 1966)Google Scholar; Rubakin, A. N., Rubakin: Lotsman knishnogo moria (Moscow, 1967)Google Scholar; and Mavricheva, K. G., N. A. Rubakin (Moscow, 1972)Google Scholar.

2. See E. P. Aref'eva, “N. A. Rubakin—kak knigosobiratel’ i ego biblioteki v Sovetskom Soiuze,” Kniga: Issledovaniia i materialy, 8 (1963): 377-400Google Scholar. For a criticism of Rubakin's methods in collecting books see Derunov, K. M., Primernyi bibliotechnyi katalog (St. Petersburg, 1908-11), pp. 153–58.Google Scholar

3. Sredi knig: Opyt obzora russkikh knizhnykh bogatztv v sviazi s istoriei nauclmofilosofskikh i literaturno-obshchestvennykh idei, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Moscow, 1911-15; reprinted Cambridge, 1973). The first edition was a list of books without “preliminary comments” in each section. See also Mashkova, M. V., Istoriia russkoi bibliografii nachala XX veka (do oktiabria 1917 goda) (Moscow, 1969), pp. 184–209.Google Scholar

4. RA/333/10-12.

5. Writing a decade later, Rubakin insisted that the increased demand for books on politics immediately after the outbreak of the war showed “to what degree the result of reading and of a book's influence depends not so much on the book being read as on the psychological and social characteristics of the readers.” See “V. I. Lenin v Montre, “ MS, RA/157/13.

6. N. A. Rubakin, “Velikie figury russkoi revoliutsii,” MS, RA/159/5. See also M. V., Mashkova, “G. V. Plekhanov i ‘Sredi knig’ N. A. Rubakina,” Sovetskaia bibliografiia, 1963, no. 6, pp. 83–101.Google Scholar

7. See Plekhanov's letters to Rubakin, undated, RA/263/30; and undated and July 14, 1915, RA/263/31.

8. On the relationship between Manuilsky and Aleksinsky see Alfred Erich Senn, “The Politics of Golos and Nashe Slovo,” International Review of Social History, 17 (1972): 675-704.

9. See Rubakin, A. N., Nad rekoiu vremeni (Moscow, 1966), pp. 60–62.Google Scholar