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The Leningrad Collection of Zemstvo Publications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Charles E. Timberlake
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Extract

The collection of Zemstvo Publications (Kollektsiia zemskikh izdanii) in Leningrad is undoubtedly the most important source of materials for the study of the zemstvo institutions which existed in Russia from 1864 to 1917. Because the work of these institutions touched every phase of Russian society, the collection is valuable for countless other topics as well. Containing approximately 100,000 volumes, it was formed in the 1950s from the library of the former Free Economic Society. It is little publicized and has not been utilized, even by Soviet scholars, to the degree it deserves. As of June 1966 the collection had been used, according to the staff, by only two American scholars, although access to it is granted to almost any scholar who has a card for the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library, of which it is a branch.

The collection is one of the fonds which make up the Fondy Vol'nogo Ekonomicheskogo Obshchestva (Fonds of the Free Economic Society), which are housed in a room of the Fontanka Embankment Library at 36 Fontanka Embankment, Leningrad, approximately three blocks from the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library. In the same building are the main library's newspaper collection and newspaper reading room and various other reading rooms for graduate and undergraduate students.

Type
Notes and Comments
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , September 1967 , pp. 474 - 478
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1967

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References

The author worked in the Collection of Zemstvo Publications during spring semester 1966. He wishes to thank Mrs. Valentina Anatol'evna Filatova, acting head of the Collection, for providing materials on which a portion of this article is based and for other assistance during his research.

1 The one-sentence paragraph on page 30 of Nikolai Iakovlevich Morachevskii's Putevoditel’ po Gosudarstvennoi publichnoi biblioteke imeni M. E. Saltykova-Shchedrina (Leningrad, 1962) is the only published information on this Collection known to me.

2 V. A. Karatygina, “Opyt organizatsii zemskikh izdanii v Gosudarstvennoi publichnoi biblioteke im. M. E. Saltykova-Shchedrina” (Leningrad, 1955), pp. 15-16. This is a 26-page typewritten manuscript by thelate head of the Collection of Zemstvo Publications, written for distribution to members of the staff of the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library. The first 15 pages follow closely Veselovskii's description of types of materials published by the zemstvos (see note 3 below). Pages 15 to 17 discuss the types of materialslisted under the tabs bearing the word knigi, and the section from page 17 on quotes Lenin on the constructive work undertaken by the zemstvos.

3 See B. B. Veselovskii, Istoriia zemstva za soroklet, I (St. Petersburg, 1909), 562-63, for alist of the periodical publications. See also pp. 595-628, which contain, among other materials, types of works published by the zemstvos and filed under subsequent tabs in the card catalogue of the Collection.

4 See Horecky, Paul L., Libraries and Bibliographic Centers in the Soviet Union (Bloomington, 1959 Google Scholar; “Indiana University Publications, Slavic and East European Series.” Vol. XVI), pp. 62-63, for a description of shelf arrangement in Sovietlibraries. The arrangement in the Collection of Zemstvo Publications differs from that pictured in his Diagram C (p. 63) only in that all the shelves must be moved fromleft to right until a passageway has been created in front of the shelf desired.