Document 28

Ye. Yaroslavsky to Politburo on library purge, 15 September 1932

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 114, d. 371, ll. 109-110. Attested copy, typed.

I have learned that during the past two years the book collections of almost all libraries have been virtually annihilated. This annihilation has been carried out under the banner of "purging" the collections of every kind of ideologically uncontrolled and pernicious literature based on general instructions published in 1930 by NKPros. The instructions were "made concrete" by certain ONO (Otdel Narodnogo Obrazovaniia [Board of Public Education]) lists and have produced the following results.

Removed was all antireligious literature unmasking religion on the basis of scientific data (in spite of Lenin's directions to use such literature widely), all trade union literature published before the Fifth Plenum of VTsSPS's Eighth Convocation [December, 1928], literature about unemployment and round-the-clock shift work and about the transition to the seven-hour workday, almost all popular literature regarding cooperatives, regarding social insurance, labor protection, and the building of kolkhozes and state farms published before 1930-31, all idealistic philosophers--except for Kant and Hegel--and the works of Spencer, Simmel, Bukharin, and others on historical materialism and sociology.

Furthermore, "closed stacks" have been created where books can be used only by party activists and students in higher educational institutions for party workers (komvuzy). To these closed stacks have been transferred such books as Rosa Luxemburg's Accumulation of Capital, Hilferding's Finance Capital, books dealing with the history of the party by Nevsky, Kerzhentsev, and Yaroslavsky, on economic policy by Sarabianov, Kritsman, Tel', Tsiperovich, on physics by Timiriazev, Ioffe, on the study of reflexes by Bekhterev, Sechenov, Pavlov (Member of the Academy of Sciences).

In Moscow Oblast alone 350,000 books were removed from trade union libraries in the City of Moscow during 1930-32. Stored in a warehouse on the Arbat in Moscow were 209,000 books taken out of raion libraries. All over Moscow and Moscow Oblast a special brigade consisting of Comrades Modestov, Etingof, Lebedinskaia, and Buzinier removed books: from the MONO (Moskovsky Otdel Narodnogo Obrazovaniia [Moscow Board of Public Education]) Library, [Sidney and Beatrice] Webb's History of Trade Unionism (Let me remind you that while living in exile, Lenin was translating the Webbs), Lozovsky's Issues in the World Trade Union Movement and also four other titles by the latter, Friche's History of the Labor Movement in the West, and others.

Several local boards of education, the Gudauta one for example, went so far as to issue instructions to remove books such as Bebel's, Lassalle's, Plekhanov's Our Differences, the works of Marx and Engels, V. Ilich's (Lenin's) The Development of Capitalism in Russia, and Stalin's Articles on the National Question.

In some libraries, in Leningrad in particular, works of Marx and Engels edited by Riazanov are being withdrawn and, since in many libraries there are no other editions of Marx, this means that they are withdrawing almost all works by Marx and Engels.

Here is more factual evidence to show the extent of the purging zeal. Removed from the library at Siniavinsk Peatbogs in Leningrad Oblast were Tolstoy, Turgenev, Goncharov, Korolenko, Bezymensky, Podiachikh, M. I. Kalinin, the "Communist Manifesto," Chernyshevsky, books by Lenin, and so forth. From the Central Library of the Communications Union in Leningrad books by Romain Rolland were removed, and this at a time when we are publishing Romain Rolland's letters and his appeal "War on War." Removed from the library of the Glass Plant Named for October 25th in the Western Oblast were books by Marx and Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Krupskaia, Yaroslavsky, Kerzhentsev, Krylenko, Bubnov, Demian Bedny, Bezymensky, Turgenev, Korolenko, Zhukovsky, and others.

All of us in the past became engrossed in our youth with books like Giovagnoli's Spartacus. In 1932 the Institute of Literary Criticism and Bibliography faulted this book and, understandably, it is now being removed by librarians who follow our reviews and bibliographical information, afraid to let books remain in libraries that this reviewer or that, sometimes an illiterate one, has condemned in the press.

As a consequence of all these books being removed and the utterly wild, scandalous "purge" of libraries, the staff of VTsSPS published in the 4 September 1932 issue, No. 206, of the newspaper Trud a resolution suspending this kind of "purge" and instructing VTsSPS's Public Culture Department to appoint a special commission to disclose those who were responsible for erroneously removing books from trade union libraries and for transferring books from trade union book holdings to local boards of public education and selling them.

It seems to me that this resolution is wholly inadequate, and I propose:

That a commission of TsK and TsKK be appointed that will give more serious attention to this matter, taking an interest not only in trade union books but in the entire library network as well. NKPros here has committed, in my opinion, a serious error.

More detailed materials on this issue can be found in the Culture Department of VTsSPS.