Under Putin, Russia has Been Closing 1,000 Libraries a Year, Official Figures Show

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 12 – When Putin became president, the Russian Federation had approximately 51,000 libraries. Today, as a result of the closure of smaller libraries in rural areas and the selling off of large one in cities to private entrepreneurs, their number has fallen to 30,000, a decline of approximately 1,000 libraries a year, official statistics show.

            But the situation is even worse than that. Ever more libraries are forced to sell off older books that haven’t been checked out for some time, but unlike in other countries, money from such sales goes not to purchase new books but into the pockets of senior officials who can hardly be expected to spend it on books.

            And while it is true that the Internet and electronic books have somewhat reduced the importance of books for many Russians as well as others, these same official statistics show that roughly a third of Russia’s population still uses libraries, even in their reduced state, almost exactly the same as two decades ago (newtimes.ru/articles/detail/231997).

            In 1969, the late Bertram Wolfe published a classic article in Survey entitled “Krupskaya Purges the People’s Libraries” which on the basis of an examination of that segment of Soviet life described how the Bolsheviks put a straightjacket on intellectual life in the USSR. Now, What Putin is doing today is at least as reprehensible and instructive.

            Unfortunately, no contemporary Bertram Wolfe is likely to write up this story in the way that it deserves or to present it as an example of the destruction of a country’s intellectual life. That is because Putin is doing it in the name of efficiency, optimization, and profit, precisely things that far too few people are now prepared to question even though they may lead to an equivalent strangulation of intellectual life.