Putin Purging Russia’s Libraries But in a Way that Means the Same Book May Be Treated Very Differently Depending on Who Published It

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 24 – Those who studied the Soviet Union years ago read, will certainly remember Bertram Wolfe’s classic 1969 Survey article, “Krupskaya Purges the Peoples’ Libraries,” an essay that tells the story of how Lenin’s wife imposed an ideological straight jacket on Soviet libraries in the 1920s. And they now have reason to recall that tale

            Putin has been moving against Russia’s libraries as well but ostensibly for different reasons – efficiency and cost effectiveness in the first instance – and has been closing them at the rate of approximately 1,000 a year (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/12/under-putin-russia-has-been-closing.html).  

            And now that his agents are going after specific books, Putin has adopted a policy that is anything but ideologically consistent, frequently treating one and the same book differently depending on who published it rather than what the book contains, according to librarians (ru.thebarentsobserver.com/novosti/prokuratura-komi-iset-v-bibliotekah-nepravilnye-knigi/454599).

            One from the Komi Republic says that this is happening throughout the Russian Federation now, leading to a crazy quilt pattern of library collections. Someone whose local library may no longer have a book published by groups like the Soros organization can find a copy in another library if it is issued by an approved domestic publishing house.

            This frequently happens, the librarian says, because many pre-1917 books and even some issued after that time have been printed multiple times by a variety of publishers and so what is “harmful” and what is “not harmful” in Putin’s Russia as far as libraries are concerned depends as much or even more on publisher than on content.