Discretion in Russian Librarianship: Pre-Soviet, Soviet, Post-Soviet

Thesis

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By

Andréa N. Atkins, B.A.

Graduate Program in Slavic and East European Studies

The Ohio State University

2012

Thesis Committee:

Jennifer Suchland, Advisor

Jessie Labov Copyright by

Andréa N. Atkins

2012 Abstract

For most of the twentieth century, public libraries and librarians in Russia were tools for Soviet propaganda. While democratic concerns for literacy and societal development were ideals that revolutionaries tried to uphold during the revolutionary period and early years of the USSR, ultimately the Soviet government executed policies that forced libraries and librarians to serve the goals of the state. The Soviet government appropriated the socio-cultural institution of the public library and made all of its activities subservient to the single principle of partiinost’. Thus, professional librarians in

Russia had little ability to exercise their specialized knowledge to promote the public good, which is often viewed as a paramount goal of librarians. In this thesis I analyze both the historical process of the Soviet state’s claiming of the public library for propagating Soviet ideals and the reaction to this in the Post-Soviet era. I argue that the ability to exercise discretion is a primary characteristic of the profession of public librarianship, but that the ability to exercise discretion was denied to Russian public librarians. I also explain the Soviet’s concept of the public library by introducing readers’ guidance generally and evaluating the Soviet-style of readers’ guidance particularly. I chronicle the reclamation of the library profession, which began during glasnost’ and perestroika. Finally, I attempt to describe the current state of librarianship in Russia by highlighting some its more important developments in the post-Soviet period.

ii Dedication

I dedicate this thesis to Verdell, who was always supportive.

iii Vita

2002…………………………………..….....B.A. Philosophy, University of Georgia 2002…………………………...... ……...B.A. Political Science, University of Georgia 2012…………………………...... ……...M.A., Public Policy and Management, The Ohio State University 2009-2012...... Graduate Student, Slavic and East European Studies, The Ohio State University

Fields of Study

Major Field: Slavic and East European Studies

iv Table of Contents

Abstract...... ii

Dedication...... iii

Vita...... iv

Introduction...... 1

Chapter 1: History and Character of Russian Public Librarianship...... 4

Chapter 2: The Soviet Conception Of The Library And Readers’ Guidance...... 12

Chapter 3: Library Policies of the Soviet Period and Their Effects...... 21

Chapter 4: Librarian-Led Changes During Glasnost’ and Perestroika...... 29

Chapter 5: Public Libraries In Post-Soviet Russia...... 38

Conclusion...... 46

References...... 49

v Introduction

For most of the twentieth century, public libraries and librarians in Russia were tools for Soviet propaganda. While democratic concerns for literacy and societal development were ideals that revolutionaries tried to uphold during the revolutionary period and early years of the USSR, ultimately the Soviet government executed policies that forced libraries and librarians to serve the goals of the state. The Soviet government appropriated the socio-cultural institution of the public library and made all of its activities subservient to the single principle of partiinost’. Thus, professional librarians in

Russia had little ability to exercise their specialized knowledge to promote the public good, which is often viewed as a paramount goal of librarians.

In this thesis I analyze both the historical process of the Soviet state’s claiming of the public library for propagating Soviet ideals and the reaction to this in the Post-Soviet era.1 Russian librarians spent much of the Soviet period carrying out propaganda work as mandated by the Soviet government. In particular, I focus on the role of guided self- education or readers’ guidance (rukovodstvo chteniem) and the notion of discretion.

Readers’ guidance was used to direct education programs for readers and also to monitor their progress through the programs. Readers’ guidance is a consultation between a

1 This paper deals with public libraries in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), as opposed to the other Socialist Republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The RSFSR accounted for one half of the population of the USSR and its center city, Moscow, served as the center of administration for public libraries. Moreover, this paper is specifically about public libraries, which were the only type of library whose patrons participated in readers’ guidance. The term mass library encompasses many types of libraries including children’s libraries, trade union libraries and public libraries.

1 library patron and a librarian wherein the librarian suggests reading materials to the patron with respect to the patron’s individual interests and ability. To do this, librarians monitored and kept records of the books a patron read and the topics covered. The practice of Soviet-style readers’ guidance was the defining characteristic of public librarianship during Soviet times. An analysis of Soviet readers’ guidance will shed light on the complexities of and changes in the relationships among patrons, librarians, and the

Soviet government.

It was not until the glasnost’ and perestroika period in the 1980s that Russian librarians began to reform their profession. Library practices that served the interests of the government and bureaucracy during most of the Soviet period were transformed into practices that actually served patrons. The changes were not just at the level of librarians as individuals. As a group, librarians were developing a new professional consciousness, becoming advocates for democracy, and re-exploring the potential of librarianship unfettered from Soviet ideology. In the post-Soviet era, Russian librarianship has continued to evolve. Librarians held a great deal of hope in the early 1990s that libraries would thrive after communism fell. Conditioned by seventy years of Soviet culture, librarians and patrons alike have not fully shed the view that the library is an extension of the government. However, despite the impoverished state of libraries in the post-Soviet era, the perception of the library as a cultural institution for the Russian people is taking hold.

2 This thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter One provides a background of the history of public librarianship focusing especially on the last one and a half centuries.

This entails a brief discussion of the beginnings of the library profession in Imperial

Russia and the transition to Soviet librarianship. In that chapter, I also introduce the notion of discretion and describe its importance to professional librarianship. Chapter

Two describes the Soviet conception of the public library. The Soviets appropriated

Russian librarianship and transformed readers’ guidance. In Chapter Three I provide a broader look at the policy environment of the Soviet public library that restricted access to and censored information for the citizens of Soviet Russia. In Chapter Four I document how librarians began to reclaim their profession during the glasnost’ and perestroika period. During that period, librarians hoped that a more democratic phase in Russian history was on its way and began to reconsider the purpose and mission of librarianship.

Chapter Five assesses the state of librarianship in post-Soviet Russia. Library workers re- established Library Professional Associations. In 1999, a code of ethics guiding Russian librarianship was formulated and published. A revised code of ethics, adopted in 2011, reflects recent changes in Russian librarianship. I conclude by summarizing some of the more salient points of this thesis and suggesting questions for further research.

3 Chapter 1: History and Character of Russian Public Librarianship

In order to understand the significance of the Soviet period’s effect on Russian libraries and librarians, it is important to understand the history and character of librarianship in Russia. Moreover, such an understanding will shed light on some of the critiques of the Soviet library system as well as the changes to librarianship in the glasnost’ and perestroika and post-Soviet eras.

In this chapter, I briefly outline the historical development of the public library in the West. This overview will provide the basis for a brief discussion of public librarianship in Imperial Russia. Next, I discuss the general character of public librarianship, which is derived from its status as a profession. In particular, I discuss how the notion of discretion, or the ability to rely on one’s own judgment, both directs and restrains the decisions of librarians. Issues surrounding the Russian librarian’s relationship to discretion frame the rest of this thesis.

Prior to the invention of the printing press, libraries were the privilege only of royalty and the church. Monasteries often exchanged books so that monks could copy them by hand (Eco 1986). In the 1200s, the universities of Paris and Oxford gained prominence in part because of the quality of their libraries. With the arrival of the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century, the number of books available increased, as did the number of personal libraries. The proprietors of these libraries often invited scholars to serve as caretakers. For instance, the philosopher and mathematician, Gottfried Leibniz,

4 was employed as a library caretaker. As more books became available, proprietors opened their personal libraries to friends and acquaintances. The less wealthy established private libraries through social clubs, each member donating to the library.

Forerunners to the public library as we know it today varied in their degree of publicness. In the US, in the late 1700s, two models of libraries served the public: the subscription library and the circulating library (Black 2006a, 21). The subscription library often doubled as a social club for wealthy men, but some subscription libraries financed by industrialists or merchants were used by the working class. These sorts of libraries often had collections specifically geared toward edification of mechanics or toward the promotion of mercantile endeavors.2 Circulating libraries were business ventures that lent books to readers for a fee (Black 2006a, 21). Although these prototypes of the public library generally excluded women and those without disposable income, they featured a degree of publicness that was heretofore unseen. Later, another type of library with an even greater degree of publicness was the publicly-supported library. Towns and villages financially supported these small libraries through one-time expenditures, but financial support was not guaranteed year to year.

Genuinely public libraries, i.e., tax-supported libraries with no fee for entry, did not truly emerge until the mid-nineteenth century (Black 2006a, 21). The great proliferation of public libraries did not begin until the 1880s (Black 2006b, 25). This proliferation took place primarily in the United States and Britain. In the 1880s, Andrew

2 Industrialist-funded libraries are analogous to the modern day college scholarships offered by corporations in areas of research that may result in enhanced corporate trade and profitability. For instance, BP offers scholarships to study geology.

5 Carnegie granted many municipalities in the US and Britain funds to construct libraries

(Pepper 2006, 586). But the municipality had to guarantee initial funds for the purchase book stocks as well as yearly funds to maintain the books and employ a librarian. By

1923, libraries constructed with Carnegie grants served thirty-one percent of the US population.

In the US and Britain, the vision of the public library derives from the two philosophical strands of liberalism: utilitarianism and idealism (Black 2006b, 29). The

British proponents of utilitarianism reasoned that any money spent to establish and maintain libraries (and other public-minded institutions) would be offset by a reduction in the costs of remedying immoral behavior or incarcerating criminals. British utilitarians argued that the public library promoted “life’s higher pleasures” such as the pursuit and attainment of knowledge (Black 2006b, 29). These utilitarians believed that citizens who sought knowledge would favor meritocracy, transparency, self-help, and delayed gratification (because base pleasures are generally short-lived and may actually leave the individual worse off) (Black 2006b, 29-30). In Britain, the Public Libraries Act of 1850 permitted qualified municipalities to levy taxes for the establishment and maintenance of public libraries (Black 2006b, 25). Then, several decades later, the utilitarian view of the public library gave way to the idealist view. The idealist view of society holds that there is an “inner potential in everyone” that can contribute to the greater good (Black 2006b,

30). Accordingly, public libraries came to be seen as institutions that, by providing for individual improvement, would better society as a whole.

6 The public library movement in Russia has its roots in the abolition of serfdom.

Abolition was a response to the liberal views making their way across Europe in the

1800s. Informed by these views, many Russians believed that even the lowliest social classes, such as serfs, had the potential to enhance society. In 1861, Russian serfs were granted their freedom. Responsibility for the well-being of former serfs fell to local government, parishes, benevolent and educational societies, and individuals. Because there was no compulsory or universal education many of the serfs were unable to read.

The caretakers of public libraries stepped into the role of educator, and, by the 1880s, the

Russian public library movement had developed (Leich 1987, 44). The mission of public librarians was to spread literacy to the freed serfs. The librarians believed that, once literate, serfs could undertake their own self-education. While public librarians in Russia had some degree of education, they generally were not trained specifically in librarianship. Therefore, most public libraries in Russia lacked bibliographic organization and cataloging for their collections (Raymond and Remnek 1990, 112).

By the 1890s, private organizations in Russia recognized the value of libraries and librarians (Leich 1987, 45). This recognition brought opportunities for librarians to organize and develop the profession3 of librarianship in Russia (Leich 1987, 45). In the early 1900s, a critical mass of library workers became interested in forming professional societies dedicated to improving Russian librarianship (Richardson 2000, 109). Although

3 In relationship to librarianship, “[p]rofessionalization is a process of differentiation, of an occupation claiming authority and jurisdiction over a particular body of theoretical knowledge and practical expertise” (Gilbert 1994, 384).

7 the societies did not last long into the Soviet era, the formation of librarianship as a bona fide profession was well underway.

The first journal dedicated to the library profession in Russia, Bibliotekar’,4 was published in 1910 (Leich 1987, 49).5 In 1911, a conference of librarians and other interested parties convened in Saint Petersburg and affirmed several principles of public library work. The participants of the First All-Russian Library Conference recommended that public libraries should be available free of charge and should be maintained by local government (Leich 1987, 52). The conference further recommended that public library collections should be completely ideologically neutral—meaning they should be free from religious, nationalistic, and political leanings (Leich 1987, 29). The idea was that library collections should be balanced such that any book promoting a certain creed would be offset by another book promoting a different creed. The recommendation was aimed at promoting individual intellectual freedom and, therefore, greater self- determination. Ideologically neutral collections would allow readers and self-educators to uncover and evaluate the relative merits of differing political, social, and religious systems. This idea was especially democratic for the time. Thus, the public librarians who convened in Saint Petersburg in 1911 projected a democratic future for Russian librarianship.

Democratic concerns informed the normative foundations of Russian librarianship in the early twentieth century. Prior to this, these same sorts of concerns had informed the 4 Librarian 5 The journal, still published to this day, has undergone several name changes: Bibliotekar’, or Librarian became Krasni Bibliotekar’, or Red Librarian which became Biblioteka, or Library after the fall of the USSR.

8 development of professional librarianship elsewhere. Thus, in Russia, the profession of librarianship began to develop under the same normative principles as in other countries.

Within the development of professional librarianship, librarians’ autonomy within the work environment is an indication of the degree of professionalism reached. Professional librarians must practice a specific type of judgment in fulfilling the responsibilities of their occupation. Specifically, librarians have to make judgments about how to use library resources to serve the particular interests and needs of individual patrons. To do this, librarians must make judgments about how to develop and organize library collections and resources. These judgments are informed by the specialized knowledge and extended training acquired by every professional librarian. This ability to make decisions within the realm of one’s professional work by relying on one’s own judgment can be termed discretion.

Discretion is a highly useful but also nebulous notion when discussing complex, non-routine professional work or primarily intellectual professions. Arguably, librarianship encompasses both. Moreover, the unique normative foundations of librarianship require the use of discretion. Specifically, in librarianship, no single set of rules fits every situation. Instead, librarians must rely on their specialized knowledge and training in order to negotiate, interpret and satisfy the needs and requests of library users.

Discretion resolves issues that cannot be solved by a simple formula; it is something much more than the application of principles, no matter how intricate the principles may be.

9 In serving readers, librarians exercise discretion. Providing library services entails interacting with diverse individual personalities, and endeavoring to fulfill each individual’s information requests. Librarians use discretion to satisfy the needs of library users when they select and order books for library collections. Another discretionary role of librarians is the cataloging of books. If a book’s content seems to fall equally between two subject areas, then it is up to the librarian to decide under which heading the book will be classified. Such conundrums are resolved through librarians’ professional discretion.

Discretion in Russian public librarianship is a measure of its professionalization.

The librarians of Imperial Russia exercised far more discretion than the librarians of the

Soviet period, especially with respect to readers’ guidance. Although the theoretical underpinnings and institutional forerunners of the public library were developed in

Britain and the US, its normative foundations were embraced by the public library movement in Russia. The normative foundations of the Russian public library movement provided unity and purpose for the enterprise of librarianship. This, in turn, created a basis for the development of genuine professional librarianship. The nature of professional librarianship requires the use of discretion.

For some years after the establishment of the Soviet government, the normative foundations and discretionary character of Russian librarianship remained in tact.

However, when the Soviet government was threatened by civil war and foreign hostility,

Soviet leaders implemented policies designed to strengthen their rule. In librarianship,

10 this meant that Nadezdha Krupskaia, the top official for libraries and V. I. Lenin’s wife, implemented Soviet propaganda initiatives through libraries. Thus, new normative foundations displaced the pluralist values of the Russian public library movement. The narrowed aims of Soviet librarianship eliminated professional discretion. In particular, the reliance on one’s own judgment, which both directs and restrains the decisions of librarians, was replaced by mandates requiring the complete politicization of Russian public libraries. Soviet librarianship thus stripped the Russian librarian of the ability to practice discretion. Adherence to the normative foundations of Soviet librarianship produced a seventy-year long discontinuity in the professional duties of librarians in

Russia.

11 Chapter 2: The Soviet Conception Of The Library And Readers’ Guidance

The Soviet government appropriated Russian public libraries to make them organs of the state propaganda apparatus. The Soviet conception of librarianship entailed the use of readers’ guidance to propagate a Marxist-Leninist worldview. However, this appropriation was not a foregone conclusion with the establishment of the Soviet government. The role of public libraries in Soviet society was very much contested until the late 1920s. With their traditional vision of the role of libraries, librarians were keen to continue serving as responsive educators and resources for the public. In opposition to this vision, early Soviet leaders began to appropriate librarianship—especially the librarian’s job of readers’ guidance—to spread and promote Soviet ideology. This appropriation of libraries and librarianship took place rather quickly, as Soviet leaders went from seeing libraries as tools for education and societal progress to seeing them as tools for ideological indoctrination. Krupskaia aggressively advocated for a partiinost’- informed librarianship (Stuart 1994, 238). Indeed, Soviet leaders denounced the endeavors of many pre-revolution librarians (Leich 1987, 55).

By the late 1920s, Krupskaia implemented a new Soviet librarianship which was accompanied by a version of readers’ guidance that was changed in content and function.

The new method of Soviet-style readers’ guidance added an ideological teleology to self- education. In particular, the adult education programs of traditional readers’ guidance became tools for spreading Soviet ideology. Through this transition, the normative

12 foundations of Soviet librarianship displaced the traditionally pluralistic, but primarily patron-responsive, practices of the public library movement. Thus, the overriding criterion of partiinost’ came to be the most important normative principle of Soviet librarianship.

Prior to the Soviet era, readers’ guidance in Russia served primarily educational purposes (Greening 1995, 122). Because of this, the relationship between a librarian and a patron was that of a resource and a consumer of the resource. Librarians aimed to be responsive to the requests and needs of their patrons, but they did not didactically prescribe reading material. In addition to responding to the interests of their literate patrons, Russian librarians also responded to the needs of illiterate patrons by helping them learn to read. Adult education programs that focused on literacy were systematic lessons geared toward helping citizens teach themselves to read and then helping them to strengthen that ability. Such programs were managed through readers’ guidance, wherein librarians suggested reading material appropriate for the reading levels of individual patrons.

Soon after the revolution, early Soviet leaders, like Lenin and Krupskaia, recognized the value of librarians as educators and promoters of literacy. It did not take them long to realize that librarians could also serve other purposes. Librarians could educate citizens in ways that would advance society both technologically and culturally.

The combined emphasis on increasing literacy and producing more educated citizens is evident in some of Lenin’s speeches. For instance, in 1921, addressing the Second All-

13 Russia Congress of Political Education Departments, Lenin emphasized the connection between a literate people and a cultured, productive society:

[I]t is not enough to abolish illiteracy, it is necessary to build up Soviet economy, and for that literacy alone will not carry us very far. We must raise culture to a much higher level. A man must make use of his ability to read and write. . . The ability to read and write must be made to serve the purpose of raising the cultural level; the peasants must be able to use the ability to read and write for the improvement of their farms and their state (Lenin 1921).

As this quote illustrates, the Soviet government did not see the eradication of illiteracy as just an end in itself. Rather, a literate society was a necessary condition for building the socialist state. Adult education was integral to the success of socialism because a learned and technically savvy workforce could spur innovation and raise production levels in industry and agriculture (Raymond 1981, 397).

As librarians advanced literacy and improved the general education of the populace, Soviet leaders believed that librarians could also inculcate socialism into the masses. The leaders hoped that, through this inculcation, the people would be able to understand why socialism was (supposedly) the best and therefore only legitimate alternative to capitalist imperialism. They hoped that this would make way for the “New

Soviet Man,” the paragon of heightened consciousness. At the same time, of course, literacy could afford the masses a chance to enrich their own lives.

Soviet use of libraries as tools of ideological indoctrination was an instance of the broader propaganda apparatus of the Soviet government. Propaganda is “the spread of political, philosophical, scientific, artistic and other views and ideas with the intention of introducing them into the public consciousness and enhancing mass mobilization”

14 (Prokhorov, 1969). The principle of partiinost’ informed and structured Soviet propaganda. Partiinost’ was “party-mindedness of affiliation; devotion to the party’s cause; placing its interests above everything else and shaping one’s actions to promote

Marxism-Leninism” (Kimmage 1992, 209).

Because readers’ guidance was a traditional means of educating citizens, early

Soviet leaders like Krupskaia chose it as a tool for the dissemination of propaganda. For this reason, Soviet leaders considered readers’ guidance integral to the theory and practice of Soviet librarianship. Partiinost’ in readers’ guidance meant exclusively suggesting or promoting books that presented the world through Marxian analysis or outlook. By subjecting all reading to the standards of partiinost’ Soviet policies disallowed acquaintance with other worldviews.

This sort of instrumental conception of readers’ guidance—taking it as a tool for ideological indoctrination as opposed to general education—amounts to a change in its fundamental character. I will refer to the distinctive Soviet style of readers’ guidance as rukovodstvo chteniem6 in order to differentiate it from the traditional, pre-revolutionary style of readers’ guidance. Rukovodstvo chteniem, as the primary tool for Soviet librarianship to spread propaganda, was thus central to the Soviet motives for appropriating libraries and the library profession. Rukovodstvo chteniem employed the methods of traditional (i.e., ideologically and politically neutral) readers’ guidance but usurped its function by utilizing it for propaganda purposes, and so completely replaced its content with Marxist-Leninist reading materials.

6 Rukovodstvo chteniem may be literally translated as “guidance to readers” or “leadership to readers.”

15 Rukovodstvo chteniem added a politico-ideological end to the traditional practice of readers’ guidance. Rukovodstvo chteniem commuted all reading—recreational or work- oriented—into a systematic plan of self-education and Marxist-Leninist indoctrination

(Raymond and Remnek 1991, 125). But despite its explicit ideological objectives, rukovodstvo chteniem still served one of the traditional goals of readers’ guidance: It provided independent, individual education plans and support for Russian adults who had missed out on basic schooling. Hence, illiterate Russian adults availed themselves of rukovodstvo chteniem programs, thereby extending the reach of the Soviet propaganda apparatus.

Rukovodstvo chteniem was ultimately a program of mass conformism. In accordance with a policy of collectivist indoctrination, Soviet leaders hoped that mass conformism to the Marxist-Leninist worldview could create a societal force that would be dynamic enough to overcome the historical circumstances that constrained the social, economical, and environmental development of humanity. In other words, rukovodstvo chteniem was grounded in the belief that if sufficient input was provided to readers, i.e., exposure to Marxist-Leninist literature, then they would be compelled by the cogency of the worldview and, hence, behave in ways pursuant to its supposed collective good.

The deliberate choice to transform readers’ guidance into an instrument for the purposes of political indoctrination had unforeseen ramifications. Rukovodstvo chteniem evolved within the oppressive political environment of the Soviet Union under Stalin.

Stalinist library policies persisted throughout the Soviet era until glasnost’ and

16 perestroika. Even though the express purpose of rukovodstvo chteniem was simply ideological indoctrination, the authoritarian overtones with which it was delivered generated additional pressure on citizens to conform to the regime’s wishes. Thus, citizens experienced the public library as yet another oppressive arm of the Soviet government.

The policy that transformed traditional readers’ guidance into rukovodstvo chteniem brought with it changes to the day-to-day practices of professional librarians in

Russia. Rukovodstvo chteniem required librarians to take an active, didactic role in the political enlightenment and general education of the masses. Hence, librarians imposingly influenced adult patrons’ selections of books in order to direct them toward partisan reading material that would satisfy their intellectual abilities and “political enlightenment needs.”

With respect to the practice of professional librarians, the principle features of rukovodstvo chteniem are its librarian-initiated interaction and state-centric content.

Soviet bureaucrats and administrators assessed Soviet librarians on their abilities to guide and influence readers (Korsch 1978, 289). In librarian-patron interactions, many Soviet librarians viewed themselves as agents who had a duty to guide and mold the objects, viz., the readers (Brazhe 2004, 84; Melentieva 2006, §2.3). State-mandated librarian- initiated interaction and the subsequent consultations tended to eclipse the autonomy of readers in the Soviet setting.

17 In practice, rukovodstvo chteniem consisted of time and labor intensive one-to-one consultations between librarians and patrons. During such a consultation, the librarian was supposed to instructively respond to the reader’s questions concerning what she had read (Raymond 1981, 399-400). The librarian then interviewed the reader in order to surmise her opinions and thoughts about the reading (Simsova 1965, 303). The librarian assessed whether a requested book would be appropriate for the reader’s education, and then chose to fulfill or deny the request based how she thought the new reading material would affect the patron (Brine 1992, 154). If a librarian thought a specific author was not ideological enough, then she had to explain to the reader why some other option would be a better choice (Burnett 1977, 37). Soviet librarians were, thus, granted seemingly inordinate power over readers. Though power in the workplace is usually tantamount to the ability to exercise discretion, the scope of Soviet librarians’ power was limited to the choice among a few options for how to fulfill the doctrinal mandates from the government.

In general, in a politically repressive environment, the otherwise broad discretion of librarians may be constricted by fear of censure from supervisors. Hence, the political pressures prevalent in Soviet society prevented librarians from exercising discretion when conducting rukovodstvo chteniem.

As the Soviet era progressed, librarians’ discretion was further diminished (this time less directly) through the restriction of available media. The reading material available to librarians and their patrons continually dwindled in scope and variety.

18 Rukovodstvo chteniem in relation to the goals of partiinost’ presupposed uniform political and ideological content; there was very little left for the reader to choose. Accordingly, there was very little variety for the librarian to recommend. Because of the predetermined content of the resources librarians were allowed to provide to patrons, librarians did not actually need to rely on their interactions with patrons to make recommendations. Hence, rukovodstvo chteniem was qualitatively different than readers’ guidance in Imperial

Russia.

Many Russian public library activists and Soviet policy-makers did not believe that overtly influencing a reader’s selection of books was problematic. After all, the role of the Russian librarian has always somehow involved influencing the reading choices of patrons. However, not all influence is the same. Traditionally, a public librarian may have

“influenced” a reader’s choices by recommending a new book upon hearing a patron’s enthusiasm for something she had just finished reading. Or, a librarian might do something as simple as pointing out that a book that a patron desires to read may not be very easy to understand without first reading another. There are countless ways a librarian might influence a patron in response to the particular needs of that patron. However, in the Soviet setting, the agency of librarians was restricted to a very small sphere of influence. Moreover, if a librarian is influencing a reader, that does not mean the librarian is interacting with the reader by exercising discretion in the recommendation of books.

Such is the case when “influence” means simply carrying out government mandates.

19 Rukovodstvo chteniem was used to control not only what a reader consumed but also how the reader thought about it. As we have seen, in practice, rukovodstvo chteniem was often authoritarian, paternalistic, and formalistic (cf. Brine 1992, 154). Rukovodstvo chteniem was just one aspect—albeit a vital aspect—of Soviet library policies to gain state control of reading material. Thus, it was used to check the flow of information to the

Soviet public.

20 Chapter 3: Library Policies of the Soviet Period and Their Effects

Several policies that supported the practice of rukovodstvo chteniem bolstered state control of reading material and checked the flow of information to the Soviet public.

Soviet library policies of recommendatory bibliographies, closed stacks, and the spetskhran7 aided the state’s efforts at checking the flow of information and restricting

Soviet citizens’ access to it. Due to such restrictions, the discretionary aspects of librarianship were continually diminished and eventually disappeared.

As previously stated, at the beginning of the Soviet era, rampant illiteracy was taken to be a primary obstacle to the success of the socialist state. Therefore, Soviet leaders quickly constructed public libraries to extend outreach and teaching services to illiterate citizens. However, the existing cadre of trained librarians could not fill all of the newly created positions, and so literacy alone became the baseline qualification for library work. Thus, many new library workers had no training in librarianship, but were nonetheless expected to perform all of the duties of trained librarians, including rukovodstvo chteniem. To help these library workers fulfill their duties, the central Soviet government distributed recommendatory bibliographies to public libraries.

A recommendatory bibliography was a strategic schedule of reading organized around a specific topic and intended to facilitate self-education on that topic. Soviet recommendatory bibliographies helped library workers introduce readers to simple

7 A contracted version of spetsial’noy khraniniye, which literally means “special storage."

21 materials with a partiinost’ spin before exposing them to more complex ideological works. Early Soviet recommendatory bibliographies structured systematic literacy programs and promoted cultural and social development (Burka 1980, 21). Of course, the media comprised by the recommendatory bibliographies were fundamentally ideological.

Overworked public librarians (both those with specialized training and those without it) often relied heavily on the state-compiled recommendatory bibliographies when performing rukovodstvo chteniem. Krupskaia originally intended the bibliographies only to complement the librarian’s insights and knowledge about the reader, and she warned that overuse of recommendatory bibliographies would result in formalism

(Raymond 1979, 182). In other words, Krupskaia worried that centering rukovodstvo chteniem around these bibliographies would degrade the interaction between librarian and reader to a formality, thereby subjugating the needs of the reader to the routines of bureaucracy.

However, many inexperienced librarians did center rukovodstvo chteniem around the bibliographies. In addition, the bibliographies came to be heavily used by prudent and circumspect librarians who were fearful of suggesting insufficiently ideological works to readers. Librarians relied on recommendatory bibliographies as a means of interpreting the wishes of the party. And accordingly, the material featured in the bibliographies became signals to readers about how to interpret the brand of communism espoused by the acting party leadership (Chandler 1972, 29). Centering rukovodstvo chteniem around recommendatory bibliographies—rather than using them as supplements—was standard

22 practice for librarians because suggesting items from these documents was irreproachable. Ultimately, recommendatory bibliography played a censorial role by delimiting the boundary of the acceptable.

The Soviet library policy of closed stacks effectively deployed an interface between readers and literature, thereby restricting free access to information. In “What can be done for public education?,” Lenin argued that Soviet libraries should follow the model used in the New York Public Library—the model of open stacks. With open stacks, library patrons have direct physical access to the bookshelves. However, most Soviet libraries had only closed stacks. Thus, readers could only access library items through an intermediary, which required them to request desired items from librarians. This arrangement instilled in readers a self-censorship that, in all likelihood, prevented them from seeking particular titles.

In the early years of the Soviet state, shortly after the revolution, some libraries experimented with open stacks. But the infrastructure of many Russian libraries was not conducive to free access. For one thing, no classification or cataloging system had yet been implemented in many of the newly established libraries. Additionally, many Russian librarians did not yet recognize the usefulness of accountability measures such as keeping track of who was in possession of a specific book. The early experiment was introduced too precipitously, and, as a result, many books were stolen or lost. Open stacks (and thus open access) was abandoned after 1933 (Slon 1973a, 27-29). A couple of decades later, several years into Khrushchev’s government, the public libraries of Moscow began to

23 agitate for greater open access. Unfettered access to stacks was not granted, but measures to expand access to specific collections were allowed. The renewed (but restrained) open access project was generally limited to reading rooms and rotating exhibitions (Slon

1973b, 11-14).

Another Soviet library policy was the use of the spetskhran. A spetskhran was an area in a library that housed items that had been secretly removed from circulation—due to being categorized as anti-Soviet or “ideologically harmful,” “morally outdated,” racist or pornographic (Sinitsyna 1999, 37-38). As early as 1923, Krupskaia ordered that books deemed as “harmful and counter-revolutionary” be removed from libraries. However, for scholarly and literary purposes, she required that two copies of each culled book be preserved in closed bookcases in central research libraries (Raymond 1979, 92). In response to Krupskaia’s orders, Soviet librarians removed from circulation any items they interpreted as meeting her criteria (Raymond and Remnek 1991, 123).

Krupskaia’s 1923 directive effectively established the spetskhran, which remained an element of Soviet librarianship and a bulwark for censorship until the late 1980s. The content of the spetskhran widened and narrowed at various points throughout the Soviet era. The spetskhran sometimes included each of the following: material critical of the

Soviet Union, the Soviet Regime, or any political body of either; unofficial Soviet art; works by “politically unreliable” authors and artists; and works that made mention of a

“politically unreliable” person. In general, any work that addressed themes, subjects, or facts that might have caused persons to have disparaging thoughts about the USSR were

24 relegated to the spetskhran (Sinitsyna 1999, 37-38). Indeed, the threshold criteria for sending a book or journal to the spetskhran were quite low. For example, the American scientific journals Science and Nature were relegated to the spetskhran because the name of an out-of-favor author was included in an issue’s list of “Books Received” (Brine

1992, 146).

When library materials were consigned to the spetskhran, their bibliographic records were removed from public card catalogs and added to a secret card catalog solely for spetskhran material. In many cases, the records of spetskhran materials were inaccessible not just to the public but even to library staff (Brine 1992, 146). However, some thoroughly vetted scholars and officials were able to visit some spetskhrans in order to access small amounts of pre-specified material on approved topics. These researchers were required to sign a declaration stating that they would not disclose what they had seen (Kimmage 1988, 570-575).

If we consider the policies of rukovodstvo chteniem and recommendatory bibliographies in comparison to the policies of closed stacks and the spetskhran, then a dichotomy emerges that highlights different ways Soviet library policies censored information. Closed stacks and the spetskhran were an absence of information; rukovodstvo chteniem and recommendatory bibliographies were a presence of information. Soviet library policies of absence kept information from readers. Closed stacks resulted in the unintuitive situation in which books were virtually absent from the public areas of public libraries. Readers knew the libraries were full of books, but readers

25 simply could not access them of their own volition. And, the spetskhran comprised the materials that, for ordinary Russians, had just disappeared. In fact, citizens were not even aware that the spetskhran existed. In contrast, rukovodstvo chteniem and recommendatory bibliographies existed to present information—albeit single-sourced, narrow and propagandist. Recommendatory bibliographies announced the domain of the acceptable.

Rukovodstvo chteniem forced standardized reading programs onto library users. These policies of providing information directly shaped and regulated the worldview of library users. Soviet librarians carried out both policies that restricted information and others that imposed it upon readers.

The Soviet librarian was the human face of censorship. Publishing houses decided what would be printed, and high-ranking library officials decided what materials would be sent to the spetskhran. But only Soviet librarians denied information and coerced selections face-to-face. Thus, rukovodstvo chteniem was immediate and personal. Human emotions not germane to other censorship policies affected the dynamics of rukovodstvo chteniem. For example, few would be personally offended by a recommendatory bibliography, due to the completely impersonal character of the relationship between a reader and a government-mandated reading list. A person may be angry with her government, but she would not take the government’s reading list as a personal affront.

But, in light of the policy objectives of rukovodstvo chteniem, the interpersonal relationship between librarian and reader was often adversarial (Brazhe 2004, 85).

26 Although rukovodstvo chteniem was not the only type of censorship that took place in the

Soviet era, it was the most immediate and the most personal.

Like many socio-cultural institutions in the USSR, the Soviet public library was transformed into a fundamentally political institution. Yet, reading is an essentially individual pursuit (Brine 1986, 12). By regulating reading material, the Soviet government used librarians to further impinge upon the private lives of Soviet citizens.

Librarians had once been vigorous advocates for adult education, and thus advocates of intellectual freedom. Under Soviet librarianship, however, their role in society was diminished to that of censor. Policies of censorship and fear of reprisal forced librarians to abandon the normative commitments that had previously guided their profession. As policies eroded their ability to practice discretion, their enthusiasm for the profession dissipated. Historian of Russian librarianship, Boris Korsch, explains:

The requirement for full obedience to political dictates has tended to develop in the librarian apathy, devotion to routine, skepticism about anything new. Often, personal security has come before professional interests, and librarians are frequently torn between the Party’s ideological demands and the requirements of everyday, practical needs. No wonder then that in their work they may tend towards caution, militating against any individual or local initiative. Always dependent on and answerable to higher professional authorities, librarians have become accustomed to not taking responsibility for their daily work (Korsch 1990, 32).

By the late 1980s, when Soviet control was waning, professional discretion and initiative might have been able to foster new approaches to revitalize librarianship in Russia.

However, many librarians had lost these virtues (Sokolov and Kimmage 1992, 49-50).

27 After seventy years of censoring and propagandizing their fellow citizens, it is not surprising that librarians had a hampered and weakened view of their profession.

28 Chapter 4: Librarian-Led Changes During Glasnost’ and Perestroika

After years of censoring and propagandizing Soviet citizens, librarians had lost the respect of the populace. Moreover, many librarians had lost pride in their profession.

By no means a monolithic group, many librarians did share a dissatisfaction with the

Soviet state’s (mis)management of libraries. Some librarians saw glasnost’ and perestroika as an opportunity to reform their profession. During the late 1980s, the roles of librarians in society and the abilities of citizens to access information were subjects of public debate (Greening 1995, 122). Indeed, among librarians themselves, vigorous debates took place in professional journals rethinking the normative foundations of the library profession. Although morale was weak among many librarians during glasnost’ and perestroika, as a group, librarians still managed to redefine themselves as information professionals and redefine libraries as centers of information (Kolar 2012, 272).

Libraries and librarians once held a place of esteem in Soviet society. During a library tour of the USSR in the early 1960s, two participants in a US delegation of librarians concluded that librarianship was a well-respected profession within the intellectual community (Ruggles and Swank 1962, 109). However, since that time, librarians’ prestige and pay steadily declined. In 1988, librarians—who were still being paid at 1977 levels—took home only half of the national average in income (Brine 1992,

157). The turnover rate was as high as thirty percent in some places, and workplace

29 conditions could be abysmal (Brine 1992, 157). Stories of cold, decrepit buildings abound.

Library use had decreased steadily throughout the Soviet era, and this exacerbated the already low job-satisfaction of librarians. The public’s dislike of rukovodstvo chteniem and the poor quality of library materials were the two main reasons that library use decreased. During the Gorbachev era, readers did not care to ask librarians for advice and declined to act on their suggestions. Moreover, readers had little interest in working with librarians to reach a “correct understanding” of the materials they read. Even librarians themselves began to decline to perform readers’ guidance (Korsch 1990, 34).

When the era of glasnost’ and perestroika began, reforms to Soviet librarianship were only incipient ideas born of librarians’ job dissatisfaction and feelings of irrelevance. Glasnost’ and perestroika provided the opportunity for librarians to openly discuss the problems of librarianship. Debates took place for a number of years before librarians could reach a consensus on which areas needed reform and agree upon the trajectory for change. The debates, which took place in the professional journals and at conferences, served to help librarians sort out major issues and decide what the appropriate outcomes of reforms should look like. This period of debate was necessary because library professionals had been rather disconnected from each other prior to the reform era. From the beginning of the Soviet government until glasnost’ and perestroika, there is no history of professional library associations or other types of professional

30 forums. Hence, librarians rarely had discussed their profession (Korobkin and Firsov

2005, 177).

As librarians were considering various reforms and questioning the normative foundations of Soviet librarianship, they began to explore the history of Soviet library policy. One question they considered, especially in the early 1990s, was whether Soviet librarianship’s negative features were the result of Lenin’s ideas or whether they were products of the perversions of Leninism by Stalin (Brine 1992, 160). In particular, they asked whether Lenin’s idea of integrating the principle of partiinost’ with the institution of the public library was flawed. Was it partiinost’ in particular that was the root cause of censorship? Did partiinost’ encourage authoritarian behavior? Or, rather, was the mission of public libraries derailed, never to recover, by the pervasive bureaucratization and political repression of Stalin? The fact that Krupskaia implemented partiinost’ after

Lenin’s death and continued overseeing libraries during Stalin’s reign can only complicate these questions. Although these historical questions may never be answered definitively, that they were contentious is indicative of librarians’ concerns regarding the future of Soviet librarianship.

Beyond the questions about the history of Soviet librarianship, more pressing were issues pertaining to the future of the profession. Two issues were taken to be of utmost importance: the relevance of partiinost’ to the future of library policy and the legitimacy of the practice of rukovodstvo chteniem. Both issues touched the core of the

Soviet librarians’ understanding of their professional identity.

31 The main issue surrounding partiinost’ was whether or not to abandon it as a guiding principle of librarianship. It is important to note that librarians―and the public at large―believed that all reforms of glasnost’ and perestroika would comport with the extant Soviet socialist system. This belief was especially strong because the reforms themselves were started at the highest levels of state government. Hence, if librarians were to de-emphasize Soviet principles like partiinost’, it would not be because of the present state of Soviet politics but in spite of it.

Opponents of preserving the place of partiinost’ in libraries—i.e., those librarians who were willing to abandon it—generally held pluralism to be a proper normative foundation of public libraries. They argued that the framework of partiinost’ results in an unavoidable one-sidedness. Therefore, according to opponents, partiinost’ is an anathema to very idea of the public library and to the free access of information. The reply from proponents of preserving partiinost’ was that the public library cannot be completely apolitical; so neutrality was not an option. Their thought was that, since librarians must take a side, they believed the library should function in accordance with the dominant view of society, which was still defined by the partiinost’ framework. Other proponents believed that the principle of partiinost’ was simply not problematic. They thought, instead, that it had been misapplied in librarianship for much of the Soviet era (Tereshin and Kimmage, 1992, 66). For better or worse, the issue was resolved when the USSR collapsed and the principle of partiinost’ became obsolete. Until that time, however,

32 partiinost’ was an element of every debate, including those about the other most highly contested issue: the status of the practice of rukovodstvo chteniem.

Rukovodstvo chteniem was a vigorously debated issue during glasnost’ and perestroika. The public and, indeed, most librarians disliked rukovodstvo chteniem as it had been practiced. For many Russians, it seemed authoritarian and intellectually limiting. For others, it appeared simply anachronistic, a relic of past promises that exposed the failures of socialism. For most, it was just a trifling and unpleasant exercise, any advantages of which had dissipated long ago. The consensus was that rukovodstvo chteniem was defective, but the issues of debate were about which features of rukovodstvo chteniem were problematic and how the practice might be transformed to better reflect the changing conceptions of the guiding norms of librarianship and Russian society at large.

The characteristics of rukovodstvo chteniem were at odds with the ideas and theories propounded during glasnost’ and perestroika, which were essentially anti- authoritarian. Choices about rukovodstvo chteniem were more pointed because reform in librarianship could only accommodate either partiinost’ or the principle of pluralism.

That is because these principles are conceptually mutually exclusive, in that one- sidedness is essentially incompatible with pluralism. Ultimately, rejection of the authoritarianism replete in the practice and history of rukovodstvo chteniem impelled librarians toward pluralism.

33 By the late 1980s, several articles had been published enumerating the distasteful aspects of rukovodstvo chteniem. In contrast, the older pre-Soviet librarianship version of readers’ guidance still had some currency with librarians. In 1987, N.E. Dobrynina, a professor and researcher in librarianship, condemned rukovodstvo chteniem as paternalistic. She wrote in the journal Sovetskoe Bibliotekovedenie8 that the public

“detects in [rukovodstvo chteniem] excess” and “a guardianship that is insulting to the reader” (Dobrynina 1987, 81). Yet, Dobrynina defended readers’ guidance by arguing that patrons need librarians to help them select books, but not make choices for them. She noted that librarians have the specialized knowledge and training to inform readers about available materials on a topic. In her defense of the old style of readers’ guidance,

Dobrynina essentially argued for a return to the sort of professional discretion found in pre-Soviet librarianship. She decried the fact that rukovodstvo chteniem required Soviet librarians to assess and record citizens’ understandings of and commitments to Soviet ideology. She held that such tasks are outside of the purview of librarians, who should serve a primarily educative purpose. Librarians, concluded Dobrynina, should not be enforcers of ideology, nor should they be monitors of citizens’ behavior.

V.I. Tereshin, a librarian and critic of rukovodstvo chteniem, was more derisive of the practice. Tereshin’s indictment lacked Dobrynina’s concession to the traditional form of readers’ guidance. Tereshin argued that rukovodstvo chteniem was fundamentally authoritarian and wholly inhibited intellectual freedom. In a 1990 article published in the

8 Soviet Librarianship

34 library journal Nauchnye i Technicheskie Biblioteki SSSR,9 Tereshin noted that the term rukovodstvo chteniem (“guidance of reading”) reflected a framework that ignores the needs of the reader. He wrote:

The essence of the term clearly conveys the direction of library work: the guidance of reading objectively turns out to be a form of authoritarian influence on the member of the library, and that is why and not by chance, it brings out the negative attitude towards it by the librarians and the readers (Tereshin 1990, 3).

According to Tereshin, the authoritarianism of rukovodstvo chteniem was inescapable for both librarian and patron. Librarians had been blamed by the Soviet authorities for the failure of rukovodstvo chteniem. Here, though, Tereshin aimed to exonerate librarians by pointing out that librarians were not themselves authoritarian; rather, authoritarianism was inherent to the practice of rukovodstvo chteniem. This point is important because it recognizes the lack of control (i.e., inability to exercise discretion) that librarians had over their daily work, and thereby reconfigures Soviet librarians’ relationship to authoritarianism.

Despite continuing debates about the relevance of partiinost’ and the usefulness of rukovodstvo chteniem, many librarians began to consider new ways of understanding the normative foundations of Russian librarianship, ways that broke from the Soviet conceptual framework. The new foundational proposals were best enumerated by Arkadi

Sokolov, a prominent Russian librarian. In 1989, he wrote in Nauchnye i Technicheskie

Biblioteki SSSR:

9 Science and Technical Libraries of the USSR

35 The new way of thinking, which considers pluralism of opinion and dialogue rather than a dictatorial approach to politics and culture as the norm, rejects opportunistic restrictions on access to literature and information. Reader guidance is not the same as censorship of reading; the librarian ought to work together with the reader and not manipulate his consciousness to satisfy ideological purposes (Sokolov and Kimmage 1992, 51).

Rather than being complicit with the Soviet government in keeping information from the public, librarians wanted to reverse the course of their profession to make information more accessible. In this way, librarians wanted to eschew the Soviet principles and readopt some of the traditional norms of the Russian public library movement.

Central to the new ways of thinking about librarianship was the re-conception of library work as a kind of service to the public. Though librarians had “served” the public throughout the Soviet era—by doing such things as apprising them of government initiatives, programs, and policies—librarians did not think of this task as a “service,” nor did they refer to it as such. This attitude began to change during glasnost’ and perestroika.

Mikhail Afanas’ev, current Director of the State Public Historical Library of Russia and a past president of International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), observed that the term “library service” came into professional usage only during the years of perestroika (Kuzmin 1993). In contrast, Western librarians have been using the term for quite some time. In fact, Western authors writing about Soviet libraries in the middle of the twentieth century were using the term “library services” as a description for

Russian practices like rukovodstvo chteniem (Simsova 1965, 304). Russian librarians’ adoption of the term “library services” showed their collective willingness to abandon the

36 authoritarian policies of the past in order to become more responsive to the actual interests and needs of readers.

Although many of the debates over the direction of professional librarianship were cut short by the dissolution of the Soviet Union, they nevertheless laid the foundation for the evolution of Russian librarianship in the post-Soviet era. Moreover, through the newly expressed views and ongoing conversations published in library journals, a new professional (self-)consciousness of librarians began to take shape.

Indeed, part of the professionalization process was the ongoing conversation that took place both through articles in journals and face-to-face at conferences. The profession of librarianship progressed in more tangible ways as well. For example, librarians took steps to develop associations that could protect their financial interests as well as their professional integrity. Additionally, they forged stronger relationships with worldwide library culture. Throughout the Soviet era, Russian librarians participated episodically in events hosted by the IFLA, and were aware of its advocacy abilities. At the end of the

1980s, they began to leverage the organization’s considerable influence and its institutional knowledge to help build a Russian Library Association.

37 Chapter 5: Public Libraries In Post-Soviet Russia

In 1991, the USSR collapsed. The reforms that librarians initiated during glasnost’ and perestroika gave way to a full-fledged revamping of librarianship in Russia, informed by newly adopted norms. Librarians recast themselves as agents of democratization, as allegiants of Russian culture, and as providers of information. They discontinued state- mandated propaganda work and began to rebuild relationships with the public. Vital to the relationship between librarians and the public is trust. Citizens must be able to trust that librarians, in exercising their professional discretion, will be guided by aims and principles conducive to the good of the public. But such trust had deteriorated during the

Soviet era. Recasting librarianship in a way that justifies public trust in the profession is an ongoing and vital concern for Russian librarians.

A code of ethics issued by a professional organization—by making explicit the general norms of behavior for the profession—can go some distance toward promoting public trust in the profession. Hence, an urgent objective for Russian librarians after the collapse of the Soviet Union was to form professional societies and then formulate codes of ethics that express librarians’ duties toward the public.

During glasnost’ and perestroika, librarians recognized the need for national and field-specific Library Professional Associations (LPAs). There are now several associations for professionals of Russian librarianship, including the Russian Library

Association (RLA), the Russian School Library Association, and the Russian Association

38 of Law Librarians. The associations and their members have various mutual aims.

Besides promoting public trust in the profession, associations aim to improve the professional situation of librarians, organize the profession’s specialized body of knowledge, and provide forums for professional development (Winter 1983,10).

Additionally, according to Mikhail Afanas’ev who was the president of IFLA in 1991, the professional associations aim to aid in the democratization of Russia by providing access to information and encouraging intellectual freedom (Brine 1992, 158).

Perhaps the most critical role of professional associations is the clarification and defense of the norms of the profession (Koehler 2006, 83). Such associations establish guidelines for behavior that aligns with the profession’s foundations. During the Soviet era, the government established the goals and guidelines (as well as oversight) for librarianship (Raymond and Remnek 1991, 144). But since the end of the Soviet Union, i.e., in the absence of governmental ideological oversight, professional societies of librarianship have been created to fill the normative void left by the collapse. The result is that librarians themselves, rather than an outside entity, have authority over and guidance of Russian librarianship. A professional association’s guidance to its members is typically articulated in a code of ethics.

The RLA adopted the Code of Professional Ethics of the Russian Librarian (often known as “the COE” or simply “the Code”) in 1999. One—if not the—major impetus for its development was that having a code of ethics was a prerequisite to joining IFLA

(Trushina 2009). The RLA joined IFLA in the late 1990s, as the Code was being

39 developed. Another impetus for developing the 1999 Code was to conciliate librarians and their patrons. In light of Russia’s authoritarian past and its legacy of censorship, librarians felt uncertain about the dynamics of their relationships with patrons (Trushina

2010). In order to assuage these feelings, librarians have turned to the COE as a guide for improved professionalism and balanced, effective interaction with patrons. For the RLA, the Code signified the arrival of Russian librarianship to the world stage as a participant in global library culture (Trushina 2004). In addition, the Code symbolized a break with the past (Melentieva 2006, §2.2). The COE of 1999 suggests that the librarian has a role as a facilitator, rather than an obstacle, for the patron seeking information. (Trushina

2009).

Notably, among the ethical guidelines of the 1999 Code is a declaration that

Russian librarians are competent and knowledgeable, and that they are concerned about the “high social status” of their profession (Trushina 2004). It seems that the authors of the 1999 Code fashioned it so that it might simultaneously provide correctives to the legacy of Soviet policies, express contrition for the role of librarians in censorship, absolve librarians of responsibility for the state of their profession in the Soviet era, validate actively-employed librarians that also served during Soviet times, and, finally, herald a new stage of Russian librarianship.

The 1999 Code was largely dedicated to the principle of accessibility to information and absolute rejection of censorship (Kozlova 2010). In other words, it privileged the individual library user. It also derogated involvement of the librarian with

40 the patron as an undue influence or as an agent of censorship. In other words, it propounded the ideal of the impartial librarian. The traditions of pre-Soviet and Soviet librarianship, which both emphasized the librarian’s influence on the reader—albeit in different ways—were abandoned. When librarians were writing the 1999 Code, they were still vividly aware of the effects of the Soviet era. In order to re-brand themselves, librarians attempted to completely divorce the profession from all aspects of partiinost’ and from the practice of rukovodstvo chteniem. Librarians even divorced themselves from the traditional conception of readers’ guidance, on which rukovodstvo chteniem was founded. Thus, the COE of 1999 eschewed both the Russian tradition of deference for the collective over the individual and the tradition of readers’ guidance.

Readers’ guidance, though no longer ideological, has remained a perennial subject of contention in Russian librarianship. However, the realm of readers’ guidance is now mainly an issue in children’s librarianship. This is to be expected for two related reasons:

Russia has an educated population10 and there is no longer a policy of mandatory ideological education. Thus, the number of adult education candidates has diminished.

Regarding adult patrons, there are generally two sides of contention over readers’ guidance. Those against readers’ guidance feel that the process is likely to become

‘violent’, meaning that librarians tend to exert too great an influence on the patron. Such an imposition could rob the patron of agency and voice. Of those who favor readers’ guidance, there are usually two reasons for doing so. First, those favoring readers’

10 Readers’ guidance for adult education declines as populaces become more educated. Likewise, the demand for fiction, or other leisure reading, increases.

41 guidance believe it to be an essential aspect of librarianship as well as an educative practice that contributes to the greater good. Secondly, some advocates of readers’ guidance see its practice as a duty that protects culture by providing proper reading choices (Stel’makh 1998, 109-110). Without reader’s guidance, the advocates argue, it is quite possible that Russian readers will go the way of Western readers (and choose to read ignoble and common novels rather than literature) (Brine 1992,154; Korsch 1990,

32-33). That librarians and other advocates of reading worry about the quality of literature that readers choose manifests their feelings of obligation to promote culture and societal well-being. In general, these librarians wish to exercise a sort of influence that expands beyond the information-providing service aspects. The 1999 Code, with its strong commitment to impartiality of librarians, discouraged this type of involvement with readers.

Many Russian librarians were dissatisfied with the 1999 Code. They held the model of the impartial librarian to be problematic for two reasons. For one, the COE of

1999 too heavily emphasized impartiality of the librarian such that it detached librarians from patrons in an objectionable way. Librarians were discouraged from involvement with readers and readers’ selections. Although librarians would face no penalties for violation of this clause, the fact that a stated value of librarianship discouraged librarian- patron interaction was problematic for many librarians.

The second, deeper, reason for dissatisfaction with the model of the impartial librarian was that some librarians wanted to be able to exercise discretion in the provision

42 of information to patrons. For example, one way librarians might exercise discretion in this way is by deciding not to provide a patron with the desired information. In addition to the perceived problematic of the impartial librarian, the1999 COE featured a clause that stated that librarians should neither restrict access to information nor withhold information. This implies that librarians have a duty to provide any and all information that a patron might request. For example, a librarian strictly following the 1999 Code would not have the authority to weigh her duty to the reader against her duty to society, should such a choice present itself. But such a choice might present itself, and librarians feel that they should be able to rely on their own discretion if it does. More and more,

Russian librarians are arguing for the authority to deny patrons potentially dangerous information. For instance, they feel they should be able to deny patrons information about weapons that might be used for terrorism (Kozlova 2010; Trushina 2009).

Taking into account the changing environment and the lessons learned in the first decade of the new millennium, the RLA convened a Working Group in 2009 to revise the

Code. After soliciting input and after many articles dedicated to the revision had been published in the trade journals, the RLA adopted a new Code of Professional Ethics of the Russian Librarian in 2011. The Preamble to the 2011 COE lays out a few maxims about the importance of libraries to society and, more importantly, states that the library profession is “based on a sense of social responsibility.” In addition, the 2011 Code highlights the educational role of librarians and rescinds the idea that the impartial librarian was the ideal. But the 2011 Code does retain some of the values of the model.

43 Although the model of the impartial librarian has been in vogue for the last twenty years, this type of librarian is no longer the ideal. This is mainly because the impartial librarian has no obligation to society—only to individual readers—which precludes a sense of social responsibility.

As continually emphasized in library journals, the educative role of librarians has traditionally been a characteristic of the Russian practice of librarianship (Trushina

2009). Moreover, in the 2011 Code, the importance of informal education is recognized, especially in regard to the municipal public libraries of Russia (Firsov 2011). The educational functions of librarians and their sense of social responsibility are complementary notions.

Features of the 2011 Code that are not complementary are its two (possibly incompatible) service paradigms. The aim is to strike a balance between two types of librarianship: a librarianship that propounds the model of the impartial of the librarian and a librarianship that is intricately connected to human relationships, and thus encompasses educative aspects of the profession. The service paradigms are the spirit of service paradigm, “in which the customer is always right.” and the teacher-leader of reading paradigm. The teacher-leader of reading paradigm contributes to “the socialization of identity” and “the formation of civic consciousness” which creates in the reader a critical and discerning view of information (Sokolov 2011). The choice of which model of library service should be employed for which individual users is left to the discretion of the Russian librarian.

44 As yet, the Russian Library Association’s Code of Professional Ethics of the

Russian Librarian of 2011 is too new to reveal if these paradigms of service are compatible. The outcome, i.e., the answer to the compatibility question, will decide if the

2011 Code can truly represent the members of the profession of librarianship. Russia has experienced extreme library policies and repression of librarians’ professional discretion.

These experiences have affected librarians individually and have helped to shape a certain wariness of institutional changes in librarianship. Therefore, the COE of the RLA is most likely an evolving document whose future permutations will continue to clarify the Russian librarian’s relationship both to readers’ guidance and to the professional discretion on which it depends.

45 Conclusion

The Soviet government kept a tight rein on Russian librarians. The dictatorial

Soviet government saw libraries as organs of propaganda and librarians as tools for influencing citizens’ beliefs. Librarians in the Soviet era had little discretion; they were constantly monitored and micro-managed.

Soviet librarianship was subjugated to the principle of partiinost’, reducing librarians to little more than propagandists. Librarians were, on the whole, dissatisfied with this role. The public was dissatisfied too, so much so that library patronage continued to decline throughout the Soviet era. The era of glasnost’ and perestroika provided an opportunity to revamp the library profession in the Soviet Union. The Soviet regime exercised less control over libraries in the 1980s than it had in the previous sixty years, allowing librarians to reassert control over their own profession. Changes to the profession were not just practical; librarians expressed a genuine interest in investigating the profession from various perspectives in order to clarify its normative foundations, develop a professional consciousness, and engage with the rest of world’s librarians.

After the collapse of the USSR and no longer bound by partiinost’, librarians formed professional societies to develop and solidify the tenets of their newly found professional consciousness. Librarians new self-prescribed norms fill the gap left by the disappearance of Soviet regulations, and, in so doing, redefine the relationship between librarians and the patrons whose interests they serve.

46 In tracing the course of Russian librarianship, I have paid special attention to one of Soviet librarianship’s key tasks: readers’ guidance. Soviet librarians conducted readers’ guidance very differently from librarians elsewhere in the world. By focusing on readers’ guidance and other tasks of Russian librarians, I have examined the possibilities of librarians deploying professional discretion at various times over the past century and a half in Russia. Though the possibility of the exercise of true discretion was in jeopardy during most of the Soviet era, discretion now seems safe. The most pressing questions for librarians now are not about the possibility of discretion, but about what the shape and scope of it should be.

Of course there are other questions about Russian librarianship that remain unanswered. This thesis has focused on policies and practices of librarians. But a fuller picture of Russian librarianship would have to include the evolving perspectives of the other side, the perspective of library users. For example, what was the outlook of a normal library user at various points in Russian history?

Another area deserving of deeper research is the relevance of libraries and librarianship to the furtherance of democracy in Russia. Much has been made of the importance of public libraries to the protection of democracy elsewhere, but it is not clear that public libraries have this effect in Russia. Public librarianship can help protect democracy by promoting free access to information. However, access to information— especially governmental and legal—is increasingly limited in Russia due to the privatization of public information. Indeed, ninety percent of information provided by

47 commercial companies in Russia is actually governmental and legal information

(Trushina 2008, 20-21). Increasing privatization of information means that public libraries have to pay commercial companies for access to information that, as a matter of public record, should be free of charge (Trushina 2008, 22-23). The future accessibility of information in Russia is currently being contested. No small role in this contest is being played by public librarians, who have spoken out against such privatization. Thus, public librarianship's role in protecting access to information in Russia is also a direction for future research.

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