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Reading russia, vol. 3

 | 
Damiano Rebecchini
, 
Raffaella Vassena

Part III. After the Bolshevik Revolution

The Readers’ Milieu, 1917-1920s

Evgeny Dobrenko et Abram Reitblat

Texte intégral

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1The readership of the first post-revolutionary years largely consisted of those who belonged to the Russian reading public at the beginning of the nineteenth century. By this time, literacy and, accordingly, reading had become strong features of the urban lifestyle, but had only begun to take root in the countryside, where oral transmission of cultural traditions and work experience prevailed. Such an attitude to the book and reading was well entrenched and changed slowly.

2However, the post-revolutionary era was characterized by radical sociocultural shifts. Revolutions, World War I and the Civil War not only galvanized the masses, but also politicized them. The “social creativity of the masses” (Lenin) was the result of a crisis and the subsequent rapid destruction of all previous social institutions. This process led to radical shifts in collective (class, national) and individual identity, reinforcing the Party’s need to understand political and social changes, adapt to the new conditions, and have a number of social groups participate in building a new society.

  • 1 See A. I. Nazarov, Oktiabr’ i kniga (Moscow, 1968), 197.

3The Communists who came to power retained to a large degree the intelligentsia approach to culture. They aimed to familiarize the population with ‘culture,’ and therefore saw as their immediate tasks eliminating illiteracy and fostering among the population (primarily the working strata) the need for the printed word, a book, and a steady reading habit. But gradually, reading’s capacity to influence the population ideologically became increasingly important, enhancing political campaigns and otherwise mobilizing the population. Works by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin as well as propagandistic brochures were published in large runs. In 1920, the total run of propagandistic editions published by the Moscow branch of the State Publishing House was ten times higher than that of artistic ones. At the same time, the library funds and warehouses of book-selling organizations were cleared of “ideologically alien and outdated” literature.1

  • 2 See E. Z. Volkov, Dinamika narodonaseleniia SSSR za 80 let (Moscow, Leningrad, 1930), 270; V. P. D (...)
  • 3 Dekrety Sovetskoi vlasti (Moscow, 1959), vol. 2, 553.
  • 4 See T. Iu. Krasovitskaia, “Perveishei zadachei iavliaetsia gramotnost’,” Voprosy istorii, 5 (1979) (...)

4There is no exact data on changes in the readership in Soviet Russia. However, one could safely assert that the total number of readers in the first post-revolutionary years (in comparison with the pre-revolutionary period) barely changed. On the one hand, readers made up a significant part of those 9–11 million by which Russian population declined between 1917–1921.2 On the other hand, during this period, approximately 4–5 million workers and peasants became regular readers thanks to the eradication of illiteracy. Only the social structure of the readership had undergone significant changes. The proportion of those who before the revolution could be called an “educated audience” declined considerably: a large part of them emigrated, others were repressed, some died on the fronts of the Civil War, and others died of starvation and cold because they received insufficient rations. At the same time, the proportion of those who used to be called “popular readers” (narodnye chitateli) significantly increased. This was primarily due to the large-scale campaign to eradicate illiteracy. In 1918, the Russian Federation Constitution stated: “In order to ensure that workers have effective access to knowledge, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic aims to provide workers and the poorest peasants with complete, comprehensive and free education.”3 On December 26, 1919 Sovnarkom adopted a decree by which the entire population aged 8 to 50 was obliged to learn to read and write in their native language or Russian. The All-Russian Emergency Commission to eradicate Illiteracy in the Commissariat of Enlightenment was established by Sovnarkom decree on July 19, 1920. As a result, approximately 4 to 5 million were taught to read and write between 1918–1921.4

  • 5 Materialy po statistike Petrograda (Moscow, 1920), issue 2, 3.
  • 6 Politrabotnik, 2 (1920), 12-13.

5In addition, a number of measures had been taken to ensure the availability of books for workers and peasants: all public libraries were nationalized and open to use, and new ones were created as well. New publications were distributed free of charge to libraries and other organizations between 1920 and 1921. As a result, the number of workers’ libraries in Petrograd grew from 14 in 1914 to 65 in 1919, and their readership amounted to about 650 thousand5. 1,754 mobile libraries operated within the Army in early 1919; by the end of the year, their number reached 19.5 thousand.6 Hut reading rooms/libraries (izby-chital’ni) were created in rural areas, which at the same time were comparable to clubs.

  • 7 N. A. Rubakin, “Knizhnoe delo i chitatel’stvo v Rossii v epokhu voiny i revoliutsii 1914-1918 gg., (...)

6This educational work aligned with popular interest and demand. Scholar Nikolai Rubakin came to the conclusion that socio-political and cultural changes in the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary Russian library and reading practices contributed to the advancement of reading. The rapid growth of literacy and ever-growing number of educational institutions, intensive migration caused by war and revolution, participation in political life, and dissemination of socialist ideas all contributed to “increasing [...] semi-intelligentsia [this is how Rubakin referred those who had only recently acquired reading skills —A. R., E. D.] in all social classes.”7 Broad strata of the population which joined the political movement after the revolution felt an urgent need for the printed word, which would allow them to navigate a turbulent political life and to form a new worldview.

7In a popular ditty the soldier addresses the book with the following words:

  • 8 S. Fedorchenko, Narod na voine (Moscow, 1925), vol. 2. Revoliutsiia, 9.

Oh, you, the book, young lady!
Hanging with the rich,
You leave the rich,
Visit our brother.8
American publicist John Reed said:

  • 9 D. Rid, 10 dnei, kotorye potriasli mir (Moscow, 1957), 36.

8All of Russia was learning how to read and really read books on politics, economics, and history; read because people wanted to know... The [...] thirst for enlightenment, which was constrained for so long, burst out with spontaneous force along with the revolution. [...] Russia absorbed printed material with the same insatiableness with which dry sand absorbs water.9

  • 10 D. Furmanov, Sobranie sochinenii (Moscow, 1961), vol. 4, 94.
  • 11 S. Liubosh S. [S. B. Liuboshits], “Literatura griadushchego dnia,” Vestnik literatury, 6 (1919), 2 (...)

9Dmitrii Furmanov, who was engaged in propaganda work among workers in 1917, noted that in this environment “the thirst for political knowledge is huge. [...] Everybody is anxiously waiting for a good, fresh book! They ask each other, run, search, and queue to read.”10 One of the writers of the time expressively wrote that “the new masters of life, new readers, and new consumers of cultural values go and multiply from its very roots, from the bowels of the earth. A mass of people hungry for spiritual nourishment has risen, and this mass eagerly pounces on books.”11

10The historical circumstances stimulated this sudden and wide appeal of reading, which was fuelled by: uncertainty about the changes occurring in society, and the need to clarify them; sharp and rapidly increasing social disintegration as a result of revolution; war and the politics of the new regime, which produced mass migration to the cities and caused widespread marginalization, thus creating the incentive to ‘master’ urban (book) culture.

  • 12 See K. I. Abramov, Bibliotechnoe stroitel’stvo v pervye gody Sovetskoi vlasti. 1917-1920 (Moscow, (...)
  • 13 See A. Kukharskii , “Uspekhi i perspektivy v oblasti bibliotechnogo dela g. Leningrada,” Kommunist (...)

11From 1914 to 1920, in six provinces alone (Arkhangelsk, Moscow, Novgorod, Saratov, Tver, Ufa) the number of library readers increased dramatically (according to incomplete information), nearly quadrupling from 174 thousand to 667 thousand.12 The number of the Leningrad Gubpolitprosvet library readers increased from 47 thousand in 1918 to 88 thousand in 1921.13 A similar increase in the number of library subscribers was observed in other Russian regions.

  • 14 See V. A. Kozlov, Kul’turnaia revoliutsiia i krest’ianstvo. 1921-1927 (Moscow, 1983), 49.

12In the village, many new readers appeared from among the village activists, the most politicized peasants, former Red Army men, etc. 14

13The rapid increase of the literate population and the exponential growth of the library network created a real basis for familiarizing the broad masses of the population with book reading, but it was hampered by “book hunger,” difficult living conditions, etc.

  • 15 Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF), f. 3524. See on the census: M. P. Iroshnikov, (...)
  • 16 GARF, f. 3524, d. 204, l. 121; d. 205, l. 235; d. 279, l. 121.

14Interesting data on the material basis of reading and on the conditions in which the printed word was utilized is found in the census of Soviet officials held in August-September 1918.15 The vagueness and uncertainty of the question included in the questionnaire (“Do you find spiritual nourishment in bookstores, theaters, etc. —and how satisfactory is it?”) makes it impossible to make any precise quantitative calculations for the answers to it. However, the detailed answers available on a number of the forms allow us to characterize some tendencies in the use of the printed word during this period. First of all, the urgent need for books is striking. A significant number of respondents gave a positive response about the benefits of “spiritual nourishment,” but about a third of the motivated negative responses contained such formulations as: “no, but I would like to,” “no, but it’s very desirable,” “I’m planning to” and so on.16

  • 17 GARF, f. 3524, d. 225, l. 172.
  • 18 GARF, f. 3524, d. 225, l. 338.
  • 19 GARF, f. 3524, d. 275, l. 84.

15Responders also pointed out the difficulties that were obstacles to reading. In the city, they were connected, as a rule, with post-revolutionary living and working conditions. Lack of time and money, working conditions, business trips, traveling —these reasons prevailed in negative responses. The most typical of them: “I don’t [find spiritual nourishment in books —A. R., E. D.] for lack of time, since the urgent construction of the plant requires [...] hours of work” (repair plant engineer)17; “Not yet, since the organizational period of the institution where I work takes up all my free time” (head of the financial department of the Supreme Economic Council,18 “due to current events, there is no time” (instructor of the Labour Department of the District Council of Deputies)19.

16Intensive work on building the state apparatus and restoring the economy, as well as overcoming numerous domestic difficulties and the harsh realities of everyday life (providing oneself with food, clothing, fuel, etc.), left very little free time, which was only enough to read newspapers and current political literature.

  • 20 GARF, f. 3524, d. 280, l. 584.
  • 21 GARF, f. 3524, d. 280, l. 582.
  • 22 GARF, f. 3524, d. 280, l. 578.
  • 23 GARF, f. 3524, d. 484.
  • 24 GARF, f. 3524, d. 213, l. 228.

17Another important obstacle to reading was the insufficient development of the library network, the lack of books, etc. Most often, such responses were given by those who were sent to the countryside: “In the village where I now work, there are no books”;20 “There is no spiritual nourishment to be found in the village. I can’t even get newspapers here”;21 “We have to use only newspapers, since there is nothing else in our Mamoshinskii volost’ council of the Ruza district”.22 However, even Moscow experienced a shortage of libraries, as evidenced by the following type of responses: “I don’t (find any spiritual nourishment there) because it’s not possible due to the relatively small number of Soviet educational institutions in Moscow” (the head of operations department of the High Council of National Economy);23 “In the absence of books [...] in the area of service and residence, I do not (find spiritual nourishment)” (accountant).24

  • 25 See “O knizhnom golode,” Bibliograficheskie izvestiia, 1-2 (1917), 90.
  • 26 See I. V. Vladislavlev, “Knizhnyi golod,” Bibliograficheskii ezhemesiachnik, 1 (1917), 5-10; “Kniz (...)
  • 27 Narodnyi Komissariat po prosveshcheniiu, 1917-oktiabr’ 1920: (Kratkii otchet) (Moscow, 1920), 72. (...)

18‘Book hunger’ also affected the scale and nature of reading during these years: because of a shortage of paper and overall devastation, the capabilities of the printing industry were severely reduced even as the demand for books sharply increased. ‘Book hunger’ at first manifested itself in the almost complete absence of available books for literacy training, self-education, research, scientific studies, as well as the rising cost of textbooks for secondary education and the cost of printing new books, etc.25 In subsequent years, the situation with books became even more aggravated, as evidenced by numerous articles with eloquent titles: “Book hunger,” “Book impoverishment,” etc.26 A report by the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment noted that “the main obstacle to the development of the library network is the impoverishment of the book markets; the demand for books has reached colossal proportions, and this demand remains unsatisfied.” 27

  • 28 See L. I. Emeliakh, Istoricheskie predposylki preodoleniia religii v sovetskoi derevne (Leningrad, (...)

19The rapid increase in the number of readers among workers and peasants was due to the fact that the sharp breakdown of the old social and cultural structure forced many working people to turn to reading as a means of adapting to new social conditions and joining a new way of life. World War I and two revolutions ‘shattered’ and consequently undermined the value system of a significant part of society, the most important components of which were religion, faith in the ‘tsar-father,’ etc. Now, with the help of periodicals and books, the population assimilated a new system of values based on Marxist ideology. It is worth noting that new readers, for whom reading was not an easy task, did not seek to read just any (and certainly not entertaining) books; rather, they only sought books on vital issues. If earlier in the village this ‘world-building’ function belonged to religious and moral literature, now that there was a crisis of religion28—political, atheistic and ‘practical’—books came out on top.

  • 29 See P. Gurov, “Novaia biblioteka i zaprosy ee chitatelia,” Pechat’ i revoliutsiia, 7 (1922), 192.

20It is indicative that in 1921, when answering the question about the books that contributed most to the formation of their worldview, readers named either anti-religious and anti-church books (Articles about Religion by Paul Lafargue, Religion and Communism [Religiia i kommunizm] by Sergei Minin, Religion, the clergy, its income, its curses and blessings [Religiia, dukhovenstvo, ego dokhody, ego prokliatiia i blagosloveniia] by Ivan Stepanov, The Life of Jesus by Ernest Renan, etc.) or works of natural science (The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, How, when and why people appeared on Earth [Kak, kogda i pochemu poiavilis’ liudi na zemle?] by Nikolai Rubakin) in addition to publications of political content.29 The book, therefore, was the most important instrument for the secularization of consciousness, the transition from a religious to a materialist worldview.

  • 30 I. Rostov, “Prosveshchenie na fronte,” Politrabotnik, 10 (1921), 5-10.

21The key element of one’s worldview now became knowledge. For example, one of the Red Army political workers of that time wrote that “the Red Army mass wants to know everything: what the earth, the sun and the stars are, how the earth and man happened, how the universe works, whether or not there is a god, what is Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism, whether miracles are possible, about the relationships between church and state, religion and communism.” Readers were interested in issues of spiritual and material culture, forms of government; they had many questions about the nature and objectives of the Soviet state, family and marriage; they wanted to know “how it will be in the future.”30 Consequently, the prestige afforded to the carrier of knowledge—the printed word—increased sharply.

22The book undermined the foundations of outdated worldviews and became one of the most important values of the new one. The following lines by one of the proletarian poets vividly captures the moment of the “transition,” when a person who was accustomed to conceptualizing reality in terms of religion now replaces religious faith with knowledge and books:

  • 31 I. Loginov, “V biblioteke,” Pravda, January 11, 1918.

My temple is a library,
My book shelves—an iconostasis,
And the human mind—a Savior
Not Made By Hands.
Not a golden ark
For Mind outfit,
But ciphers, their letters aflame,
On a book cover...31

  • 32 See Massovyi chitatel’ i kniga (Moscow, 1925). All the data on Read Army readers is quoted from th (...)
  • 33 Ia. Kiperman, “Zadachi i sredstva bibliotechnoi aktivnosti,” Trudy I Vserossiiskogo s”ezda bibliot (...)

23For people with a relatively high level of education and reading culture, this restructuring was accompanied by intensive reading of a wide variety of publications—from the social, political, and natural sciences to artistic and ‘applied’ (i.e. necessary in the everyday) work. However, a number of neophyte readers in the world of book culture, who had only just begun to go beyond the confined world of the rural community, were primarily interested in utilitarian literature. Valuable material for the characterization of such readers, who were in the ‘transition’ stage from oral culture to book culture, is provided by data from a questionnaire survey by the Red Army, conducted in 1920 ̶ 1921 (more than 12 thousand profiles).32 Thirty-one percent of respondents were almost half-literate and had stayed in school for only one or two years. As a result, two-thirds of the respondents said they preferred to read themselves, and for the rest it was preferable to have a listening, or that both ways of getting acquainted with books were equivalent. A library worker of that time noted: “On the whole, we have before us in the Red Army libraries a novice reader who is not prepared, who not only cannot read in the exact sense of the word, but who has not yet learned to hold the book.”33

24Eighty percent of the interviewed Red Army men believed that they benefited from reading, which gave them a deeper knowledge of life in general or allowed them to acquire practical information on agriculture, handicrafts, etc.

25Agricultural literature turned out to be the most preferred type of literature among the Red Army soldiers of peasant origin (32% of readers in this indicated group), since they intended to use the acquired knowledge for more rational land management upon returning home. Characteristic in this regard is a letter from one of the Red Army men to the Novaia Derevnia (New Village) magazine with a request to send him a book about the multi-field system:

  • 34 Quoted in V. P. Prozorov, “Chto krest’iane pishut o knige,” Novaia derevnia, 11 (1923), 77.

When I entered the Red Army, I was completely illiterate, I could not even write a letter home, because I did not know all the letters, but now, as you can see, I am writing a letter to you here with my own hand, as I can and I will be able to [...]. One of these days I am going home to the village to destroy the three-field system. I will try to explain to my fellow villagers to the best of my ability the benefits of the multi-field and the harm of the three-field.34

26The above-mentioned “utilitarian” peasant approach to reading prevented, in part, the consumption of other types of literature. Nevertheless, 20% of Red Army soldiers of peasant origin preferred fiction, and 8% preferred political literature.

27Some of the answers emphasized the ideological significance of reading, the possibility of using it in a new way to comprehend the surrounding reality (“In reading I find many useful things: 1) I got rid of the yoke of religion; 2) learn how to live a fair life”; “Reading gave me knowledge, for example, about the way we used to live and how we should live further”; “It taught me to understand the meaning of the surrounding life, acquainted with the people of old times, and this makes it possible to look in and forward: to make up some picture of the future”). Other answers emphasized the utilitarian importance of reading books (“in view of fertilizing the land for a new crop,” “helping to keep a better farm,” “learned from the book how to build a new farm,” “for the most part reading benefited agriculture” and so on).

28Reading was a powerful means of political influence—32% of respondents noted the influence of reading on their political views (“reading changed my political views, it put them on the right ways scientifically and consciously relate to the reality surrounding me”; “I used to read books, and they told me they didn’t bring any benefit, now I’ve begun to read political books, newspapers—it’s very beneficial”). Nevertheless, despite the clearly propagandistic and ideological nature of the survey, approximately 1.5% of respondents named religious books as their preference, and 1% named fairy-tales. Although both of these sections were not indicated in the questionnaire, they were written in by the readers themselves.

29Among the most liked writers, Red Army soldiers cited well-known authors, above of all Lev Tolstoi (“writes truthfully,” “enlightens the people,” “a teacher of life,” “writes about religion and truth,” “encouraged people to love and brotherhood”), then Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin; such classics of Russian literature as Aleksandr Pushkin (“writes beautifully,” “tells stories well,” “it is written clearly”), Nikolai Gogol’, Nikolai Nekrasov, Anton Chekhov, Ivan Turgenev; and among contemporary authors, Maksim Gor’kii (like him for “protecting the rights of the proletariat,” “correctness of the image of people’s life,” “as more popular”) and Dem’ian Bednyi (attracted by “his tendentiousness,” “for the criticism of topical problems,” “writes lucidly and truthfully”).

  • 35 See S. G. Strumilin, Biudzhet vremeni russkogo rabochego i krest’ianina v 1922-1923 godu (Moscow, (...)

30The most literate part of the rural population that was more readily engaged in reading tended to join the Red Army. It is also important to note that active political and educational work was carried out within the army, and that a developed network of libraries was at its disposal. Reading in the countryside was significantly less intensive, which was due to a lower level of literacy and a weaker base of reading materials. In 1923, 13.8% of peasants read newspapers and 13,1% read books. The time spent reading in this environment (on average per person) was a little over 1.6 hours per month.35 On the reading practices of other social groups in this period we have much more limited information.

  • 36 Ibid, 24, 26.
  • 37 See S. G. Strumilin, “Domashnii byt po inventariam,” in Idem, Izbrannye proizvedeniia (Moscow, 196 (...)
  • 38 See Gramotnost’ v Rossii (Moscow, 1922), 45.

31According to a survey in the cities, in 1922 45.9% of workers read newspapers, 41.0% read books and journals/magazines. The figures are slightly different among working women specifically: 40% read newspapers and 20% read books and journals/magazines.36 On average, workers spent 10.2 hours on reading per month (that is, 6 times more than the peasants), and working women specifically—3.7 hours. A 1923 survey found that 64.2% of working families did not have books.37 If we consider that the literacy rate among workers, according to the professional census of 1918, was 79.1% for men and 44.1% for women,38 then it can be stated that a number of potential readers were not yet attracted to systematic reading during this period.

  • 39 E. O. Kabo, Ocherki rabochego byta: Opyt monograficheskogo obsledovaniia domashnego byta (Moscow, (...)
  • 40 See Gurov, Novaia biblioteka i zaprosy ee chitatelia, 194.

32Elena Kabo, who studied the everyday life of workers between the years 1924 to 1926, notes that in this environment “the book is not used for recreation or entertainment. Reading here is still work, not quite familiar, sometimes hard, but necessary for life and knowledge.”39 Attention to the intellectual function of reading is also evidenced by the data of a questionnaire survey conducted in 1921 in the Armavir workers’ library. It was found that 70% of subscribers read for the purpose of acquiring knowledge and only 30% (among which students and employees prevailed) for entertainment.40

  • 41 Report quoted in E. G. Gimpel’son, Sovetskii rabochii klass 1918-1920 gg. (Moscow, 1974), 330.
  • 42 See N. B. Lebina, Rabochaia molodezh’ Leningrada: Trud i sotsial’nyi oblik. 19211925 (Leningrad, (...)

33A questionnaire survey conducted in early 1919 on the everyday life and living conditions of the workers of the town of Mtsensk, Oryol Province showed that “the young worker is greedy for enlightening reading. He has a lot of brochures, flying sheets and newspapers in his hands.”41 In 1921, socio-political literature accounted for a quarter of all regularly issued books in the libraries of the Komsomol clubs of Petrograd.42 In the mass libraries of the Kostroma province, the reading of socio-political literature was only 0.1% in 1917, and in 1922 it was already 4%.

  • 43 E. Khersonskaia, “Kak chitat’ belletristiku,” Obshchee delo, 5 (1920), 9.
  • 44 See Gurov, Novaia biblioteka i zaprosy ee chitatelia, 198-200.
  • 45 Istoriia bibliotechnogo dela v SSSR: Dokumenty i materialy. 1918-1920 gg. (Moscow, 1975), 196; als (...)

34Fiction was actively read along with political literature. Describing the readership of 1920, contemporaries noted that “fiction is easier to read than a scientific book, they buy it more readily, it appeals to a wider reading mass.”43 For example, in the aforementioned Armavir library, readers most often asked for the books of Fedor Dostoevskii, Lev Tolstoi, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Victor Hugo, Aleksandr Amfiteatrov, Ivan Turgenev, Anton Chekhov, Maksim Gor’kii, Dmitrii Mamin-Sibiriak, Grigorii Danilevskii, Ivan Goncharov, Herbert Wells, Vladimir Korolenko, Aleksei Pisemskii, Aleksandr Pushkin. and others. It was also noted that readers “turn to such authors who inspire them to fight, to support the revolution” and that the workers’ demands were more serious than those of other social groups.44 However, there is also evidence of a countervailing trends. For instance, in 1918-1919 at the Prechistenskii workers’ courses (Moscow), workers “in fiction demanded Pinkerton, Jacolliot, Amfiteatrov, Verbitskaia,”45 that is, adventure literature and books by authors who wrote about the acute problems of sexual relations.

  • 46 G. Martinson, “O literature,” Izvestiia, January 16, 1919.
  • 47 “Khronika,” Bibliotechnye izvestiia, 1 (1918), 61-62.

35The heightened interest of the broad working masses in political literature, as well as an correspondingly oriented publishing strategy, determined the general picture of reading during these years. However, this does not mean that there were no other groups who differed in their attitude towards books. The press noted an unhealthy craving of the bourgeoisie for the old classics.46 Representatives of the opposition-minded social strata (former nobles, the bourgeoisie, a significant part of the pre-revolutionary intelligentsia) read books by pre-revolutionary writers, moving away from the unpleasant and dangerous Soviet reality into a more harmonious and humane world of the past. Moreover, educated readers paid extra attention to the culture of the publishing world. When the exhibition “The Fine Book in the Past” was organized in Moscow in 1918, the reviewer frankly admitted in a newspaper article that “it is always pleasant to look at a good old book, but now that the book has generally been destroyed, now that the book has become godlessly expensive and scruffy, the pleasure of contemplating the exhibited [books] grows more profound and acquires a tinge of dreary env.”47 In our opinion, the revitalization of bibliophile societies and the increase in the number of bibliophile publications in the post-revolutionary period are connected with this nostalgic attitude. However, actual, living representatives of such an attitude to books were very few. For example, in 1921, the circulation of the magazine Sredi kollektsionerov (Among collectors), which contained materials not only about books, but also about painting, applied art, etc., did not exceed 500 copies.

36Thus, in the early Soviet years, the readers’ milieu underwent a significant transformation. This was due to a number of reasons: the Civil War ended and the socio-political situation stabilized; with the beginning of the New Economic Policy (NEP), the situation in the economy improved and domestic problems (food provisions, fuel, clothing, etc.) were not so acute; literacy rates increased; a new, young generation already emerged in the early Soviet years. The readership now consisted primarily of workers and peasants. ‘New readers’ were characterized by new attitudes towards the book and book culture. The prestige of the printed word in this milieu was high, but the low level of education and general culture caused a peculiar combination of conflicting tendencies (e.g. a utilitarian-practical approach to the book, the growing popularity of fiction, etc.).

37Gradually, the authorities began to take issue with the Russian population’s desire for the printed word, for the independent formation of a new vision of the world, for a new worldview; they feared that this desire might run counter to their own goals of unifying the population’s thinking, narrowing its ideological horizon, making it absorb the Marxist worldview in its vulgarized form, and compelling it to adapt to urgent political tasks. By the mid-1920s, a solid infrastructure in the form of a significant number of libraries, working clubs, newspapers, and magazines/journals and books of a corresponding ideological orientation were already created for these tasks, and a large corps of ideological workers and propagandists had been formed. However, during the period of the NEP a large number of private publishing houses appeared in the country, and censorship somewhat weakened. Readers had an opportunity to make some choices within the framework of the book publishing repertoire. Given this situation, all kinds of educational institutions and libraries were launched in the 1920s (especially in the second half of the decade) in order to intensely study readers and thereby increase the effectiveness of education and propaganda. Interest in the ‘voice of the reader,’ as well as the theoretical foundations in the study of the reader—including the very concept of the reader itself—formed among the populist intelligentsia and played a crucial role in shaping the new reader. This intelligentsia, which saw in the revolution the possibility for expanding its influence on the masses, had much experience working with and studying the mass reader. It possessed a conceptualization of the reader (i.e. someone who is being shaped intellectually through the act of reading) that dovetailed well with the needs of the time—and also possessed no small amount of the classic ‘intelligentsia precariousness’ that was ultimately rejected by the more rigid and dogmatic authorities.

  • 48 For review and assessment of the methodology and validity of the results of these studies See B. V (...)

38The ideological orientation of these studies affected both the focus of research and the tools it employed (the selection of respondents, the choice of indicators, the formulation of questions, etc.).48 Nevertheless, the material collected in these studies (taken critically) allows us to highlight in more detail reading practices in Russia during the second half of the 1920s (since by the early 1930s these studies were curtailed, and from the mid-1930s discontinued and resumed only in the mid-1960s).

2

  • 49 B. Bank, A. Vilenkin, Derevenskaia bednota i bibloteka (Leningrad, 1928), 15, 42.
  • 50 M. I. Slukhovskii, Kniga i derevnia (Moscow, Leningrad, 1928), 20, 27.
  • 51 B. Bank, A. Vilenkin, Derevenskaia bednota i biblioteka, 20, 22, 26-32, 39-40, 91.
  • 52 Slukhovskii, Kniga i derevnia, 106.

39Let us begin our characterization of readers of the second half of the 1920s with the peasants, who made up the bulk of the country’s population and whose reading habits were more stable (whereas the urban reading milieu is more variegated and its scale of values is extremely dynamic; the same can be said of the young readership, which is characterized by greater instability and educational impacts from the outside). A survey of village readers in the Leningrad province in 1926 showed that the rural poor borrowed more popular science books than fiction books from libraries (the first—52.3%, the second—47.7%). At the same time, the main interest in popular science literature was associated with the acquisition of practical knowledge. Such books were borrowed by 53.8% of respondents; however, a considerable portion of the books (38.5%) also concerned the social and political sciences.49 This fact was also noted in research on book purchases. M. T. Slukhovskii wrote that “the overwhelming majority of peasant inquiries testifies to the utilitarian approach to the book [...]. The book is primarily for work, for production,” while political literature came in second (16%), and the share of fiction was only 5.7%.50 In rural libraries of the Leningrad province, almost all readers turned to Russian literature (88.8%) and only 11.2% to foreign literature, which significantly distinguishes the rural reading tendencies from urban ones. Among Russian books, modern literature prevailed over older literature: it was read by twice as many readers (67.5% vs. 32.5%, respectively). Attitudes towards modern fiction were quite serious, as indicated by negative reviews of modern fiction: 44% of readers pointed to the frivolity or triviality of the plot (“Windbag. Did not like,” “Bad. Rubbish,” “Did not like it at all. We know it by heart,” “Nonsense. As it is it’s impossible to understand”); 27% of readers pointed to the author’s inability to “engage” the reader, complaining of the text’s monotony, flatness of presentation (“Monotonous,” “Boring,” “Nothing interesting”); 19% expressed telling “ideological objections” to the works: “Sick and tired of commissars!,” “I do not like to read the present books: there is no truth, everyone lies. All ‘the city cares about the poor,’ but it is not true—they write not what they have, but what they would like to have happened”). Most popular was modern Russian fiction.51 Researchers noted the discrepancy between the approaches of critics and the peasants: “The peasant completely disagrees with our qualifications of renowned [writers]. He does not approve of their approach to the topic, nor of the language, nor the interpretation of the material; he shies away from their stylistic delights; they do not understand at all, in any way, the village they portray.”52

40Contemporary foreign fiction, as we have noted, occupied a rather small place in the reading in the Revolutionary-era village. It is remarkable, however, how the “social novel” changed the structure of values, bringing new “class parameters” into this fiction. For example, in reviews of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, there were the statements such as “It’s curious how educated countries make fun of oppressed people,” and “The capitalists’ making fun of their slaves is described really well.”

41In terms of the number of books issued to the readers, the most popular were Aleksandr Neverov, Maksim Gor’kii, Aleksei Tolstoi, Pavel Dorokhov, Aleksandr Serafimovich, Al. Altaev, Semen Pod’’iachev, Pavel Loginov-Lesniak, Ivan Volnov (from modern Russian writers); Korolenko, Danilevskii, Pisemskii, Chekhov, Dostoevskii, Turgenev (from pre-revolutionary authors); and Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Erckmann-Chatrian, Hugo (from the foreign ones).

  • 53 B. Bank, A. Vilenkin, Krest’ianskaia molodezh’ i kniga (opyt issledovaniia chitatel’skikh intereso (...)

42Younger readers showed less interest in applied literature and greater interest in fiction, with the latter predominating over the former (57% to 42.6%). There was greater interest in foreign (18.4%) and modern Russian literature (72.3%) in this readership. Researchers noted that “about half of all peasant youth using the library pursue the topic that interests them and, not limiting themselves to reading a single book on this topic, systematically return to it, trying to grasp it comprehensively and as widely as possible,” and that one-fifth of the respondents in general read in a planned manner and for the purpose of self-education.53

  • 54 “V bibliotechnyi pokhod,” Krasnyi bibliotekar’, 6, 4 (1929), 3.
  • 55 On peasant readers see a book by L. I. Petrovicheva based on sociology of reading in 1920s: L. I. (...)

43Overall, interest in reading in the village was quite low. By the late 1920s, according to Glavpolitprosvet, only 2.7% of the rural population of the Russian Federation were members of a library.54 The main problems here were the low level of literacy and a lack of interest in reading.55

  • 56 See A. Bek, “Problema izucheniia chitatelia,” Na literaturnom postu, 5/6 (1926), 23-24.

44In many respects, the situation in the city was different, which was mainly due to changes in the working environment. There were about a million reader-workers in the country, and according to the statistics of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, as of March 1, 1926, there were one and a half million regular readers (subscribers) in all trade union libraries.56

  • 57 B. Bank, A. Vilenkin, Rabochii chitatel’ v biblioteke (Moscow, Leningrad, 1930), 11-12.
  • 58 A. Kukharskii, Prigovor chitatelia. Otsenka khudozhestvennoi literatury sovremennyi chitatelem. Op (...)

45Fiction prevailed in these readers’ preferences. A survey of workers’ reading, conducted in 1929 in Leningrad libraries, showed that it accounted for 60.5% of all books borrowed, and that two thirds of non-fiction books consisted of political propaganda literature.57 Summarizing the results of numerous studies, library scholars concluded that “the reading and loaning of fiction in all libraries holds pride of place.”58

  • 59 See A. Isbakh, “Chto chitaet kolomnskii rabochii,” Na literaturnom postu, 2 (1926), 36-37.

46What did the worker of the mid-1920s read? Let us turn to the materials of the study of the factory readers of Kolomna near Moscow in 1925. At the Kolomna Metal Works there was a library of 10,000 books to which more than 1,700 adult workers were subscribed. First of all, it is worth noting their interest in fiction: out of 7,260 books taken in one month, fiction accounts for 5,317. Of the fiction, the books by Dem’ian Bedniy and Aleksei Novikov-Priboi were the most read; the factory intelligentsia mostly read translations. Classical literature was read mainly by workers 50 years and older (Pisemskii was the most popular), although young workers also asked for classics. The novels by Aleksandr Sheller-Mikhailov were most popular among young women. We note a strong interest in Jack London and Upton Sinclair, and the social novels of Émile Zola. Of the Russian classics, Lev Tolstoi was the most popular, followed by Turgenev and Dostoevskii. The modern writers in greatest demand were Gor’kii and Serafimovich. From the ‘new literature’ (in descending order of demand)—Neverov, Lidia Seifullina, Iuri Libedinskii, Vsevolod Ivanov, Leonid Leonov, Dmitrii Furmanov, and Fedor Gladkov. The most frequently read poets were Nikolai Nekrasov and Ivan Nikitin, and among the modern ones—Sergei Esenin, Aleksandr Bezymenskii, Vladimir Maiakovskii, Aleksandr Zharov, Ivan Doronin. The study showed that the factory youth read little, especially the Komsomol activists.59

  • 60 Ibid, 37.

47Per the survey, it should be noted that the library “has almost no adventure literature, revolutionary romance. Ticky-tacky pinkertonism was withdrawn from the library [...]. There is no memoir literature at all.”60 Clearly, had these categories of books (i.e. adventure and memoir) existed in the library, it would have been a different picture, as they were the most the most popular genres of mass literature.

  • 61 The data was published in L. Kogan, “Rabochii-chitatel’ i khudozhestvennaia literatura,” Krasnyi b (...)

48The picture changes if we turn to the more robust statistical materials from a major ‘Europeanized’ city. In 1926, the Odessa Office of Political Education investigated the book forms of 13 factory and club libraries from October 1926 to February 1927.61 The data considered only those writers whose books were loaned during this time in all 13 libraries at least 100 times (at the same time it was taken into account how many books of these authors were in circulation). About twenty thousand book loans over 4 months were analyzed.

49The survey showed that interest in translated literature strongly prevailed over interest in original (Russian and Ukrainian) books, 57.7% vs. 42.3%, with American writers on top. In Western literature, first place was occupied by Jack London’s books and Upton Sinclair’s social novels, followed by books written by Herbert Wells, Heinrich Mann, Claude Farrère, and Victor Hugo.

50Regarding Russian literature, three-fourths of the demand was for modern literature and one-fourth was for classical. Of the contemporary Russian writers, in the first place (60.3%) were the so-called “fellow travellers” (Gor’kii, Il’ia Erenburg, Seifullina, Vikentii Veresaev, Vladislav Shishkov, Aleksei Tolstoi, Boris Lavrenev, Panteleimon Romanov, Vsevolod Ivanov, and Isaak Babel’), then “proletarian writers” (39.3%: Neverov, Gladkov, Serafimovich, Libedinskii). Last were members of “LEF” (not including Maiakovskii), constituting only 0.4%. The Russian classics were represented by (in descending order of demand) Turgenev, Lev Tolstoi, Korolenko, Nikolai Gogol’, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, and Pushkin.

  • 62 B. Bank, A. Vilenkin, Rabochii pokupatel’ knigi (Leningrad, 1930), 22.

51Interestingly, the 1929 study showed that in the book shopping habits of metalworkers, fiction was not the most popular, but rather socio-political literature (with a third of the total books purchased). Much technical literature (instruction manuals, textbooks, etc.) was also bought (17.3%), and the proportion of fiction only slightly exceeded a quarter of all books purchased. 62

52Within the confines of workers’ reading demands in the 1920s, one can see a sharp break reflecting the intensive urbanizing process that transformed the country. The workers’ milieu of the 1920s was comprised of both “established workers” and yesterday’s peasants. In addition, during this period there is a noticeable “rejuvenation” of the working reader, and at the same time a qualitative change in the literature itself. The simultaneous influence of so many factors, both intra-literary and extra-literary, could not but lead (and indeed led) to a significant change in the structure of reading in the working milieu.

  • 63 G. Brylov, N. Lebedev, V. Sakharov, “Populiarnost’ literatury sredi rabochikh,” Krasnyi biblotekar (...)
  • 64 Ibid, 55.

53According to the results of the “Old and new book” questionnaire (with more than 2500 responses processed), conducted among workers by the Leningrad Regional Committee of the Metalworkers’ Union in 1928, the “new” literature was read twice as much as the “old.” In addition, a significant age difference among readers was revealed: older workers were familiar with classical literature twice as much as young people. But another feature of the readers’ demands also came to light: “The most well-known and widely read books are read the least.”63 Gogol’, for instance, was in first place in terms of fame, but among the most widely read authors, he was close to being last—37th. Among all contemporary authors, Dem’ian Bednyi was the most famous, but his books were not in demand in working libraries. The authors of the questionnaire explained the popularity of the “first proletarian poet” by the fact that people were “reading his works in newspapers.”64

  • 65 See Brylov, Lebedev, Sakharov, Populiarnost’ literatury sredi rabochikh, 56.

54Among contemporary authors, books by Aleksei Chapygin, Aleksander Fadeev, Gladkov, Seifullina, Ivan Evdokimov, Lavrenev, Furmanov, Serafimovich, Neverov, Nikolai Liashko, and Babel were most read.65 E. O. Kabo, who studied workers’ reading habits in the mid-1920s, concluded that workers

  • 66 Kabo, Ocherki rabochego byta, 191.

feel an acute need to read not the great masters of Russian literature, but simple and understandable teachers of life who can answer the burning questions of modern times. That is why, of all the fiction writers, according to our observations, Gorky enjoyed the greatest popularity. This is also the reason for the success of Gladkov, Neverov and other contemporaries.66

  • 67 The data was published in K. Boris, “Chto pokazal opyt chitatel’skikh konferentsii v Rostove na Do (...)

55To understand the nature of the changes in reader demand, it is necessary to address the problem of motivation. Important material was collected in 1926-1927 in Rostov-on-Don, when, during workers’ reading group conferences, questionnaires on the topic “Why read fiction?” were distributed. Typical answers were: “Because it is not boring,” “Because it vividly describes and reflects human life,” “You can find a lot about the past in it,” “Just to kill time.” In terms of percentages, the questionnaires gave the following picture: in first place, one read fiction “to replenish knowledge, because fiction sometimes provides more knowledge than science” (43%); then “for entertainment” (31%); then in order “to understand the meaning of life” (13.8%); then “in order to develop speech” (9.5%); and “for rest and escape from their difficult life into a life of beautiful dreams” (2.7%). In general, “conscious reading” accounted for 56.8% of the readers’ activity, “entertainment”—33.7%, and “development”—9.5%.67 As we see, the data on the motivation for reading testifies above all to the status of reading in the minds of reader-workers; however, the data do not answer the question of why one needs to read and how precisely to answer the question about one’s motivation for reading.

56A significant shift to ‘conscious reading’ (counter to the regular reader’s love of reading itself, in which time spent with an interesting book gives him pleasure) indicates a shift towards the ‘correct answers’ that were expected from the readers by propagandists, librarians, educators, and, ultimately, the authorities behind them. There is no doubt that the percentage of “conscious readers” would be significantly higher if the survey were not anonymous.

57Of particular interest among readers of the 1920s are the working youth. In the first place, it is the young reader who quantitatively dominates in all data groups, and in the second, it is this generation of readers (from 16 to 23) that can be defined as the first proper generation of Soviet readers.

  • 68 The data was published in L. B., “Chto chitaet rabochaia molodezh’,” Krasnyi bibliotekar’, 4 (1928 (...)
  • 69 A. Liubimova, “Na bibliotechnom fronte neblagopoluchno,” Krasnyi bibliotekar’, 4 (1931), 15.

58Within the confines of young workers’ reading habits, fiction amounted, according to a survey conducted by Glavpolitprosvet in 1927 in 23 cities of Russia, from 70 to 80% of all reading material,68 whereas the scientific literature accounted for only 20-30% of demand. We note a low percentage of scientific literature, of which only a third was “social science.”69 At the same time, strictly among working-class youth, there was a tendency towards greater interest in modern literature among men and, conversely, to “old literature” among women. Moreover, the “old literature” did not include the classics, which with age disappears from the reading preferences of working youth (at the age of 19 it is 37%, and at the age of 23 it is only 23%).

  • 70 The data was published in V. Gorovits, “Chto chitaet rabochaia molodezh’,” Krasnyi bibliotekar’, 4 (...)

59A survey conducted by the Moscow City Council of Trade Unions in 1927-1928 gives a more detailed picture of the working youth readership in the 1920s. Over the course of this survey, conducted in 58 of the largest trade union libraries in Moscow, more than 4,000 responses from readers between the ages of 16 and 23 were processed.70 It turned out that 70% of the total demand was for fiction, of which only 15% were from the classics, while translated and modern Russian literature each occupied 40% of that share. Among the working youth, the most widely read authors were Esenin, Lev Gumilevskii, and Romanov.

60This worried the leadership of Politprosvet:

  • 71 Ibid, 45-46.

The common feature of all young people reading fiction is the quest for entertaining reading. We think that this is not a completely healthy inclination and one that needs to be corrected. On the other hand, our proletarian writers need to think about this and to give the reader artistic images of the new man, building a new life in an entertaining, captivating way.71

  • 72 On workers readers see L. I. Petrovicheva, Sovetskii rabochii – chitatel’ (Minsk, 1978).

61However, this ‘social order’ was never fulfilled by proletarian writers. It can be said that the reading habits of working youth after the 1920s remained essentially unchanged. The most popular writers since the first decade of the Revolution included Fadeev, Gladkov, and Serafimovich, and as time passed, the more this fossilised pantheon of canonical Soviet authors diverged from the popular demand.72

62Although worker-readers attracted general interest, and although the educational efforts were primarily directed at them, they did not constitute the majority in the 1920s, not only among the ‘readership’ of the whole country, but also among the urban readers.

63The urban readership was exceptionally variegated, although the bulk of the adult patrons of the city libraries were students—of universities, various courses, technical, working and party schools, etc.—who accounted for up to 60% of urban readers. They read almost exclusively technical literature, science textbooks, and other academic materials “in accordance with the [academic] program,” “for credit,” etc. Only 15-20% of the readers of city libraries were young working people not associated with schools of various types. Most popular in this group were books by Gor’kii, London, The Gadfly by Ethel Lilian Voinich, Spartacus by Raffaello Giovagnoli, Henri Barbusse, the science fiction novels by Wells and Aleksandr Bogdanov, novels by Sinclair, Bernhard Kellermann, Zola, Hugo, and Sergei Stepniak-Kravchinskii.

64The intelligentsia, as the research shows, remained usatisfied with the district library, and happening upon it, these readers snapped up everything new—journals, magazines, the latest works of “fashionable contemporary authors,” be they Boris Pilniak or Il’ia Erenburg. A district library’s core set of patrons was more likely to be a large group of elderly readers. The old urban intelligentsia was alien to the new literature, did not recognize the new art for the most part, and merely tried to conform to the ‘new cultural life.’ Its representatives read and re-read classics, old magazines, humour; for the readers of this category, “modern” literature ended with Knut Hamsun. Finally, the last category of readers of urban district libraries is, in the terminology of those years, ‘urban semi-intelligentsia and urban philistines.’ They read

  • 73 N. Frid’eva, “Sovremennye zaprosy gorodskogo chitatelia i aktivnost’ biblioteki,” Krasnyi bibliote (...)

almost exclusively fiction [...] with a particular inclination [...] to look for romance in all its varieties, like old historical novels, high-ranking, resplendent heroes (counts, princes), lack of ideology, and mysticism. These are library grave diggers, book hyenas. If you haven’t purged the fiction from your library yet, rely on their instincts for any ‘carrion,’ as they ask for the exact books that need to be removed: Verbitskaia, Ponson-du-Terraille, Salias, Vsevolod Solov’ev, Paul de Kock, prince Golitsyn, Breshko-Breshkovskii, prince Meshcherskii—these are their requests.73

  • 74 The data was published in: L. Perepletchikova, “Opyt izucheniia vzroslogo chitatelia v moskovskikh (...)

65We now turn to more detailed statistical information on the adult readership of the city. Of considerable interest in this regard are the materials of Moscow Province Educational Department for the years 1926-1927. It represented the first coordinated, methodologically consistent research into city libraries of different types, carried out by the Glavpolitprosvet and the Moscow Library Association.74 According to this large-scale survey, the greatest reading activity was observed among young readers aged 16 to 25 (who accounted for two thirds of the total number of subscribers). But the older the readers were, the more independent their demand was, the more diverse their interests were, and the more interest they had in fiction. Students accounted for almost half of the audience (44.0%), workers—just over a quarter, and the others—16.5%.

66Both in the group of students and in adult groups, London, Gor’kii, and Lev Tolstoi were among the most widely read (as well as, among adults, Sinclair). By gender, in all age groups over 20 years old, men made up 75% of readers, and women—25%.

67Here we should take into account the historical background behind these data: the migration patterns in the first decade after the Revolution led to the erosion of the traditional urban reading milieu, which was the result of the new authorities’ purposeful policy of narrowing the traditional cultural aura of the city. Urban cultural infrastructure had undergone a sharp deformation. This was partly due to the emigration of the cultural elite and the emergence to the fore of new social groups, and partly due to the general reorientation of the readers. An important role in this process belongs to the purging of library collections: by the end of the 1920s, for the traditional reader of the city library there was practically nothing to read in it—a significant part of the book fund was removed from circulation. Therefore, there was a sharp decrease in the share of traditional urban readers from the “old intelligentsia.” This reading group, formerly the most numerous in the cities, was now left with only personal book collections, which fuelled its reading needs throughout the 1930s and mostly perished during the war.

68Thus, by the end of the 1920s urban youth—consisting of petty officials, Soviet officials, employees of the party and Soviet apparatus, etc.—represented an overwhelming quantitative majority of readers. Due to this change, the urban reading environment of the 1920s, for the most part, was characterized by the instability of readers’ interests (which is generally characteristic of young people), here reinforced by the new urban residents’ marginal social status (e.g. workers or graduates from the Workers’ Schools) who had recently moved from the village to the city.

  • 75 Quoted in Bank, Vilenkin, Krest’ianskaia molodezh’ i kniga, 62-64.

69Let’s take a closer look at women’s reading habits. Let us compare the village women’s reading interests with the preferences of the urban female readership. First of all, the ‘sympathy’ of the rural readers for the “new woman,” in comparison with the city, merits attention. The younger the readers, the more enthusiastic their support for the ‘heroine social activist’: “It is interesting that the women started working in defence of their rights. All women need to assert their rights” (18 years old); “I liked the book because it describes something new and communicates well how peasant women love Lenin” (20 years old); “I liked it because Malasha is a social worker” (18 years old); “I liked the fact that Mariia became strong, that she freed herself from the obstacles that used to constrict her, that she began working in the village soviet” (17 years old); “I liked the book. These are women with strong character who are fighting for the rights of women, for the interests of working people, for Soviet power” (19 years old).75

  • 76 Ibid, 68-69.

70It is interesting that such liberalism and progressivism regarding the “women’s issue” among young peasant readers existed alongside sincere conservatism when it comes to assessing social phenomena: “I do not like it. I do not like to read about the revolution. I’m tired, and they don’t give you a rest even with the book” (17 years old); “Did not like it. If they would live peacefully without war and fratricide, we would not suffer so much economically” (17 years old); “It’s well written, but I don’t like to read about war. Our life is hard enough” (19 years old).76 It combines a peasant understanding of ‘stability,’ ‘order,’ ‘well-being,’ and rejection of ‘turmoil’ and ‘fratricide’ with a new understanding of the ‘women’s issue’ that came from the city (often, though not exclusively, communicated by means of literature). It is this circumstance that highlights the ‘feminine perspective’ on literature; otherwise, women’s reviews are no different from the men’s.

  • 77 The data was published in L. Kogan, “Chto chitaiut zhenshchiny,” Krasnyi bibliotekar’, 6 (1927), 1 (...)

71The urban reading milieu was much more diverse. According to a broad survey of women’s reading habits in Odessa libraries held in 1926-1927, the main groups of readers are women workers, employees, and housewives.77 Each of these groups had its own specific features, both in terms of the intensity and structure of their reading practices. Housewives read the most intensively (on average 19.2 books in six months), then employees (18.9), and then, in last place, workers (8.8). Interest in reading fiction prevailed over translated literature. Interest in modern literature was highest among female workers and lowest among housewives. In regards to modern literature read by working women, “proletarian writers” commanded 45% of that share, and “fellow travellers” 55%; for employees, “proletarian literature” accounted for only 15% of modern literature read, with 85% for “fellow travellers.” Finally, among the housewives “proletarian writers” occupied only 8% of the modern fiction read, while “fellow travellers literature” accounted for 92%.

72If the woman workers read Neverov, Serafimovich, Gladkov, Libedinskii (from “proletarian writers”), Gor’kii, Seifullina, Erenburg, Veresaev, Lavrenev (from the “fellow travellers”), then employees from “proletarian writers” read only Serafimovich and Gladkov, and housewives read Gladkov only.

  • 78 Ibid., 24.

73Housewives were the most “apolitical” in their reading interests, while workers were more conservative than even rural readers in terms of the ‘women’s issue’ (“the most striking female image in the novel Cement [Tsement], Dasha Chumalova, was often met with a disapproval from female workers who did not wish to see in her either a heroine nor the founder of the new life”78), not to mention the housewives, for whom the ‘women’s question’ was not at all essential (and probably too social for their tastes).

74If the process of reorienting a new adult reader took a long time in the post-revolutionary period—since forming of a new kind of adult readership required taking into account existing library funds and breaking well-established reading interests and habits while still reckoning with the readers’ existing preferences—then, comparatively speaking, children’s reading was utterly transformed after the revolution. Because of library collection purges, the texts available for children’s reading were altered dramatically. This increased attention to children’s reading materials was partly due to the fact that children’s libraries were part of the system of the People’s Commissariat of Education; consequently, they were supervised by Nadezhda Krupskaia, who, as Deputy Commissar, was at that moment “laying the foundations” of the new Soviet pedagogy. The new authorities rightly saw the children as its future base, and the project of bring them up properly was directed primarily at them. If adults needed to be re-educated and their established views needed to be reckoned with, then the children turned out to be practically defenceless before these new educational measures, which were carried out both through public organizations and through the school. It was here that fiction played an essential ideological role.

  • 79 The data was published in Krasnyi bibliotekar’, 8 (1927).

75Consider the range of children’s reading. Let us turn to the materials sent by sixty children’s libraries to Glavpolitprosvet from various places of the USSR—from Leningrad to Tashkent, from Kharkov to Kazan, from Odessa to Saratov.79 The survey of 1926-1927 was as diverse and widespread as possible. It was conducted on the basis of written and oral reviews of children, live readings, and collective discussions, taking into account demand, recommendations by the children themselves, questionnaires about favourite books, individual conversations, observations on exhibitions, records in albums of opinions about books, readers’ diaries, works of literary circles, and finally, reader forms.

76The general report revealed the following picture (the lists are given in decreasing order of demand):

  • boys’ favourite topics are: adventure and travel, civil war and revolution, technology, “what and how to do it yourself”;
  • girls’ favourite themes are: everyday life, ‘compassion’;
  • general themes are: ‘fairy tales,’ ‘animals,’ ‘humor’;
  • boys’ favourite authors are: Jules Verne, Mayne Reid, Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain, Sergei Auslender, Sergei Grigor’ev;
  • girls’ favourite authors are: Charles Dickens, Louisa Alcott, Elisabeth Werner, Vera Zhelikhovskaia;
  • common favourite books are: Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher-Stowe, The Prince and the Pauper and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Twain, Murzuk by Vitalii Bianki, Children of Captain Grant by Verne, With a bag after death (S meshkom za smert’iu) by Grigor’ev, Tashkent is the city of bread (Tashkent gorod khlebnyi) by Neverov, The Leatherstocking Tales by F. Cooper.

77It worth noting that different social strata exhibited demands for different kinds of books. Thus, fairy tales represented 27.5% of all reading among children of workers and artisans, whereas among children of clerks it was only 15.7%. While travel and adventure literature amounted to 31.7% of all reading among children of clerks, but only 21.5% among children of workers and artisans. The only thing that united ‘children’s reading’ in the 1920s was the school, and consequently, demands made on school curricula acquired outsized importance for state institutions.

78The schools’ instructional materials were completely different from the students’ independent reading preferences. In fact, the school (with varying degrees of efficiency) did everything to break the latter. Indeed, 40% of ‘school literature’ was ‘socio-political literature’ (which occupied up to 5% in independent children’s demand), but adventure and travel literature in the ‘school demand’ occupied merely 1.5%, with no fairy tales represented at all.

79As we see, books recommended by the school did not at all correspond to the independent needs of young readers. Already in the mid-1920s the Soviet school had shown its revolutionary nature in its desire to alter the usual children’s reading habits. It succeeded and children’s habits began to change, although at some point the school was forced to abandon its revolutionary extremism and take into account the specifics of children’s reading—even if it was unable to fully account for the psychology of typical children. This was partly due to instructors focusing on pedagogy at the expense of their pupils’ psychology, and partly to the fact that the Soviet school was ideologically overdetermined.

80Non-library reading occupied a significant share in the general reading habits of children. According to a survey of one and a half thousand children conducted by the Kiev Association of Children’s Library Workers in 1926, before joining the library, 65% of the new “young readers” procured books through means outside of the library system, while 34% did not have any books in their homes and took them from their friends. As it turned out, as a result of such “uncontrolled reading,” up to 80% in non-library reading was occupied by literature published before the revolution, and only 20% was dedicated “new literature.” The most serious problem was that children read “harmful literature”: names like Lidiia Charskaia, Klavdiia Lukashevich, Nadezhda Lukhmanova, Daniil Mordovtsev, Vera Novitskaia, Sofia Segur, Ol’ga Rogova and other books constantly appeared in the questionnaires long after they were withdrawn even from adult libraries. The survey’s conclusion sounded like an indictment:

  • 80 A. Margolina, “Formirovanie chitatel’skikh navykov u detei i podrostkov,” Krasnyi bibliotekar’, 1 (...)

More than 50% of the books indicated in the questionnaire make for an obsolete, anti-artistic reading habit completely unsuitable for children’s reading, and if we take only literature read by girls, this figure will increase to almost 70% [...] Outside of the library system, we raise our children on a very narrow and very harmful corpus of books.80

81Of course, in these conditions, the children’s library increasingly acquired the character of a pedagogical institution. Moreover, the institution was extremely rigid. The child was completely dependent on the library holdings, and independent demand was reduced to almost zero; the librarian completely determined the circulation of reading materials in accordance with the goals of this ‘educational work.’

  • 81 I. Zhelobovskii, “K voprosu o politicheskoi rabote v detskoi biblioteke,” Krasnyi bibliotekar’, 4/ (...)

82More successfully than any other kind of library, the children’s library achieved the pedagogical model which was the basis of the broader Soviet ‘library construction.’ “The main task of the children’s library is to educate the reader. Therefore, all its work should be pedagogical [...] Political work should not be a separate component of the children’s library, but rather the point of view from which all the work is being done and should be organically incorporated into it” instructed the journal Krasnyi bibliotekar’ (Red Librarian) in 1924, asserting that ‘young Leninists in the library should feel like knights of communism, “whose weapon is the book.”81

83The final word on pedagogical rationales for the development of children’s libraries occurred during the All-Russian Conference of Children’s Librarians in 1928. The principles of ‘restructuring’ children’s libraries were specified here. Thus, it was found that “filtered in certain way, a library can influence the evolution of readers’ interests, contributing to their switching in the desired direction.” (For example, as a result of this ‘filtering’ there was an “evolution of demand in girls—an increase in demand for adventure at the expense of fairy tales.”) Among the main issues discussed during the conference was the question of “organizing the reading milieu” (i.e. about the actual subordination of the library to the “plans for educational work” of schools, as well as pioneer and Komsomol organizations). Special attention was paid to work with senior students:

  • 82 M. Smushkova, “Ocherednye zadachi detskikh bibliotek (Itogi konferentsii detskikh bibliotekarei),” (...)

The aim for youth libraries and branches should be: a) to keep young people constantly aware of the next policy of the government; b) to teach the youth to use the book to develop a Marxist understanding of the world and social work skills, [and to treat the book] as a tool of labor; c) to prepare the youth for the transition to the adult libraries.82

  • 83 See N. Khersonskaia, “Detskaia biblioteka i pionerskoe dvizhenie,” Krasnyi bibliotekar’, 8 (1924), (...)

84This list exhausted the set of goals of the library, designed to “work with youth.” In the children’s and youth library, the general model of the Soviet library was worked out in the most rigid form. This rigidity was provoked by the relative malleability of children’s and adolescents’ perception. As a result, in the process of pedagogization the children’s library turned into a kind of appendage of the school, or, more precisely, of the “social and political organizations of the youth.”83

85By the end of the 1920s, interest in children’s reading shifted from a matter of abstract study to one of direct impact. In the 1930s the statistics of children’s reading disappeared, and the children’s reader turns into an ideal “pioneer reader” who is interested exclusively in books “about our Motherland” and the “Soviet classics.”

86As even this general outline of the reader of the revolutionary era shows, the main thing that characterizes the reading milieu of the 1920s was its heterogeneous character and dynamism. This is not only the most significant of its characteristics but perhaps its most distinctive, given the next several decades of Soviet history. The propaganda work of the Soviet state resulted in the creation of a new, Soviet reader as a result of ideological ‘molding.’ Already by the end of the 1920s the reading of the main patron groups of city libraries was largely controlled and directed. However, Soviet propaganda could not control a reader’s worldview completely, leaving room for elements of other views. Thus, the book-library mechanism of control was never total nor definitive: there were always sociocultural groups and facets of reading that remained free of it. The vanguard of the ‘new Soviet reader’ was the young worker-reader. This fact helps to reconcile two contradictory points that characterize the period: on the one hand, the situation was dynamic, while on the other hand, imposition of Soviet norms was well under way.

87But the longer it went on, the stronger the process of ‘levelling the reading circle and the unification of the readers’ preferences became. The prerequisites for this development were already laid out in the ‘optics of reading’ vis-à-vis the mass reader of the post-revolutionary years.

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Brylov G., Lebedev N., Sakharov V., “Populiarnost’ literatury sredi rabochikh,” Krasnyi biblotekar’ (1929), 4.

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Notes

1 See A. I. Nazarov, Oktiabr’ i kniga (Moscow, 1968), 197.

2 See E. Z. Volkov, Dinamika narodonaseleniia SSSR za 80 let (Moscow, Leningrad, 1930), 270; V. P. Danilov, “Dinamika naseleniia SSSR za 1917-1929 gg.,” in Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik za 1968 god (Moscow, 1970), 246; Iu. A. Poliakov, I. N. Kiselev, V. A. Ustinov, “K voprosu o metodike opredeleniia chislennosti i natsional’nogo sostava naseleniia SSSR v 1917-1926 godakh,” Istoriia SSSR, 2 (1981), 109.

3 Dekrety Sovetskoi vlasti (Moscow, 1959), vol. 2, 553.

4 See T. Iu. Krasovitskaia, “Perveishei zadachei iavliaetsia gramotnost’,” Voprosy istorii, 5 (1979), 120.

5 Materialy po statistike Petrograda (Moscow, 1920), issue 2, 3.

6 Politrabotnik, 2 (1920), 12-13.

7 N. A. Rubakin, “Knizhnoe delo i chitatel’stvo v Rossii v epokhu voiny i revoliutsii 1914-1918 gg.,” Otdel rukopisei Rossiiskoi Gosudarstvennoi Biblioteki (OR RGB), f. 358, kart. 47, d. 21, l. 5.

8 S. Fedorchenko, Narod na voine (Moscow, 1925), vol. 2. Revoliutsiia, 9.

9 D. Rid, 10 dnei, kotorye potriasli mir (Moscow, 1957), 36.

10 D. Furmanov, Sobranie sochinenii (Moscow, 1961), vol. 4, 94.

11 S. Liubosh S. [S. B. Liuboshits], “Literatura griadushchego dnia,” Vestnik literatury, 6 (1919), 24.

12 See K. I. Abramov, Bibliotechnoe stroitel’stvo v pervye gody Sovetskoi vlasti. 1917-1920 (Moscow, 1974), 118.

13 See A. Kukharskii , “Uspekhi i perspektivy v oblasti bibliotechnogo dela g. Leningrada,” Kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie, 1 (1925).

14 See V. A. Kozlov, Kul’turnaia revoliutsiia i krest’ianstvo. 1921-1927 (Moscow, 1983), 49.

15 Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF), f. 3524. See on the census: M. P. Iroshnikov, “Materialy perepisi sluzhashchikh 1918 g. – istochnik po istorii stanovleniia sovetskogo gosudarstva,” Istochnikovedenie istorii Velikogo Oktiabria (Moscow, 1977), 237-255.

16 GARF, f. 3524, d. 204, l. 121; d. 205, l. 235; d. 279, l. 121.

17 GARF, f. 3524, d. 225, l. 172.

18 GARF, f. 3524, d. 225, l. 338.

19 GARF, f. 3524, d. 275, l. 84.

20 GARF, f. 3524, d. 280, l. 584.

21 GARF, f. 3524, d. 280, l. 582.

22 GARF, f. 3524, d. 280, l. 578.

23 GARF, f. 3524, d. 484.

24 GARF, f. 3524, d. 213, l. 228.

25 See “O knizhnom golode,” Bibliograficheskie izvestiia, 1-2 (1917), 90.

26 See I. V. Vladislavlev, “Knizhnyi golod,” Bibliograficheskii ezhemesiachnik, 1 (1917), 5-10; “Knizhnoe oskudeniie,” Vestnik literatury, 6 (1919), 8; V. Kerzhentsev, “Knizhnyi golod,” Izvestiia, September 9, 1919; S. I. Mitskevich, “Propala kniga,” Izvestiia, December 1, 1920; N. A. Semashko, “Golod khlebnyi i knizhnyi,” Izvestiia, August 4, 1921, etc.

27 Narodnyi Komissariat po prosveshcheniiu, 1917-oktiabr’ 1920: (Kratkii otchet) (Moscow, 1920), 72. See on book shortages also: J. Brooks, “The Breakdown in the Production and Distribution of Printed Material,” in A. Gleason, P. Kenez, R. Stites (eds.), Bolshevik Culture: Experiment and Order in the Russian Revolution (Bloomington, 1989), 151-174.

28 See L. I. Emeliakh, Istoricheskie predposylki preodoleniia religii v sovetskoi derevne (Leningrad, 1975).

29 See P. Gurov, “Novaia biblioteka i zaprosy ee chitatelia,” Pechat’ i revoliutsiia, 7 (1922), 192.

30 I. Rostov, “Prosveshchenie na fronte,” Politrabotnik, 10 (1921), 5-10.

31 I. Loginov, “V biblioteke,” Pravda, January 11, 1918.

32 See Massovyi chitatel’ i kniga (Moscow, 1925). All the data on Read Army readers is quoted from this edition.

33 Ia. Kiperman, “Zadachi i sredstva bibliotechnoi aktivnosti,” Trudy I Vserossiiskogo s”ezda bibliotechnykh rabotnikov Krasnoi Armii i Flota (15—24 oktiabria 1920 g.) (Moscow, 1922), 38.

34 Quoted in V. P. Prozorov, “Chto krest’iane pishut o knige,” Novaia derevnia, 11 (1923), 77.

35 See S. G. Strumilin, Biudzhet vremeni russkogo rabochego i krest’ianina v 1922-1923 godu (Moscow, Leningrad, 1924), 103.

36 Ibid, 24, 26.

37 See S. G. Strumilin, “Domashnii byt po inventariam,” in Idem, Izbrannye proizvedeniia (Moscow, 1964), vol. 3, 268.

38 See Gramotnost’ v Rossii (Moscow, 1922), 45.

39 E. O. Kabo, Ocherki rabochego byta: Opyt monograficheskogo obsledovaniia domashnego byta (Moscow, 1928), vol. 1, 191.

40 See Gurov, Novaia biblioteka i zaprosy ee chitatelia, 194.

41 Report quoted in E. G. Gimpel’son, Sovetskii rabochii klass 1918-1920 gg. (Moscow, 1974), 330.

42 See N. B. Lebina, Rabochaia molodezh’ Leningrada: Trud i sotsial’nyi oblik. 19211925 (Leningrad, 1932), 129.

43 E. Khersonskaia, “Kak chitat’ belletristiku,” Obshchee delo, 5 (1920), 9.

44 See Gurov, Novaia biblioteka i zaprosy ee chitatelia, 198-200.

45 Istoriia bibliotechnogo dela v SSSR: Dokumenty i materialy. 1918-1920 gg. (Moscow, 1975), 196; also See I. K. “Nat Pinkerton – korol’ syshchikov,” Rabochii mir, 11 (1918), 40-42.

46 G. Martinson, “O literature,” Izvestiia, January 16, 1919.

47 “Khronika,” Bibliotechnye izvestiia, 1 (1918), 61-62.

48 For review and assessment of the methodology and validity of the results of these studies See B. V. Bank, “Iz istorii izucheniia chitatelei v SSSR,” Sovetskii chitatel’ (Moscow, 1968); J. Brooks, “Studies of the Reader in the 1920s,” Russian History, 9, 2–3 (1982), 187–202; A. Gerasimova, “Vzlet i padenie: ob izuchenii chitatel’skikh otzyvov v 1920-kh gg.,” in Russkaia filologiia: sbornik nauchnykh rabot molodykh filologov (Tartu, 2018), 221-236.

49 B. Bank, A. Vilenkin, Derevenskaia bednota i bibloteka (Leningrad, 1928), 15, 42.

50 M. I. Slukhovskii, Kniga i derevnia (Moscow, Leningrad, 1928), 20, 27.

51 B. Bank, A. Vilenkin, Derevenskaia bednota i biblioteka, 20, 22, 26-32, 39-40, 91.

52 Slukhovskii, Kniga i derevnia, 106.

53 B. Bank, A. Vilenkin, Krest’ianskaia molodezh’ i kniga (opyt issledovaniia chitatel’skikh interesov) (Moscow, Leningrad, 1929), 19, 29, 31, 106, 192.

54 “V bibliotechnyi pokhod,” Krasnyi bibliotekar’, 6, 4 (1929), 3.

55 On peasant readers see a book by L. I. Petrovicheva based on sociology of reading in 1920s: L. I. Petrovicheva, Sovetskii krest’ianin — chitatel’ (Minsk, 1981); also see R. Robin, “Popular Literature of the 1920s: Russian Peasants as Readers,” in S. Fitzpatrick, A. Rabinowitch, R. Stites (eds.), Russia in the Era of NEP (Bloomington, 1991).

56 See A. Bek, “Problema izucheniia chitatelia,” Na literaturnom postu, 5/6 (1926), 23-24.

57 B. Bank, A. Vilenkin, Rabochii chitatel’ v biblioteke (Moscow, Leningrad, 1930), 11-12.

58 A. Kukharskii, Prigovor chitatelia. Otsenka khudozhestvennoi literatury sovremennyi chitatelem. Opyt issledovaniia i nabliudeniia (Leningrad, 1928), 4-5.

59 See A. Isbakh, “Chto chitaet kolomnskii rabochii,” Na literaturnom postu, 2 (1926), 36-37.

60 Ibid, 37.

61 The data was published in L. Kogan, “Rabochii-chitatel’ i khudozhestvennaia literatura,” Krasnyi bibliotekar’, 4 (1927), 41-52.

62 B. Bank, A. Vilenkin, Rabochii pokupatel’ knigi (Leningrad, 1930), 22.

63 G. Brylov, N. Lebedev, V. Sakharov, “Populiarnost’ literatury sredi rabochikh,” Krasnyi biblotekar’, 4 (1929), 54.

64 Ibid, 55.

65 See Brylov, Lebedev, Sakharov, Populiarnost’ literatury sredi rabochikh, 56.

66 Kabo, Ocherki rabochego byta, 191.

67 The data was published in K. Boris, “Chto pokazal opyt chitatel’skikh konferentsii v Rostove na Donu,” Krasnyi bibliotekar’, 11 (1927).

68 The data was published in L. B., “Chto chitaet rabochaia molodezh’,” Krasnyi bibliotekar’, 4 (1928), 42-43.

69 A. Liubimova, “Na bibliotechnom fronte neblagopoluchno,” Krasnyi bibliotekar’, 4 (1931), 15.

70 The data was published in V. Gorovits, “Chto chitaet rabochaia molodezh’,” Krasnyi bibliotekar’, 4 (1929), 39-51.

71 Ibid, 45-46.

72 On workers readers see L. I. Petrovicheva, Sovetskii rabochii – chitatel’ (Minsk, 1978).

73 N. Frid’eva, “Sovremennye zaprosy gorodskogo chitatelia i aktivnost’ biblioteki,” Krasnyi bibliotekar’, 1 (1924), 53.

74 The data was published in: L. Perepletchikova, “Opyt izucheniia vzroslogo chitatelia v moskovskikh bibliotekakh,” Krasnyi bibliotekar’, 7 (1927), 28-48.

75 Quoted in Bank, Vilenkin, Krest’ianskaia molodezh’ i kniga, 62-64.

76 Ibid, 68-69.

77 The data was published in L. Kogan, “Chto chitaiut zhenshchiny,” Krasnyi bibliotekar’, 6 (1927), 18-28.

78 Ibid., 24.

79 The data was published in Krasnyi bibliotekar’, 8 (1927).

80 A. Margolina, “Formirovanie chitatel’skikh navykov u detei i podrostkov,” Krasnyi bibliotekar’, 1 (1928), 42.

81 I. Zhelobovskii, “K voprosu o politicheskoi rabote v detskoi biblioteke,” Krasnyi bibliotekar’, 4/5 (1924), 82, 83.

82 M. Smushkova, “Ocherednye zadachi detskikh bibliotek (Itogi konferentsii detskikh bibliotekarei),” Krasnyi bibliotekar’, 11 (1928), 29, 38.

83 See N. Khersonskaia, “Detskaia biblioteka i pionerskoe dvizhenie,” Krasnyi bibliotekar’, 8 (1924), 9.

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