About

Following the October Revolution in 1917 and the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia, the library system in Russia was put under the influence of the Communist Party. Nadezhda Krupskaya, deputy education commissar and wife of Vladimir Lenin, spearheaded Bolshevik reforms and reorganization of the library system in Russia, and used her theories of librarianship, heavily influenced by Marxist-Leninism and the concept of partiinost’, to create a library system that served the interests of the new Soviet state.

This website aims to collect resources on Krupskaya and Soviet librarianship in a centralized place, so that it can be used as an educational tool for those who wish to learn more about the history of Russian librarianship after the October Revolution.

The site is managed by Ian Goodale, European Studies Librarian at the University of Texas at Austin.