Spetsfondy

Spetsfondy (Спецфонди). Special depositories in Soviet libraries and archives consisting of materials confiscated or prohibited by the authorities. They were established in 1931, although in pre-revolutionary imperial Russia and Austria-Hungary political, pornographic, anti-Semitic, and anti-Christian literature was also widely censored (see Censorship).

During the Stalinist terror ‘provocative’ books were taken directly out of stores and state publishing houses. Publications of political émigrés and foreign publications with an ideology contrary to the official line of the Communist Party were also banned. Lists of such materials were published by the People's Commissariat of Education (Narkomos, only until the Second World War) and the government censorship agency Glavlit. The names of certain prolific authors were often followed by the directive ‘all titles, for all years, in all languages.’

Spetsfondy were established at research libraries, particularly those of scientific research institutes, and in museums and state archives. A maximum of two copies of each banned publication were preserved, and the rest were destroyed. Libraries with unrestricted public access were forbidden to hold the works, which were thus effectively taken completely out of circulation.

In Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s, all endeavors in Ukrainian studies that were at variance with Communist Party directives were prohibited, as were all forms of art that departed from officially sanctioned socialist realism and some works of the Ukrainian canon, such as Lesia Ukrainka’s Boiarynia (Noblewoman) and Taras Shevchenko’s works critical of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky. In the postwar period there was no consistent formula for the proscription of Russian or Ukrainian works, and censors were largely simple functionaries adhering to the latest inclinations of the Party. Numerous lists were compiled chaotically by various institutions and agencies, such as the Book Chamber of the Ukrainian SSR. The materials held in spetsfondy could be accessed only by Party officials and scholars at postsecondary institutions, scientific research institutes, and museums, who had to present a letter, signed by the president of the institution they represented, in which the topic of their research was outlined. Libraries did not make available catalogs of their spetsfond holdings to the general readership.

In 1989, as a result of perestroika, substantial portions of the spetsfondy were transferred back to the open collections of libraries, and émigré publications were also made accessible to readers. But literature deemed to be subversive, ethnically, racially, or nationally inflammatory (particularly anti-Semitic items), pornography, and certain works by authors such as Volodymyr Vynnychenko and Mykola Khvylovy continued to be banned and collected. With the dissolution of the USSR, spetsfondy in newly independent Ukraine have been merged with other library holdings.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bilokin', S. ‘Na polytsiakh spetsfondiv u rizni roky,’ Slovo i chas, 1990, no. 1

Serhii Bilokin

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]