Libraries (бібліотеки; biblioteky). Information concerning the earliest libraries in Ukraine can be found in chronicles from the 11th century. The oldest Kyivan chronicle, Povist’ vremennykh lit, contains a special section in the year 1037 devoted to Prince Yaroslav the Wise, describing him as a man well versed in books and identifying him as the founder of the first library in Kyiv, housed at the Saint Sophia Cathedral. On the basis of information gathered from preserved specimens of Kyivan literature, it has been established that the cathedral library at Saint Sophia contained approximately 500 volumes, including original Greek manuscripts, translations from the Greek prepared by Bulgarian and native authors, and some original books written by Kyivan authors. During Yaroslav’s reign another library was established (ca 1050) at the Kyivan Cave Monastery; it is considered the first monastery library in medieval Ukraine. Thereafter, church and monastery libraries were established in other cities. Private collections were developed by the Kyivan princes, and other, smaller private collections were owned by the aristocracy as well as by some priests and monks.
During the 16th century numerous collections of manuscripts (and, later, books) were established by church brotherhoods. The most famous of the libraries belonged to the Lviv Dormition Brotherhood (est 1585–86). That extensive collection of manuscripts and books apparently employed a rudimentary classification system, a significant advance over the simple inventories of earlier monastery libraries (see Library science). The Lviv Dormition Brotherhood Library was active for many centuries (it survived as the Stauropegion Institute until 1939). Similar brotherhood libraries were established in western Ukraine in Ostroh, Lutsk, Brest, and Drohobych, as well as in Kyiv and Chernihiv. The prominent Kyivan Mohyla Academy housed the largest library in 17th-century Ukraine (10,000 volumes).
During the 17th and 18th centuries many private collections were developed, most belonging to clergy. Among them were the libraries of Petro Mohyla, Dymytrii Tuptalo, Teofan Prokopovych, Ioanikii Galiatovsky, Lazar Baranovych, and Stefan Yavorsky. Significant private collections were also owned by members of the Ukrainian Cossack starshyna (eg, Yakiv A. Markovych, Hryhorii A. Poletyka, Mykola Khanenko), scholars (eg, I. Samoilovych, Aleksandr Rigelman), members of the Ukrainian gentry (eg, I. Lukashevych), government officials (eg, Oleksander Bezborodko, Kyrylo Rozumovsky), and merchants (eg, S. and I. Kuliabka, S. Lashkevych).
19th and early 20th centuries. The Kyivan Mohyla Academy and similar but smaller institutions (colleges) that were established—Chernihiv College (1700), Kharkiv College (1727), and Pereiaslav College (1738)—all had significant academic libraries which later provided the groundwork for library services at the newly created university libraries. By 1917 the library at Kharkiv University (est 1805) consisted of 250,000 volumes. The Kyiv University Library (est 1834) developed from the nucleus of the Kremianets Lyceum Library and had grown to over 500,000 volumes by 1913. The Odesa University Library began with the collection of the Richelieu Lyceum and had grown to 314,000 volumes by 1913.
During the 19th century specialized libraries also began to appear, many connected with archival commissions in gubernia capitals or started by scholarly societies (eg, the Historical Society of Nestor the Chronicler in Kyiv, the Odesa Historical-Philological Society, the Volhynia Research Society in Zhytomyr). In larger cities public libraries and reading rooms were established. The Odesa Municipal Library (founded 1829) was the first such library in Ukraine; it also became one of the largest, with 60,000 volumes in 1890 and 162,000 in 1911. The Kyiv Municipal Library (founded 1866) housed a significant Ukrainian collection donated by Mikhail Yuzefovich. Additional public and private libraries were organized by zemstvos and civic clubs.
After the Revolution of 1905, during a short period of relative laxity in Russian censorship, several private Ukrainian libraries came into existence, sponsored by Prosvita societies and Ukrainian clubs. Following the dissolution of those organizations by the Russian government in 1912, the activities of the libraries were curtailed or completely abandoned. There were 2,739 small rural libraries in Ukraine by 1913 (or one for approximately 180 villages), with an average of 400 volumes per library or reading room.
Conditions in Western Ukraine under Austro-Hungarian rule were more favorable for the development of Ukrainian book collections. The oldest university library in Ukraine was founded in Lviv in 1784, and consisted of 340,000 volumes before the Second World War. Other important research libraries in Lviv were the Ossolineum Institute (est 1817, with 298,000 volumes), the Lviv Polytechnical Institute Library (est 1844, with 84,000 volumes), the Baworowski Foundation Library (est 1856, with 55,000 vols), the National Museum Library (est 1905), the Prosvita Library (20,000 volumes), and the Municipal Library (est 1911, with 20,000 volumes). By the late 19th century the People's Home in Lviv Library (est 1849) housed a large collection of Ucrainica, including 100,000 volumes and many manuscripts and documents. The Ukrainian Catholic church had an important library in the Greek Catholic Theological Academy in Lviv (est 1783, with 8,500 volumes) and in other cities, such as Peremyshl. Significant book and manuscript collections were also maintained at the monasteries of the Basilian monastic order in Lviv (42,000 volumes), Krekhiv Monastery (15,000 volumes), and Buchach (15,000 volumes). In rural communities and smaller towns a network of small libraries was developed by the Prosvita societies (3,000 libraries) and the Kachkovsky Society. They were usually attached to reading rooms in educational institutions.
The most important Western Ukrainian research library was established in Lviv by the Shevchenko Scientific Society in 1894; it had 90,000 volumes in 1914 and over 200,000 volumes in 1938, including 1,500 manuscripts. Under the direction of Ivan Krevetsky and Volodymyr Doroshenko the library became an internationally recognized center for depository material and bibliographic research, and it established interlibrary loans with all leading university libraries in Europe. In 1939 the library was transformed into a separate unit of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR.
In Bukovyna the largest library was at Chernivtsi University (420,000 volumes in 1936). The Ruska Besida in Bukovyna maintained a network of 150 smaller libraries for the use of the local population. In comparison with that in Galicia, library development in Transcarpathia was modest. Among its oldest libraries were the monastic libraries established by the Basilian monastic order at Chernecha Hora (est 1720, with 8,000 volumes) and the Greek Catholic church in Hrushiv (est 1775, with 15,000 volumes). The library of the Prosvita society in Uzhhorod (est 1921) also ran a small rural network of libraries (235 in 1935). Following the Soviet occupation of Galicia and Volhynia (1939), Bukovyna (1940), and Transcarpathia (1945) all existing libraries were nationalized and incorporated into the Soviet centralized library system.
Under the Soviet regime. During its struggle for independence (1917–20) Ukraine experienced a growth in libraries and book production. On 2 August 1918 the National Library of the Ukrainian State (see National Library of Ukraine) was established with a nucleus of 40,000 volumes. Its collection had grown to 500,000 volumes by 1919 and over one million volumes by 1921.
In November 1922 the Soviet authorities issued a decree on the ‘Establishment of the Unified System of Libraries,’ which authorized the maintenance of academic libraries by the People's Commissariat of Education and the creation of a network of people’s (public and regional) libraries in cities and villages. A number of larger libraries were established from nationalized book collections, including the Central Children’s Library in Mykolaiv, the Central Jewish Library in Kyiv and a similar Jewish library in Odesa, the Polish State Central Library in Kyiv, and other specialized larger libraries, such as the October Revolution Library in Katerynoslav.
The largest library in Ukraine during that period was still the National Library, which was renamed the National (or All-People’s) Library of Ukraine in 1919 (from 1965 the Central Scientific Library of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR). Many specialized private collections, and even entire libraries, were transferred to that central library. In 1932 the National Library housed 2.5 million volumes in Kyiv and 125,000 in its Vinnytsia branch. Following the abolishment of the autonomy of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and its reorganization by the Soviet authorities into the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR in the 1930s, the Kyiv and Vinnytsia libraries merged, and their holdings were consolidated into a single library belonging to the academy, consisting of over 7 million volumes (1936).
During the 1920s all universities were abolished and replaced by ‘institutes of people's education,’ and their library collections (except textbooks) were transferred either to the National Library in Kyiv or to local central libraries. As a result of the reorganization the Odesa State Library became the second-largest library in Ukraine (2.3 million volumes in 1932); smaller collections were found at the Kharkiv Central Library, the Poltava Central Scientific Library, and elsewhere.
In 1934 the universities were re-established, and by 1935 the Kharkiv University Library had 740,000 volumes, the Kyiv University Library, 700,000 volumes, and the Odesa University Library, 250,000 volumes. The Soviet government was also interested in developing the network of public (or ‘people’s’) libraries in the cities and villages, which in 1922 had consisted of 3,067 libraries and approximately two million volumes. The number of such libraries increased rapidly to 10,000 libraries with 21 million volumes in 1933 and 16,000 libraries with 27 million volumes in 1938.
Repressions and reforms of the Soviet regime in the 1930s stifled the development of libraries in Ukraine. A decree ‘About Library Work in the Soviet Union’ (March 1934) brought to an end the limited autonomy enjoyed by Ukrainian libraries during the 1920s. Strong censorship was introduced in academic libraries, and many books found unfavorable to communist ideology were removed.
Research libraries suffered particularly great losses during the German-Soviet War of 1941–5 (see Second World War). When Ukraine was occupied by German troops, many collections were destroyed during the hurried evacuation of the Soviet authorities, and remaining collections were seriously depleted by the Germans. Some of the lost collections were recovered after the end of the war; the National Library of Ukraine (in 1948–65 the State Public Library of the Ukrainian SSR), for example, recovered its old imprints and manuscripts, which had been evacuated by the Soviet authorities to Ufa in 1941, and also part of the collection taken to Germany.
Such losses continued to occur on a smaller scale. During the 1960s and 1970s a number of valuable collections of Ukrainian prerevolutionary materials were destroyed in unexplained circumstances, either by fire or through some kind of negligence. In May 1964 arson in the Central Scientific Library of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR resulted in the loss of the singular collection of Mykhailo Hrushevsky, as well as of other historical materials. Not long afterward the famous Vydubychi Monastery and its library, containing rare books from the 17th and 18th centuries, were also destroyed by fire. In the early 1970s a significant part of the rare books collection of Serhii Maslov was lost from the Kyiv University Library, apparently through negligence. In 1974 a fire destroyed a large number of books of V. Kolosova’s collection in the library of the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. Historic musical documents, housed at the library of the Lysenko Higher Institute of Music in Lviv, perished in 1977.
Postwar library development in the Soviet Union was influenced by such All-Union decrees as ‘On the Current Status of Libraries and Their Improvement’ (1959) and ‘The Increasing Role of Libraries in the Communist Education of Workers and in the Scientific and Technological Process’ (1974). A high degree of standardization and uniformity was applied in library organization and services, in spite of the existing diversity of nationalities, cultures, and library traditions. The Soviet press and library professional literature stressed that the principal task of libraries was to propagandize the resolutions of Communist Party congresses and to explain the policy and decisions of the Communist Party and the Soviet government. Most of the public libraries and many academic and specialized libraries in Ukraine were under the jurisdiction of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR and the Ministry of Culture of the Ukrainian SSR..
Political vigilance in regard to book selection was enforced by a network of distributing centers which published lists of recommended book acquisitions and were actively involved in centralized acquisition processing. The largest distributing center for research libraries, supplying over 2,000 such institutions throughout the Soviet Union, was located in Moscow; regional distribution centers in Ukraine existed in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and Lviv. They were the main source for the bulk of acquisitions by academic, public, and school libraries. In that centralized system each library was supplied with books under an annual contract that specified the particular library’s subject of interest, the average number of copies required, and the proposed expenditure on acquisitions during the year.
The rise and fall of leading personalities in the Soviet Union, and especially in Soviet Ukraine, accompanied by abrupt shifts and turns in official policies, resulted in a constant process of weeding library collections of ‘deteriorated material’ and ‘obsolete publications.’ An estimated 4 percent of public library holdings in the USSR were withdrawn from circulation every year; several factors indicate that the percentage was significantly higher in the Ukrainian SSR. According to the observations of Western scholars, special collections of confiscated material existed in many of the larger libraries (see Spetsfondy). Those collections included books by ‘enemies of the people,’ ‘obsolete’ histories, foreign works inimical to the Soviet Union, and even pornography.
In a typical Soviet library there were usually at least two types of catalogs. The readers’ or public catalog provided a selective coverage of the collection; occasionally it contained annotations guiding the user to the most ‘popular’ or politically significant material. The official catalog served as an inventory of library holdings, supposedly covering the whole collection (and possibly including some innocuous foreign material). Only researchers and some advanced students with written authorization were allowed to consult the official catalog. It is believed that special inventories or catalogs of removed and politically undesirable materials were maintained in most research libraries and in some larger district libraries. When certain Soviet personalities were ‘rehabilitated,’ their works might have been reinstated, at least in the official catalog.
As of 1985 the Central Scientific Library of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR was the largest library in Ukraine. It housed some 12 million volumes, including 291,000 manuscripts, 1.6 million periodicals, 40,000 unpublished dissertations, and a substantial number of nonbook materials. Of special interest were its holdings of incunabula and rare books. That library, along with several others in Ukraine, received depository copies of all books published in the Soviet Union. Its affiliate, the Lviv Scientific Library of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, had approximately six million items, including 75,000 manuscripts and a substantial number of rare books.
University libraries with significant collections could be found at Kyiv University (2.7 million volumes in 1985), Lviv University (2.5 million volumes), Kharkiv University (2.3 million volumes), Odesa University (3.5 million volumes), Chernivtsi University (1.7 million volumes), Uzhhorod University (1.2 million volumes), and Dnipropetrovsk University (1.2 million volumes). Smaller collections were housed at some 140 libraries of pedagogical institutes, such as the Kyiv Pedagogical Institute (700,000 volumes) and the Drohobych Pedagogical Institute (415,000 volumes); scientific research institutes of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, such as the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (150,000 volumes) and the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (120,000 volumes); and libraries subordinated to various ministries, such as Library of the Ministry of Culture (130,000 volumess) and the Ministry of Education Pedagogical Library (260,000 volumes).
By the 1980s there were also over 2,000 specialized libraries in Ukraine, the largest of which were the State Republican Scientific and Technical Library of the Ukrainian Scientific Research Institute of Scientific-Technical Information and Technical-Economic Research in Kyiv (est 1935, with 1.7 million volumes), the Library of the Kyiv Institute of Light Industry (est 1930, with 600,000 volumes), and the Central Research Library of the Ministry of Agricultural Industries (est 1944, with 360,000 volumes). The Ukrainian SSR had approximately 100 large industrial libraries, such as the Kyiv Library of Building Industries (est 1944, with 330,000 volumes) and the Kyiv Library of Automobile Transportation of the Ministry of Special Education (est 1945, with 288,000 volumes), and several hundred smaller libraries. Among the 36 sizable agricultural libraries was the Central Scientific Agricultural Library in Kyiv (est 1921, with 480,000 volumes). There were 73 medical libraries, the largest of which was the Republican Scientific Medical Library in Kyiv (est 1930, with 850,000 volumes). Many larger regional libraries also served as public district libraries, and usually reflected regional economic and professional interests. The Korolenko State Scientific Library in Kharkiv (est 1886 as a public library), for example, housed 5.8 million volumes, with emphasis on science and technology, and the State Regional Library for Adults in Donetsk (est 1926) contained 1.4 million volumes, with emphasis on technology, particularly mining and metallurgy.
Most secondary schools and eight-year schools had their own libraries of 2,000 to 5,000 volumes. Larger libraries were found in the professional schools, including tekhnikums. The elementary schools, especially in rural districts, had rather small collections, and children used local libraries for supplementary reading. In 1980 there was a total of 59,300 libraries in the Ukrainian SSR (including school libraries), with combined holdings of 883 million volumes; in 1985 there were 57,900 libraries in the Ukrainian SSR (compared to 165,000 in the RSFSR), with 1,011 million volumes (compared to 3,019 million volumes in the RSFSR). (See the table.)
Abroad. Through the efforts of Ukrainian émigrés, many educational institutions, churches, civic clubs, and professional organizations have supported libraries of varying size and utility. Some important collections of Ukrainian materials were transferred out of Ukraine to existing university and state libraries. The Austrian State Library, for example, obtained depository copies of all Ukrainian books published in Austria up to 1918. After the First World War the largest émigré Ukrainian libraries were founded in Czechoslovakia, at the Ukrainian Free University in Prague (est 1922, with 10,000 volumes in 1938), the Ukrainian Husbandry Academy in Poděbrady (est 1922, with 30,000 volumes), the Ukrainian Higher Pedagogical Institute in Prague (est 1923, with 11,000 volumes in 1936), the Museum of Ukraine's Struggle for Independence in Prague (est 1925, with 10,000 volumes in the main collection and 35 special collections, including more than 1,000 complete sets of Ukrainian periodicals and newspapers), and the Ukrainian Historical Chamber in the Czechoslovakian Foreign Ministry in Prague (est 1931, with 17,000 volumes in 1936). With the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Army in 1945, most of those collections were taken to the Soviet Union, destroyed, or partially integrated into the Slavic collection of the Prague University Library.
The libraries of the Ukrainian Scientific Institute in Berlin (est 1926, with 32,000 volumes) and the Ukrainian Scientific Institute in Warsaw (est 1930, with 7,000 volumes and several special collections, including the archives of Mykhailo Drahomanov) were destroyed during the Second World War. The Petliura Ukrainian Library in Paris (est 1929, with 15,000 volumes by 1940) was confiscated and shipped to Germany during the war. It was re-established in Paris after the war (10,000 volumes).
Postwar Ukrainian émigrés established new libraries as part of scholarly and educational institutions. Two important libraries were founded in Rome, at the Ukrainian Catholic University (Rome) (20,000 volumes) and Saint Josaphat's Ukrainian Pontifical College (15,000 volumes, including valuable archives pertaining to the history of the Ukrainian Catholic church). In Munich a significant collection of Ucrainica was established by Ukrainian émigrés at the Ukrainian Free University Library (12,000 volumes). During the 1950s the Shevchenko Scientific Society Library was transferred from Munich to Sarcelles, France (in 1978 it had 20,000 volumes), and in 1950 the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences Library, originally in Augsburg, Germany, was transferred to New York (in 1978 it contained 20,000 volumes and a rich collection of manuscripts).
Other libraries established in the United States of America during the 1950s were the Saint Basil’s College Library (15,000 volumes) and the Ukrainian Diocesan Museum of Stamford and its Library (20,000 volumes), the Ukrainian National Museum Research Library in Chicago (12,000 volumes), the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of America Library in South Bound Brook, New Jersey (14,000 volumes), and the Ukrainian Museum-Archives in Cleveland (6,000 volumes).
The largest collections of Ukrainian materials in the United States of America are found at the Library of Congress (61,500 volumes), the University of Illinois (45,000 volumes), the New York Public Library (25,000 volumes), Harvard University (60,000 volumes), the University of Michigan (18,000 volumes), Indiana University (18,000 volumes), the University of Chicago (16,000 volumes), and the University of California at Berkeley (15,000 volumes).
In Canada significant Ukrainian collections are housed in libraries at the Basilian Fathers’ Museum in Mundare, Alberta (20,000 volumes), the Ukrainian Fraternal Society of Canada in Vancouver (8,000 volumes), the Saint Vladimir Institute (22,000 volumes) and the Ukrainian National Federation (20,000 volumes) in Toronto, and Saint Andrew's College (40,000 volumes) and the Ukrainian Cultural and Educational Centre (20,000 volumes) in Winnipeg.
Collections of Ukrainian materials are also housed in the libraries of the University of Toronto (20,000 volumes), the University of Alberta (15,000 volumes), and the University of Manitoba (30,000 volumes). The National Library and Archives of Canada, located in Ottawa, have significant collections of Ukrainian-Canadian folklore and Ucrainica (the latter including the personal archives of Volodymyr Kubijovyč).
Large collections of Ukrainian materials and Ucrainica are housed in leading university and research libraries in Europe (Warsaw, Prague, Vienna, Helsinki, Paris, Munich, London), in the Svydnyk Museum of Ukrainian Culture in Slovakia, in Romanian libraries, in Moscow (the Lenin Library and the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library), and in the libraries of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
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Bohdan Wynar
[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]