open access

https://hdl.handle.net/2115/39243

Public Libraries in the Russian Empire : A Study on the Expansion of Readership after the Great Reforms

日本語

2008

北海道大学スラブ研究センター

Slavic Studies

55

249-272

研究ノート

In Russia, the printing press began to develop rapidly during the era of the Great Reforms under the reign of Aleksandr II (1855-1881). At the same time, readership expanded, implying not only a rise in the number of readers but also a change in the readership structure. A. I. Reitblat analyzed this changing readership structure in his Ot Bovy k Bal'montu (Moscow, 1991), in which he divided readers into three groups: (1) intellectual readers (scholars, students, and intelligentsia) who read voluminous academic journals and polite literature; (2) semi-intellectual readers (merchants, middle and lower class officials, servants, intellectual workers, etc.) who read illustrated journals and popular novels; and (3) village readers (peasants and migrant workers) who read religious books, educational pamphlets, and lubki (booklets with illustrations and short texts on wood blocks or copper plates). His study provides important insight, particularly related to the inadequately studied Russian readership in the second half of the nineteenth century. However, his study has two shortcomings: One is that his scheme is too static to demonstrate the emergence of new readers and the accompanying change in the readership structure, and the other is that he relates each group of readers to one particular printing medium too clearly. This paper aims to resolve these problems and further explore the readership analysis of the period after the Great Reforms. For this purpose, we will examine Russian public libraries, one of the main institutions through which books were circulated in those days. First, we will examine the history and environment of Russian public libraries. The process of the establishment of libraries in the Russian Empire comprised three phases: (1) gubernskie publichnye biblioteki (provincial public libraries) in the 1830s and 1840s, (2) obshchestvennye or gorodskie biblioteki (society libraries or city libraries) in the period 1860-1890, and (3) narodnye biblioteki (libraries for the common people) in the 1890s. Geographically, the public libraries were spread across provincial cities (gubernskie goroda) in the 1830s and 1840s, county towns (uezdnye goroda) in the period 1860-1890, and to villages in the 1890s. However, they served as information repositories only for Russian users. Studying public libraries provides us with useful material for solving the two problems mentioned above. The first point concerns the social ranks of readers. They were recorded in the libraries' annual reports and provide us with the following concrete evidence on the process of the expansion of readership: The small group of the nobility and clergy in the 1830s and 1840s expanded to encompass merchants and townspeople in the period 1860-1890, and further to include peasants and workers in the 1890s. Second, we examine the emergence of various readers' groups. Library reports proved that new reading practices such as "light reading" and reading popular novels and illustrated journals appeared after the era of the Great Reforms. Librarians contrasted these practices with those of "serious reading" and reading polite literature and voluminous academic journals. The reports indicated that none of the readers' groups were directly related to a particular medium; instead, readers from various social ranks gradually made a transition from serious reading to light reading. We conclude that in the second half of the nineteenth century, reading in Russia was not limited only to the privileged classes, as is evident from the changing readership structure. Moreover, in the words of J. Habermas, we can consider the readers with new reading habits as "a culture-consuming public." Thus, it can be concluded that the expansion of readership is one of the important phenomena that occurred during the change of the social structure in nineteenth-century Russia.

紀要論文

Version of Record

0562-6579

AN0012574X