Russian Libraries since the Revolution Available to Purchase

IT will be remembered that at the revolution of 1917 innumerable collections of books, many of them brought together by wealthy members of the bourgeoisie, fell into the possession of the state. Leningrad district alone secured twenty‐five million books, and other populous areas benefited similarly! These rich inheritances created the problem of preserving the collections—an extraordinarily difficult problem in view of the conditions created by the civil war: the horrors of famine, disease, and cold. A state organisation, “Book Funds,” was created with branches and local departments, and these, with the excellent aid of voluntary bodies and library societies, did especially good work in remote areas.