Special funds: libraries without readers.

Book depositories and structural subdivisions of libraries that stored publications banned from free circulation by the Soviet censorship were known as special storage funds and divisions. Similar units existed in archives and museums.

Established in 1921, special funds were not liquidated until 1990.

Publications ended up in special funds after libraries and bookstores were inspected for banned editions based on lists issued by the Main Directorate for Literature and Publishing Houses. Any publications that contradicted the Marxist-Leninist ideology were deemed “pernicious,” as did all books published in Western Ukraine before 1939, during the Nazi occupation and in the diaspora, as well as books containing mentions of persecuted figures and facts “uncomfortable” for the Bolshevik authorities.

Special funds staff was vetted and selected by the state security apparatus. Only certain categories of library users could get access to special funds after following a complicated application procedure: scholars, graduate students, party committee members of various levels, engineers, journalists, official counter-propaganda workers. Any potential user was to file a precise request because these books were not listed in general catalogues, and special fund catalogues was only accessible to the staff.

During the Khrushchev thaw, criminal cases from the era of Stalin’s personality cult were reviewed. Hundreds of thousands of wrongly convicted prisoners, including artists, were rehabilitated. Publications connected to the rehabilitated figures were moved from special funds to the main library holdings. The list of authors whose works were to be removed from circulation was whittled down by 2,535 names by January 1, 1960, from the initial total number of 3,310. 18,000 titles returned to general circulation.

The next large-scale opening up of special funds fell on the perestroika period (1985-1991), despite the Main Directorate taking every step to slow down the process.

Despite their main function of “a prison for books,” special funds have played an important role as a place where banned texts were preserved. The surviving 2-3 copies of banned books or magazines were kept in special funds while any other remaining copies were destroyed. Many Ukrainian titles from the 20^th century now exist in less than 10 copies.

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