College and Research Libraries


LEV VLADIMIROV 

Soviet Centralized Bibliography: 
ITS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESSES 

After pointing to the critical need for comprehensive world bibliogra-
phy both current and retrospective, the author describes the structure 
of Soviet bibliographic coverage. He gives reasons for certain aspects 
of Soviet bibliography which have on occasion in the past been 
criticized and describes some of the particular problems encountered 
in enumerating the productions of the Soviet press. He concludes with 
a statement concerning some of the weaknesses remaining in the 
Soviet system and describes prospects for their elimination. 

THE PROBLEM of centralized bibliogra-
phy is of urgent importance for our 
times. In the opinion of UNESCO, the 
two main objectives of the world's bib-
liographic effort are to maintain a com-
prehensive record of current published 
materials of all kinds, and to try to cre-
ate a comprehensive record of past pro-
duction. Each is a very difficult task, and 
it will become more difficult in the future 
if we do not make it part of our work 
at the present time. 

If my memory is correct, I recall a 
quotation in an American library journal 
made by Verner Clapp, or was it Jesse 
Shera, who said that we are living in 
an age of explosions, an explosion of 
population, explosion of science, explo-
sion of information, and an explosion of 
book publishing. The world's publica-
tion output has been doubling every 

· forty-five years during the five centuries 
since Gutenburg labored-or at a rate 
roughly three times as fast as the growth 
of the world's population. 

Mr. Vladimirov is Director, Dag Ham-
marskjold Library, United Nations. This 
paper was read before the Library Staff 
Association at Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology on April 29, 1965. 

The tremendous explosion in research 
has generated a million or more scien-
tific papers a year. How formidable is 
the task of ensuring current awareness 
of all this new information! In the Soviet 
Union, from 1918 to 1964, more than 
1,900,000 books were published in 138 
languages, of which eighty-nine are in 
the USSR. Each year there is an average 
of 556 new books for every one hundred 
citizens in the USSR, whereas in 1913, 
before the Revolution, there were only 
sixty-two for every one hundred people. 

To cover adequately the entire na-
tional output of printed matter with the 
greatest possible ease and competence, 
and to cope with the task of coordinating 
the efforts of large bodies of biblio-
graphic workers engaged in this work, 
incontrovertibly requires the support of 
the state. 

In the Soviet Union today bibliog-
raphy is regarded as a matter of great-
est national importance. One of the 
strongest points in favor of the Soviet 
system of centralized national bibliog-
raphy is the fact that this endeavor is 
being developed under extremely favor-
able conditions, namely, that of a cen-
trally planned and balanced economy 
and culture, with book publishing and 

I 185 



186 I College & Research Libraries • May, 1966 

distribution under the direction and reg-
ulation of the state. 

In most countries of the world the 
task of compiling the national bibliog-
raphy is the responsibility of a national 
or diet library. In my opinion, however, 
it is better to place such a large-scale 
undertaking in the hands of a special 
institution. ·Experience has proven that 
many national libraries are overloaded 
with a variety of specific library activi-
ties, with the result that national bibli-
ography is often left to drift in a sea of 
cross currents. 

The difficult and complex task of 
creating, developing, and maintaining a 
national bibliography is the responsibi_li-
ty of an institution specially established 
for this purpose. For this reason the All-
Union Book Chamber (Vsesoiuznaia 
Knizhnaia Palata) was created by gov-
ernment decree. It receives under the 
legal depository act a copy of all ma-
terials published in the USSR, compiles 
and issues the current national bibliog-
raphy, initiates and directs work in the 
field of retrospective bibliography, and 
also serves as a center of methodological 
guidance and assistance to other libraries 
doing research in bibliography. 

Conceived in the period of Tsarist 
Russia, the Soviet national bibliography 
during a half century of drastically 
changing political and social conditions 
has undergone many changes in format, 
system, and frequency of issuance. To-
day, the current weekly bibliography 
Knizhnaia letopis' is the most compre-
hensive index and guide throughout the 
world of the Soviet book. Published in 
two separate or parallel series, the main 
issue of the Knizhnaia letopis' records 
the current production of all Soviet book 
publishing houses, all scientific mono-
graphs, textbooks, handbooks, popular 
booklets, reference literature, fiction, dic-
tionaries, encyclopedias, etc. 

Serial publications, learned papers, or 
transactions are listed in the Knizhnaia 

letopil and the yearbook ( Ezhegodnik 
knig SSSR) only by title; the analytical 
description of these periodicals will be 
found in the Letopis' periodicheskikh 
izdanii SSSR (Chronicle of periodical 
publications of the USSR). 

The parallel of supplementary issue 
of the Knizhnaia letopis':1-dopolnitel'nyi 
vypusk-lists most all the printed or 
processed information intended primari-
ly for internal use by various adminis-
trative, social, economic, or scientific or-
ganizations. It includes such items as 
official documents and instructions, ad-
vertising materials, methodical publica-
tions, standards, abstracts of theses, etc. 
Publications in these categories are usu-
ally unpriced and for limited distribu-
tion through official channels. 

In my opinion, a separate listing of 
such official or instructive material of 
limited distribution is quite sound. It 
prevents the already expanding Knizh-
naia letopis' from being overloaded with 
thousands of items of limited interest 
and use for the general public. 

However, even this well-founded pur-
pose in the method of publishing the 
Soviet national bibliography did not of-
ten receive the correct interpretation and 
evaluation abroad. Some members of 
the distinguished delegation of American 
librarians who visited the All-Union 
Book Chamber in 1961, and who had an 
opportunity to make a first-hand study 
of its activities, criticized the practice of 
issuing the Soviet bibliography in two 
parts. They felt that the comprehensive-
ness of coverage of the national bibliog-
raphy was seriously jeopardized by this 
practice, alluding to a kind of Soviet re-
strictive policy which attempts to hide 
from the rest of the world some im-
portant information. Such naive reason-
ing! It is no secret that a great deal of 
printed material classified "strictly con-
fidential" is being issued throughout the 
world, not only in the USSR but in the 
United States as well, and that such 



political, strategic, or scientific materials 
is accessible to limited official circles 
only. 

[By the way, the new American De-
pository Library Act excludes from dis-
tribution even among depository libraries 
those publications which are determined 
by their issuing bodies to be for official 
use only, or intended for strictly admin-
istrative or operational purposes of no 
public interest or educational value. 
Thus, no one will blame L. Quincy Mum-
ford, the Librarian of Congress, or Sir 
Frank Francis of the British Museum, 
that such material is not listed in the 
national bibliographies of their coun-
tries.] 

By slightly digressing from my main 
topic I have intended to remove some 
of the groundless critical remarks which 
in my opinion are directed against some 
of the imaginary shortcomings of Soviet 
bibliography. 

In evaluating the significance of such 
a large-scale enterprise as the Soviet 
national bibliography, the determinant 
factors should be: 

1. comprehensiveness of the bibliog-
raphy, its coverage of the national out-
put of the national output of publica-
tions. 

2. regularity and up-to-date informa-
tion about new publications. 

3. range and definition of bibliograph-
ic data about each registered publica-
tion, and, of course, the use of the bib-
liography as a satisfactory reference and 
information tool. 

In terms of coverage, the Knizhnaia 
letopil is a unique, and I dare say, an 
unsurpassed phenomenon in the world 
of bibliography. It covers almost 90 per 
cent of all publications classified as 
books or brochures, and all monographs 
of five pages or more. Only a few types 
of publications are excluded, e.g. items 
issued in less than one hundred copies 
(except for important political, scientific, 
or literary works), and various unessen-

Soviet Centralizes Bibliography I 181 

tial material considered to be ephemeral. 
Such comprehensiveness of coverage is 

only possible by means of the compul-
sory legal deposit of all new Soviet pub-
lications at the All-Union Book Cham-
ber. The organization receives an ad-
vance copy directly from the printer 
before the publication appears in print. 
This assures an up-to-dateness in the 
current national bibliography, and en-
ables the printed catalog card services 
of the Book Chamber to provide libraries 
with cards several days before the book 
is marketed. 

Of course even a well planned system 
of compulsory legal deposit and the 
Book Chamber's current bibliography 
sometimes run into problems. On the 
whole, the editing machinery of the na-
tional bibliography is running smoothly 
and efficiently. Errors, omissions, or 
other defects are promptly eliminated or 
remedied. For example, in each issue of 
the Knizhnaia letopil there is a section 
which lists publications received by the 
Book Chamber with a delay of two 
years or more. In the first weekly issue 
of the current year with 849 entries, 
there were only four delayed entries, 
two for 1961 and two for 1963. 

Full descriptive cataloging is given 
in the Knizhnaia letopis', plus the size 
of the edition, price, book cover, and the 
language of the edition. The Book 
Chamber's registration number, as well 
as the Decimal Classification index num-
ber are given. The weekly Knizhnaia 
letopis' is indexed quarterly by author, 
editor, illustrator of subjects, and geo-
graphical areas. There is also an annual 
index which lists monographic series and 
the separate titles within each series. 

Besides the Knizhnaia letopis', there is 
an All-Union bibliographic record of 
music, maps, pictorial reproductions, se-
rials, reviews, etc., and these appear 
regularly in constantly increasing vol-
ume. The chronicle of journal articles, 
Letopis' zhurnarnykh statei, is a com-



188 I College & Research Libraries • May, 1966 

plete index published weekly since 1926 
and lists articles, documents, and literary 
pieces appearing in the principal Soviet 
periodicals. There is also a monthly 
chronicle of newspaper articles, Letopis' 
gazetnykh statei, which lists articles ap-
pearing in the principal Soviet news-
papers. 

When one realizes the enormous 
amount of work that goes into the prepa-
ration of the journal and newspaper 
chronicles, he can appreciate more fully 
their value as excellent bibliographies. 
For example, in 1964 there were 155,000 
journal articles and 32,500 newspaper 
articles listed in the respective bibliog-
raphies. Of course it would be too bur-
densome and unwieldy a task to cover 
all the vast amount of newspaper arti-
cles, paragraphs, and notices which ap-
pear in the seven thousand Soviet daily 
and weekly newspapers. Therefore, a 
rigid selective policy for bibliographic 
entries is an absolute necessity. How-
ever, the number of listed newspaper 
entries is growing faster each year. Ac-
cording to a recent statement of the di-
rector of the Book Chamber, the number 
has tripled in size in the last five years. 

I should also mention that, although 
the Knizhnaia letopis' lists all the na-
tional or I should say the multinational 
output of Soviet publications, regardless 
of the language in which they are pub-
lished, the chronicles of journal and 
newspaper articles lists only articles 
printed in Russian. The listing of arti-
cles in other national languages is the 
responsibility of the Book Chambers of 
th~ . Soviet Republics, or in some cases 
their national libraries. 

The American librarians who visited 
the USSR in 1961 were puzzled by the 
fact that each of the fifteen Soviet re-
publics, and even each of the twenty-
eight . autonomous republics and autono-
mous districts has more or less developed 
its own current national biblography . 
. "Thus the Soviet Union has more than a 
national bibliography" the delegation de-

dared in its report. "It has a suprana-
tional bibliography, plus 17 [actually 15] 
national bibliographies, which heavily 
duplicate the titles appearing in the All-
Union bibliography." As a striking ex-
ample of such duplication, and the waste 
of effort and money, the delegation cited 
the U zbek Republic where 80 per cent 
of the entries in the U zbek Knizhnaia 
letopis' also appear in the All-Union 
Knizhnaia letopis', and this 80 per cent 
includes all scientific and scholarly pub-
lications in Uzbekistan. The data here 
cited are quite correct, but the con-
clusions are not. 

Foreign visitors to the Soviet Union 
very often have a misunderstanding of 
the essence of Soviet federalism. The 
Constitution of 1936 says that "the USSR 
is a federal state, formed on the basis of 
a voluntary union of equal soviet so-
cialist republics." The sovereignty of 
these republics lies in the peculiar auton-
omy in cultural affairs. The Soviet Union 
is not a melting pot of nationalities like 
the United States is said to be, and a 
soviet republic is quite unlike an Ameri-
can state. Each of the soviet republics 
has its national languages, maintains its 
national culture, historical traditions, 
customs, and literature. The flourishing 
of some of these national cultures began 
only during the Soviet period, and their 
national languages became written lan-
guages only after the October Revolu-
tion. 

However, the roots of their culture 
reach into antiquity. The Armenians for 
example contributed greatly to the de-
velopment of science and civilization in 
the middle ages. The great U zbek astron-
omer U glubek and the physician A vicena 
are world-renowned. As a matter of fact, 
the first printed book in the Soviet Union 
wa~ : not published in Moscow, but in 
Vilnius, the ancient capital of Lithuania, 
by the Byelorussian scientist and editor 
Skorina. 

At present there is a great deal of 
publishing in the national languages of 



the various republics. In Lithuania, 
where I come from, there were 1,494 
books published in 1963, of which 917 
were in Lithuanian and the other 577 
in Russian, Polish, or other languages 
spoken in Lithuania. Of course the 
Lithuanians like other nationalities of 
the USSR are vitally interested in issu-
ing publications in Russian in order to 
make their scientific and literary works 
known throughout the Soviet Union, and 
thus throughout the world. 

While there is a considerable number 
of books published in Russian in the 
various soviet republics, the bulk of the 
output of the republic publishing houses 
is in the native language. This then is 
the raison d' etre of the Book Chambers 
in the various republics. And, like the 
All-Union Book Chamber in Moscow, 
the functions and activities of each re-
public Chamber are similar. As national 
bibliographical information centers, they 
receive all the publications of the re-
spective republic under the compulsory 
legal deposit system. This law not only 
enables the republic Book Chamber to 
create its own current bibliographies, 
but at the same time permits it to stock 
the most complete collection of national 
literature. Unlike the All-Union Book 
Chamber, however, all entries in the 
local bibliographies are done in the orig-
inal languages, and are not translated in-
to Russian, thereby stressing the na-
tional character of these bibliographies. 

Close cooperation between the Book 
Chambers and the republic national li-
braries is essential in carrying out the 
formidable task of compiling and issuing 
the national (All-Union) bibliography. 
Without this cooperation the republic 
Book Chambers would be swamped with 
the editing of current bibliographies, and 
would not be able to venture into many 
other bibliographic projects. 

For example, were the All-Union Book 
Chamber to cope with the task of com-
piling such cumulative bibliographies as 
the "Book Annual of the USSR" or the 

Soviet Centralizes Bibliography I 189 

"Chronicle of Periodicals of the USSR" 
without the cooperation of the Republic 
Book Chambers, then the assistance and 
combined forces of some of the larger 
libraries would be needed. On the other 
hand, close cooperation between the 
Book Chambers and the larger libraries 
is markedly evident in the field of retro-
spective bibliography. In Georgia, for 
example, more than three hundred years 
of its publications have been covered in 
a comprehensive bibliography created 
with the combined efforts of the Repub-
lic Book Chamber and the academy, na-
tional, and university libraries. 

Also worth mentioning is the project 
of compiling a retrospective bibliography 
of Lithuania. This bibliography must 
cover the entire pre-Soviet period, begin-
ning with the first half of the sixteenth 
century up to 1940. It will cover not only 
books, but all other kinds of printed mat-
ter, periodicals, and periodical articles. 
A bibliography comprising twenty-four 
volumes and fifteen thousand pages, it 
will be created by a pool of the largest 
libraries in Lithuania together with sci-
entific institutions under the direction 
and guidance of the Republic Book 
Chamber, and an editorial board con-
sisting of the best experts in their field. 
Each library participating in this project 
was entrusted with a specific task in ac-
cordance with the character of its hold-
ings and the functions and activities of 
the respective library. 

Some progress has been made in the 
field of retrospective bibliography of the 
·Russian (pre-Soviet) book. The All-
Union Book Chamber, which is involved 
in a great number of projects covering 
the Soviet period, such as the compila-
tion of the Letopis' periodicheskikh 
izdanii ( Chronicle of Periodicals of the 
USSR), with its supposed fifteen or even 
twenty million entries, is not able to de-
vote its efforts to such a monumental 
bibliographic project. This tremendous 
task has therefore been undertaken hy 
the large Lenin State Library in Moscow 



190 I College & Research Libraries· May, 1966 

and the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library in 
Leningrad with their comprehensive 
holdings of the Russian book. Already 
the first two volumes of the five-volume 
set for the period 1725-1800 have been 
published. 

In .discussing centralized bibliography, 
the distribution of printed catalog cards 
based on the entries compiled for the 
bibliography is also of special considera-
tion. In the USSR this operation is the 
responsibility of the All-Union Book 
Chamber for Russian books and the re-
public Book Chambers for publications 
in their respective languages. 

Cards are also issued for articles in 
journals and newspapers, and, in addi-
tion, the Book Chamber issues separate 
series of annotated cards for some of 
the smaller public libraries. Cataloging-
in-source still remains an experiment. 
The best advance in this direction has 
been made by the Ukrainian Republic. 
They receive the galley proofs from the 
publishing houses and send the card 
copy back to the publishing house to-
gether with the galley. However, be-
cause of the fact that the books are is-
sued by the publishing houses and the 
printed cards by the Book Chambers, 
stoppages and gaps occur since the 
printed card is often behind the book. 

Thus far we have discussed the high-
lights of Soviet centralized bibliography, 
and next to nothing about the shortcom-
ings. We are aware of the many gaps that 
remain to be filled in the field of bibliog-
raphy, particularly those relating to peri-
odicals and to the cumulation of periodi-
cal indexes. In the field of retrospective 
bibliography, there is a serious gap in 

the nineteenth century period, and there 
remains a mosaic of various blank spaces. 
There are still complaints of insufficient 
promptness in editing the current bibli-
ography and in the distribution of 
printed cards. 

In the Asian republics, where the na-
tive bibliographers are young and inex-
perienced, the quality of current and 
retrospective bibliography is often poor. 
The technique of editing the current 
bibliography is in the manufacturing, 
but not the highly mechanized, stage of 
development. The Book Chambers are 
very conservative in this respect. Mecha-
nization and automation in the Book 
Chambers have still not been introduced. 
This may provide a solution to many of 
our problems. 

One of the best rewards for the efforts 
of a nation in developing culture and 
science is the interest and enthusiasm 
shown by other nations in these achieve-
ments. We view with great satisfaction 
the growing interest abroad in the use 
of the Soviet national bibliography. To 
illustrate, I call your attention to the fact 
that an American firm has undertaken 
the task of reprinting the Knizhnaia 
letopis' for the years 1907 to 1954-a 
publishing enterprise of tremendous 
magnitude. To be issued in 156 volumes, 
at a price of over $5,000, the decision to 
reprint came as the result of a number 
of requests from librarians all over the 
country. In conclusion therefore, I pay 
tribute to this grand endeavor, by quot-
ing a line from an American TV com-
mercial: "Try it, buy it, you will enjoy 
it." 

••