Peculiarities of Censorship of Library Funds in the First Post-War Years (proceeding from the materials of the State Archive of the Kirovohrad Region)

Abstract

The article highlights the peculiarities of censorship of library funds during the second half of the 1940s. The main tendencies in implementing ideological control of printed publications during the first post-war years have been analysed. It has been found that the Holovlit of the Ukrainian SSR and its local bodies (obllits), guided by the instructions of the moscow center, showed considerable activity in searching for and neutralizing “anti-Soviet” manifestations in public life, including the book and library spheres. The main aspects that have been analysed in this article are the following: lists of banned publications that were subject to removal from public libraries and the bookselling network; “purge” campaigns aimed at library collections, the result of which was the removal from libraries of literature undesirable to the authorities with its subsequent destruction; the distribution of complete library collections between different libraries; the creation of a repository of proscribed publications that the authorities considered a threat to the current regime. It has been proven that in the post-war period, the works of authors who did not support communist ideas in their work or were very distant from politics and did not want to please the ideological conjuncture in their writing, as well as the works of those who, in the opinion of the authorities, showed too emphasized national patriotism and love for Ukraine, were persecuted. This also extended to “outdated” Soviet publications (brochures of an agitational and propaganda direction of the 1920s–1930s). The article highlights the further fate of the seized publications, some of which were placed in the special storage fund — a separate book depository with limited access, which was intended to gather some of the publications banned for ideological and political reasons. Ordinary readers’ access to these funds was limited. It has been found that in the post-war period, a new work direction of the Holovlit of the Ukrainian SSR became supervision over literature that had been published in the western regions of Ukraine before 1939 and during the years of the temporary stay of the German occupiers on Soviet territory.