Lesia Kusyi, Candidate of Sciences in Social Communications, Scientific Researcher in Manuscript Department of Vasyl Stefanyk National Scientific Library of Ukraine in Lviv
Documents from the Manuscript Department in the Special fund of Vasyl Stefanyk Lviv Scientific Library of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialistic Republic
DOI: https://doi.org/10.37222/2524-0315-2024-16(32)-16
In May 1940, the Soviet authorities founded the Special fund in the Lviv branch of the Library of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. The goal of a new department was to ensure the ideological purity of the Library’s collections. The Special fund existed for almost half a century. It was an autonomous structural department of the Library with limited access for even the Library’s employees. The aim of the Special fund was a concentration of information that was prohibited for free use according to the official orders of the censorship authorities. Prohibitory measures affected specific printed, handwritten and other documents in the field of Library, archival and museum studies.
The Soviet police (NKVD) controlled all manuscript collections within the Special fund right from the foundation of the Lviv branch of the Library of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. Every archival collection was under suspicion of having ideologically harmful information.
The paper deals with a subject analysis of archival documents removed for ideological reasons from the storages of the Manuscript Department to the Special fund. For decades these archival documents were unavailable to scholars.
The most numerous seizures of handwritten documents in the Library were carried out during the so-called “period of stagnation and crisis of Soviet society” (1975–1983). From the foundation in February 1940 until the mid – 1980s, more than 1,000 items from personal collections of the Manuscript Department were withdrawn to the Special Fund. The Special Fund was disbanded in 1991–1992, and all the seized documents were returned to the Manuscript Department storages.
Keywords: Lviv branch of the Library of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, Vasyl Stefanyk Lviv Scientific Library, Manuscript Department, library censorship, Special fund, personal archival collections.
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References
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