Library
Library of the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn House of Russian Expatriate Community
In 1995, to store the emigrant materials collected by A.I. and N.D. Solzhenitsyn, the government of Moscow decided to create the open-to-all Library and Fund "The Russian Expat Community" using this facility. In 2009, it became the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn House of the Russian Expatriate Community. The library is becoming a part of the museum, but continues following the principles of openness and accessibility, laid by its founders A.I. Solzhenitsyn and N.A. Struve. Unlike many other museum libraries, the doors of the library of the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn House of the Russian Expatriate Community are open for all visitors. You do not need to present any other documents except for your passport to gain access to its collections (with the exception of access to the archive documents in the reading hall).
The library fund is formed mostly thanks to the donations from emigrants. Its basis is composed from the books donated by YMCA-Press and personally by N.A. Struve. We received a large collection of rare publications from Zemgor (library of senior facilities in Gagny and Karmoy) thanks to Y.A. Trubnikov. M.I. Lifar donated the books of the late husband Leonid Lifar, a Parisian printer, brother of the famous dancer Sergei Lifar.
Since 1997, the "Books for Russia" Committee in the USA headed by L.S. Flam-Obolenskaya has been making an invaluable contribution to the fund of the library. Its efforts have allowed us to obtain thousands and thousands of books. With its support, more than 300 Russian expats in the USA donated books.
We received many valuable publications from Nikolay Soldatenkov, A.L. and M.V. Smetankins (France), I.N. and T.I. Timakhovich, S.N. and K.I. Zabelin, R.B. Sereda, R.V. Polchaninov, Y.I. Shidlovskiy, T.S. Zigern-Korn (USA), from E.B. Horneffer-Nikolskaya, S.N. Krikoryan (Switzerland), from the Society in Memory of WW2 Veterans in Los Angeles (USA), Association of Emigrant Descendants "Russians of Ugin" (Ugin, France), "Otrada" Society and many other associations of our compatriots.
Readers at the Library are mostly researchers of the history of the Russian expatriate community and related topics, students, post-graduates, and teachers at the humanitarian colleges and universities of Moscow and Russia. Many foreign visitors come to our reading halls – scientists, descendants of Russian emigrants, representatives of today's expat communities. The staff of the Library is always happy to welcome every guest interested in the history of Russian emigration and ready to assist in finding the information they need.
We hope that the users of our website will some day visit our Library in real life, too.
The Library sees its goal in meeting the informational needs of specialists in the scientific research, exposition, educational activities of the House and giving access to a wide circle of users to the information resources on the Russian expat community, above all – to the unique fund of our library as a part of the cultural and scientific legacy of our country.
The library consists of the following sections:
- the library acquisition and processing sections, concerned with the acquisition of printed and other documents and management of the library's catalogs;
- the book storage section, working to preserve the unique collections of the library;
- the readers and bibliography section, working at the reading hall and delivery desk;
- the media hall section, concerned with digitalization of the collections and fee-paid services.
The staff works actively to study and promote the collections of the library among the public. For this purpose, they compose bibliographic guides and reviews of the Russian expat literature and organize expositions of books and illustrations in the House and on other venues.
Library Director
Korolkova Tatyana Aleksandrovna