Abstract

This essay focuses on how the political climate of the Cold War-era U.S.S.R. affected Soviet librarians' ability to study and write about libraries in capitalist countries. The author refers extensively to papers published in major Soviet library science journals from the 1920s to the early 1990s to support his views. Examples are given of the influence of Cold War politics on the work of Russian library science researchers. The author uses contemporary material to trace the effects of the political on Soviet librarians' view of the international library community. Volodin also makes a clear differentiation between publicly expressed "politically correct" views and unpublished, unbiased research by significant Soviet librarians. The article discusses the profound impact made in bibliographic research by humanities scholars who chose library careers to avoid the intellectual constraints enforced elsewhere in Soviet academics. The author concludes by pointing out that librarians in the former Soviet Union are still unable to consider the effects of the Cold War on their profession as past history due to the stagnant climate of research and education. He describes the continued intellectual isolation perpetuated by the domestic focus of the popular Russian library science journals.

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