"So Ample a Collection, So Well Balanced:"
The Yudin Collection at the Library of Congress

Harold M. Leich,
Russian Area Specialist

Introduction and Background

The Yudin Collection, a private library of approximately 80,000 volumes purchased in November 1906 by the Library of Congress (LC) from Siberian collector, bibliophile, and merchant Gennadii Vasil'evich Yudin (1840-1912), arrived at LC in April 1907, after a long journey via rail and sea from Krasnoiarsk, Siberia. Librarian of Congress Herbert Putnam, in his 1907 report on the Library, termed the collection "the most important accession to the Library" of the year, "so ample a collection, so well balanced."¹ This paper will discuss what happened to the collection after its arrival at LC in April 1907 and examine claims made in the 1990s that the Library deliberately destroyed all or most of the collection. I will also mention other aspects of how the collection has been handled since its arrival in Washington one hundred years ago.

There is a large body of descriptive, scholarly, and polemical literature about Yudin and the Yudin Collection,² and interesting materials continue to be written about them.³ November 16, 2006 (Gregorian Calendar) marked the hundredth anniversary of the signing of the sales contract, dated November 3, 1906 (Julian, or "old style" Calendar) between Yudin and the Library of Congress whereby LC purchased the collection. For this occasion the Library mounted in its European Reading Room an exhibition of works from and about the Yudin Collection, and this author organized a panel, held on November 17, 2006, at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. Five people made presentations on various aspects of the collection, its acquisition, and subsequent treatment by LC.⁴

Sources

There is a wide variety of sources available to track the history of the Yudin Collection at the Library of Congress after its arrival in 1907. Except for the published annual reports of the Librarian of Congress, these sources are unpublished and available only on-site at LC. The Library's Archives, under the jurisdiction of the Manuscript Division, hold the official correspondence files relating to the purchase of the collection and relations with Yudin until his death in 1912. A number of these documents have been photocopied and maintained in the European Division files, which also contain a large number of manuscript items relating to the history of the collection, particularly internal memoranda relating to cataloging the collection and the 1960s disposal of a number of duplicates from the Yudin Collection.

The Yudin volumes themselves are a rich source of information on the collection: many bear the Yudin Collection bookplate and, on the verso of title pages, the LC accession number (104837) for the collection. In addition, many books from the Yudin Collection bear stamps or labels of the bookdealers who supplied Yudin with his books--chief among them St. Petersburg dealer Vasilii Ivanovich Klochkov. Yudin's own card catalogs of his collection, discussed in detail below, reflect most fully what was actually in the collection as it was received at LC in 1907. Catalog records in the form of printed cards or MARC records show when LC cataloged individual items in the Yudin Collection (although Yudin provenance is not mentioned in these records).⁵ The ultimate disposition of individual items from the Yudin Collection--for example, when specific items were dispersed from the former Slavic Section to various LC custodial units, or when a particular duplicate may have been sent to another library--is not recorded in the LC archives, bibliographic records, or internal memoranda.

Finally, LC staff and particularly catalogers prove a rich source of information about the collection: having had years of hands-on experience cataloging Yudin books or upgrading Yudin catalog records, these catalogers know better than anyone now alive the details and intricacies of Yudin bookplates, labels, stamps, and interpreting several generations of cataloging data to provide insights into the fate of the Yudin Collection at LC.

Original Location and Subsequent Dispersal

When the Yudin Collection arrived in Washington in April 1907, it was unpacked and ultimately shelved in a vacant room in the east attic. The Jefferson Building had opened to the public in November 1897 and at the time was called simply the Library of Congress (or Congressional Library) building. There are several photographs of this room, showing the Yudin Collection on the shelves, in the published Russian translation of Herbert Small's guide to the Library building (a translation financed by Yudin himself).⁶

The rapidly growing Library of Congress quickly filled up all stack space in the new building, and two of the original four interior light courts were filled in to provide additional shelf space. An external addition to the original LC building was constructed in the late 1920s and early 1930s to provide space for a Rare Book Reading Room (on the second floor), an expansion area for the growing card catalog (first floor), and a loading dock (ground floor), necessitating the temporary relocation of the Slavic Section and the Yudin books. Upon moving back to the new space in February 1934, the Slavic Section annual report noted that it now had over three miles of shelf space in its new quarters.⁷

The temporary loss to construction of the Slavic Section space in the east attic and then the abolition of the Slavic Section itself in 1943/44⁸ were most likely the immediate reasons the Yudin Collection was split up and dispersed to appropriate custodial divisions throughout the Library. It should be noted that in dispersing the collection to a number of units within the Library, LC went against Yudin's wishes that the collection be kept together as a separate collection and housed in its own separate room. It is in fact very rare for the Library of Congress, or other American libraries, to keep large collections literally together and house them in a separate room.⁹

The dispersal of the Yudin collection in the 1930s and 1940s followed the pattern that was standard practice then as now, based on the rarity, format, and reference potential of each item. Many books and journals published before 1800 went to the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, as did selected nineteenth and early twentieth century rare books.¹⁰ Materials in special formats were sent to the appropriate custodial division. Maps and atlases went to the Geography & Map Division; materials on law and legal matters went to the Law Library of Congress; music scores and musicological books were sent to the Music Division.¹¹ A few collections of prints and engravings were sent to the Prints & Photographs Division. Important reference works such as encyclopedias, biographical dictionaries, and bibliographies were assigned to the Slavic Section's reading room. The vast majority of books and long runs of periodicals from the Yudin Collection--those neither considered especially rare nor in non-book formats--went to the Library's General Collections, the "main stacks" of the Library. ¹²

"Continuation" of the Collection into the 1920s

For reasons not completely understood today but apparently considered logical at the time and possibly done to honor the value of the original Yudin Collection, many Russian books received at LC after 1907, from whatever source, were considered in some sense a continuation of the original Yudin Collection. Many of these books therefore received the Yudin bookplate and some also an LC bookplate with the words "Yudin Collection" imprinted on it. Obviously, a book published in 1912, or 1925, could not have been part of a collection purchased in November 1906 that arrived at the Library in April 1907. It remains unclear exactly why this practice was followed, and for so long, apparently into the late 1920s. I was unable to find any documentation in the LC Archives about why this practice was done or when or why it was stopped.

Yudin Bookplates. Top: Ex Libris designed by Yudin, showing (left to right) Gennadii Vasil'evich Yudin; St. Basil's Cathedral, Moscow; Yudin's library building in Tarakanovo, near Krasnoiarsk. The bookplate was reprinted in 1928 by the Government Printing Office Bottom: Library of Congress Bookplate as Used for Yudin Books. Photograph by Barbara L. Dash. CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE

Catalogs of the Yudin Collection

The Library received Yudin's own handwritten card catalog of his collection along with the books. There were two separate sections of this catalog: an alphabetical author/title section, and one that reflected the way the books had been arranged on the shelves in Yudin's own library (this arrangement itself reflecting a combination of broad subject categories, language categories, and the order in which Yudin had received the books from his suppliers). During the years when the Yudin Collection was maintained as a separate collection housed in the Slavic Section in the east attic, this catalog, especially the author/title part, was presumably the only access to the contents of the collection, other than physically browsing items on the shelves.

The status of the catalog today is somewhat confusing. Like the collection itself, the catalog has been split up. The alphabetical, author/title part of the catalog is currently housed in the European Division. Based on statistical samples I did in early 2007, there are approximately 38,000-40,000 cards in the 64 drawers of this catalog.¹³

The original cards in the author/title section, each 3.5" x 4.5" and written in an elegant "library hand," were glued onto 4" x 6" index cards, provided with headings in the Roman alphabet (personal or corporate author, or the first few words of the title in the case of title main entry), arranged in A-Z Roman alphabetical order, and subsequently microfilmed.¹⁴ The original of this part of the catalog remains in the custody of the European Division, is housed on its deck in the Jefferson Building stacks, and is available upon request to readers interested in the collection. The 38,000-40,000 title figure, incidentally, is probably a good indication of the number of bibliographic titles or discrete units (as opposed to volumes, which numbered around 80,000) in the Yudin Collection as sold to LC.

The Rare Book and Special Collections Division currently holds another section of the catalog, still stored in its original boxes.¹⁵ It is unclear whether the copy in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division is complete.¹⁶ The cards in this section of the catalog are the 3.5" x 4.5" size used by Yudin and his scribes and represent what the Russians would call a "topograficheskii katalog"--a shelflist reflecting how the volumes themselves were arranged, in fixed locations, on the shelves of Yudin's own library. Each card indicates a case number (shkaf), a shelf number (polka), and an item number (No., usually left blank).

Boxes containing Yudin's handwritten card catalog of his collection. Photographs by Barbara L. Dash.

Sample handwritten catalog cards from Yudin's collection. Photographs by Barbara L. Dash.

Cataloging the Yudin Collection

As noted above, Yudin's own original handwritten card catalog, particularly the author/title (main entry) section, served as the only access to the collection for several decades, other than browsing the items themselves on the shelves. The Library gradually began providing standard LC cataloging for items as they were integrated into the special collections divisions and the Library's General Collections, a process that was not complete (except for a number of pamphlets, not ordinarily given full cataloging at the Library) until the 1990s.

The catalog records that LC ultimately produced for Yudin titles, over the course of several decades, were never explicitly flagged as being from the Yudin collection. As a result, there is no way, in either the old card catalogs or the newer computer catalog, to retrieve listings of cataloged Yudin books. In LC's first generation online catalog, MUMS/SCORPIO, used until December 1999, that subset of Yudin books in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division was flagged with a "Yudin" provenance note as the result of a special project to upgrade those catalog records. However, in the late 1999 changeover to the current Voyager online catalog, most of these notes were stripped out of the bibliographic records and are no longer present.¹⁷ As a result, it is unfortunately not possible today to do provenance searches in LC's online catalog to retrieve the majority of books in the original Yudin Collection.¹⁸

Several large-scale efforts to catalog the collection were made beginning in the 1960s and continued into the early 1990s. European Division files contain many internal memos detailing proposals to catalog the Yudin "remnant."¹⁹ The Yudin Collection contained thousands of pamphlets (defined at LC as publications under fifty pages in length) and offprints of periodical articles. This large subset of Yudin materials has been divided into two sections, those published pre-1865 and those published after 1864. The latter category has had a finding aid produced, and many of the pamphlets themselves have been microfilmed.²⁰ The pre-1865 pamphlets, however, currently in the custody of the European Division, are unprocessed and comprise the only subset of Yudin materials to remain uncataloged.²¹

Disposal of Yudin Duplicates

Yudin's collection often had two or more copies of the same book. In the midst of a large initiative at LC beginning in the mid-1960s to finish cataloging the bulk of the collection, a number of these extra copies were designated as "surplus duplicates," deaccessioned from the LC collection, and subsequently offered to LC's exchange partner libraries or for sale to antiquarian book dealers (LC's standard practice is to retain only one copy of foreign items, except in the case of important reference materials). Obviously, in retrospect, this never should have been done--exceptions to the "one copy" policy are routinely made whereby second (third, etc.) copies of books in special collections are kept. The total number of volumes deaccessioned is probably in the range of 3,500-4,500, but cannot be documented precisely.

The disposal of Yudin duplicates became a controversial issue almost as soon as it began. People at other libraries--including libraries in the Soviet Union--began to wonder why they had received, ultimately from LC, books from the original Yudin Collection. This ultimately fueled speculation that LC was getting rid of the collection. Because of the controversy, LC tightened up procedures for treatment of Yudin duplicates in 1971, and the practice was in effect halted as of the early 1970s.²²

The largest single block of "duplicate" Yudin books known to this author, possibly as many as two to three thousand volumes, is owned by a private collector in Maryland, who in early 2007 donated a number of them to the Slavic Library at the University of Illinois/Urbana. The collector, Raymond Arent, acquired the Yudin duplicates from the University of Miami Library (Florida) between 1975 and 1979 after that library, having received many Yudin duplicates through the Library of Congress' gift and exchange program, decided to divest itself of some of its existing Russian holdings due to space limitations.²³

The claim that LC had deliberately destroyed part or even all of the Yudin Collection came to a head in the early 1990s. The only real proponent of this claim was Emmanuel Sztein, who in 1991 published an article detailing his accusations in the Moscow literary journal Znamia.²⁴ A year later the journal published responses to Sztein's claims by Librarian of Congress James H. Billington and by Yudin relative Inna Alekseevna Polovnikova. Among other criticisms of LC, Sztein claimed that during the Cold War American hostility to Russia and the USSR was so high that Russian collections at LC, chief among them the Yudin Collection, were deliberately and systematically destroyed, and the Soviet Union consciously ignored. In fact, of course, just the opposite was true: concern and even paranoia about the USSR, particularly after the October 1957 launch of Sputnik, fueled unprecedented growth of Russian, Slavic, and East European studies and development of corresponding library collections not only at LC, but at a number of large academic libraries throughout the U.S.²⁵

Why did Sztein's claims, that LC had destroyed some or even all of the collection, seem at least partially credible? First of all, some volumes, particularly imprints from the late 19th century with deteriorating paper, had been microfilmed as part of LC's ongoing, systematic preservation program. The originals were, as is standard practice, in fact discarded once they had been filmed, since most were severely damaged by the microfilming process itself. Too, as mentioned above, catalog records (whether in card or electronic form) for the vast majority of titles in the Yudin Collection did not indicate Yudin provenance. A provenance search in LC's current online catalog, Voyager, yields fewer than two thousand records. This means, not that the rest of the collection isn't at LC any more, but rather that most catalog records for Yudin bibliographic entities are not properly flagged as to their provenance.

In addition, the fact that LC's bookstacks are closed to the public means that staff cannot take visitors into the stacks to see, particularly in sections such as the DKs (Russian history) or the AP50s (general Russian periodicals), how many Yudin volumes are present in these call number ranges and in fact throughout the Library's General Collections. Finally, some books with the Yudin bookplate did end up in other collections and even back in Russia, because of the "surplus duplicate" disposal discussed above.²⁶

Renewed Contacts with Yudin Family Members

In the glasnost' and perestroika years of the late 1980s, LC was contacted for the first time in decades by descendants and relatives of Yudin. The first contact was in late 1988, from Irina Konstantinovna Iudina.²⁷ This author met with her in St. Petersburg in September 1989 to discuss the status of the Yudin Collection at LC. She showed me several photographs that had been in her branch of the family for almost a century. In addition, we were contacted by letter in September 1989 by Inna Alekseevna Polovnikova, a great-grand niece of Gennadii Vasil'evich Yudin.²⁸ Mrs. Polovnikova, a retired geologist and spectroscopist now living in St. Petersburg, has published two books on Yudin based on original archival research and access to family records.²⁹ I met with her at the Library of Congress' Moscow Office in September 1993. After several unsuccessful attempts to fund a trip for her to Washington, she visited LC for two weeks in November 2006, her trip funded by the "Bank Moskva." During her stay in Washington she researched Yudin and his collection, utilizing primarily Yudin materials in the LC archives (Manuscript Division) and a large collection of Yudin materials in the European Division.

Conclusion

For various reasons, known and unknown, the Library did not honor Yudin's wish that the collection be kept together in its own room, or that a book catalog of the entire collection be published. Given current Library priorities, it is unlikely that the collection will ever be regrouped together as a physical collection, although a virtual reconstruction would certainly be possible, using Yudin's catalog of his collection.

The Yudin collection, nonetheless, remains the critical, essential core of LC's large Russian holdings, estimated now to number at least 800,000 volumes, and is heavily used to this day.³⁰ Of the original collection, around 76,000 volumes remain at the Library and represent approximately 38,000-40,000 bibliographic titles. Researchers using LC holdings particularly appreciate the long, usually complete, runs of pre-revolutionary bound periodicals and "thick" literary journals that LC has in the original hard-copy editions from the Yudin Collection; most American libraries own these incompletely or only in microform. It goes without saying that volumes from the Yudin Collection will continue to support scholarly research on Russia for generations to come.

Notes

¹Library of Congress. Report of the Librarian of Congress ... for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1907 (Washington: GPO, 1907), 20. Back to text

²For an overall view of Yudin's life and of his collecting and other activities before the sale of his library to LC, and for basic bibliography about the collection, see Miranda Beaven Remnek, "Yudin, Gennadii Vasilevich" in Joseph L. Wieczynski, ed., Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History, 45 (Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1987), 50-53. For a relatively complete bibliography of Russian and Soviet literature on Yudin and his collection, see N. M. Sokolova, Gennadii Vasil'evich Iudin, bibliograficheskii ukazatel' (Gennadii Vasil'evich Iudin, a Bibliography) (Krasnoiarsk: Krasnoiarskaia gos. kraevaia universal'naia nauchnaia biblioteka, 1990). Back to text

³See, for example, Inna A. Polovnikova, Molodye gody Iudina (Yudin's Youth) (Moskva: Ekskliuziv, 1996), her Sibirskii bibliofil i zavodchik Iudin (The Siberian Bibliophile and Merchant Yudin) (S. Peterburg: Biblioteka Rossiiskoi akademii nauk, 2002), and her "Podvig bibliofila" (A Bibliophile's Feats), Bibliografiia, 2000 no.1 (January-February), 72-84. Also the following: Tat'iana Fesenko, 'Russkie sokrovishcha Biblioteki Kongressa' (Russian Treasures at the Library of Congress), in: Vsevolod Sechkarev, ed., Otkliki, sbornik statei pamiati Nikolaia Ivanovicha Ul'ianova, 1904-1985 (New Haven: [s.n.], 1986), 186-211; Boris Zabolotskikh, 'Znamenitaia biblioteka v Tarakanove' (A Remarkable Library in Tarakanovo), Sibirskie ogni, 1990 no.12 (December), 153-165; "Iudin Gennadii Vasil'evich" in N. M. Polunina, Kto est' kto v kollektsionirovanii staroi Rossii (Moskva: Ripol Klassik, 2003). Back to text

⁴For a short report of the panel and summaries of the five presentations, see I. A. Polovnikova, "Sto let iudinskim knigam v SShA" (One Hundred Years of Yudin Books in the U.S.), Bibliografiia, 2007 no.2 (March/April), 154-157. Papers by Barbara Dash, Edward Kasinec, Harold Leich, and Inna Polovnikova are published in Slavic & East European Information Resources, 9, no. 2 (2008), 92-152. Back to text

⁵For books cataloged in the twentieth century, the first two digits of the card number (LCCN or control number) indicate the year the number was assigned and most likely cataloged (an exception is that books cataloged 1970-1979 used a different system of LCCN assignment, one not based on the year the number was assigned). In addition, catalogers indicated the exact date of cataloging in pencil in the left gutter of the first page of text of most volumes. Back to text

⁶Herbert Small, Illiustrirovannoe opisanie novoi Biblioteki Kongressa v Vashingtonie (An Illustrated Description of the New Library of Congress in Washington) (Moskva: Sinodal'naia tip., 1910). Two photographs of the Slavic Section, with Yudin books on the shelves, appear immediately after page [120]. Back to text

⁷Report of the Librarian of Congress for the Year Ending June 30, 1934 (Washington: Library of Congress, 1934), 174. Back to text

⁸Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1944 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1945), 23. Back to text

⁹At LC there are currently only two named special collections housed separately in their own named rooms: The Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, acquired 1943-1975; and the personal library of President Woodrow Wilson; cf. Annette Melville, Special Collections in the Library of Congress, a Selective Guide (Washington: LC, 1980), 309-310 (Rosenwald), 381 (Wilson). Thomas Jefferson's personal library, as much as survived the 1851 fire, will be permanently exhibited in the southwest pavilion, second floor, Jefferson Building, beginning in 2008; and the Jay Kislak Collection of Pre-Columbian Americana will be permanently displayed in the northwest curtain starting in 2008. Back to text

¹⁰By the late 1980s all pre-1800 imprints from the General Collections had, in theory, been transferred into the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. Back to text

¹¹Some law books were apparently sent to the Law Library of Congress as early as 1914, cf. Law Library of Congress, Library of Congress Law Library, an Illustrated Guide (Washington: Library of Congress, 2005), 110. Back to text

¹²The General Collections are housed in the Jefferson Building (LC classes B-F, N, P), the Adams Building (LC classes A, G-H, L, Q-V, Z), and the Library's new remote storage facility at Ft. Meade, Maryland (lesser-used materials and extra copies). The Law Library (Madison Building) holds LC class K, and the Music Division (Madison Building) LC class M. Back to text

¹³Each of the 64 drawers has 10-12 inches' worth of cards; there are 50-60 cards per inch. Averaging out the differences in cards per inch and inches per drawer, there appear to be just under 40,000 cards in the alphabetical part of the Yudin catalog. Back to text

¹⁴Library of Congress control number 96106546; Microfilm shelf number 6309. The film set contains 13 reels. Back to text

¹⁵The eighteen boxes, each 17.5" x 5.5" x 4", bear the title, Podvizhnoi katalog domashnei biblioteki G. V. Iudina. S nazvanii knig v alfavitnom poriadke (Portable Catalog of the Personal Library of G. V. Yudin. From the Titles of Books in Alphabetical Order). There are separate sections for Russian books and books in foreign languages. Back to text

¹⁶There are only eighteen boxes, numbered 1-10, 41-43, and 57-61, leading one to wonder where boxes 11-40, 44-56, and 62+ are, if indeed LC received them at the time of the sale. Perhaps the absent boxes contained the author/title cards now housed in the European Division. Back to text

¹⁷A printout was made in the mid-1990s from the MUMS/SCORPIO database of that subset of Yudin books housed in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. It contains two parts (author/title, 324 pages; shelflist, 368 pages) and is available for consultation in the European Division of the Library of Congress. There are approximately 2,400 bibliographic records represented. Back to text

¹⁸Using the LC online catalog, http://catalog.loc.gov, and searching in "Expert Search" mode on the word "Yudin" in notes fields (5XX) yields 1,518 hits (September 2007). Searching the catalog for added entries (710) for "Yudin Collection" yields 717 hits. Combining these two sets with the OR operator yields 1,904 titles. Back to text

¹⁹Unpublished memoranda available in the European Division, the Library of Congress. Back to text

²⁰For items from the post-1865 collection of pamphlets that have been microfilmed and included in LC's "Meeting of Frontiers" digital library, see: http://frontiers.loc.gov/intldl/mtfhtml/mfdigcol/mfdcbs.html#e_eng Back to text

²¹The older pamphlets are housed in 14 boxes and have been first-lettered by LC class number. Although uncataloged, these boxes are available for browsing to researchers upon request in the European Reading Room. Back to text

²²Glen A. Zimmerman, "Yudin Collection--Treatment of Duplicates," internal memorandum to John C. Finzi (Assistant Director for Library Resources), August 25, 1971. European Division Yudin files, The Library of Congress. The memorandum recommends halting the practice of sending Yudin duplicates outside LC. Back to text

²³Information on the Arent collection was provided by Dr. Ellen Scaruffi, Arent's wife, to the author in an email communication dated March 22, 2006. Back to text

²⁴E. Shtein, "Knigi G. V. Iudina v Biblioteke Kongressa" (G. V. Yudin's Books at the Library of Congress), Znamia, 1991 no.3 (March), 237-240. Responses to Sztein's claims from Librarian of Congress James H. Billington and Yudin descendant Inna A. Polovnikova were published the following year, cf. "Eshche raz o biblioteke G. V. Iudina" (On the G. V. Yudin Library, Again), Znamia, 1992 no.7 (July), 234-240. On Sztein (1934-2002), see the short biographical article in Evrei v kul'ture russkogo zarubezh'ia, 3 (Ierusalim: M. Parkhomovskii, 1994), 537. Until his death, Sztein operated an antiquarian bookstore in Orange, Connecticut and occasionally sold Yudin duplicates deaccessioned by the Library of Congress, cf. His Tematicheskii katalog, 21 ([1992?]), which offers a volume of the rare literary almanach Novosel'e for $3,500. The volume had been de-accessioned by LC at some point in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Back to text

²⁵For details on the rapid build-up of Soviet language and area study programs in the U.S. in the immediate post-Sputnik period, see Donald N. Bigelow and Lyman H. Letgers, NDEA Language and Area Centers, a Report on the First 5 Years (Washington: U.S. Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare, 1964) (Office of Education Bulletin, 1964, no.41). Back to text

²⁶A. E. Shindina, Iudinskoe sobranie Krasnoiarskoi kraevoi nauchnoi biblioteki: katalog. Vypusk 3, Religiia (The Yudin Collection at the Krasnoiarsk Regional Research Library: a Catalog. Volume 3, Religion) (Krasnoiarsk: Krasnoiarskaia gos. kraevaia universal'naia nauchnaia biblioteka, 1995), 18-20. Back to text

²⁷Typescript translation of original handwritten letter from Irina Iudina to James H. Billington, December 26, 1988. Yudin Collection files, European Division, The Library of Congress. Back to text

²⁸Manuscript letter, Inna Polovnikova to the Library of Congress, September 6, 1989. Yudin Collection files, European Division, The Library of Congress. Back to text

²⁹See Inna A. Polovnikova, Molodye gody Iudina (Yudin's Youth) (Moskva: Ekskliuziv, 1996) and her Sibirskii bibliofil i zavodchik Iudin (The Siberian Bibliophile and Merchant Yudin) (S. Peterburg: Biblioteka Rossiiskoi akademii nauk, 2002). Back to text

³⁰Since LC does not keep any usage statistics for individual items in its collections, this claim represents the author's impression based on twenty years of public service at the Library's European Reading Room. Back to text