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A Preliminary Discussion of RussianÉmigré Materials at the Library ofCongressBarbara L. Dash aa Rare Materials Section, Library of Congress, Washington, District ofColumbia, USAPublished online: 01 Mar 2013.
To cite this article: Barbara L. Dash (2013): A Preliminary Discussion of Russian Émigré Materials atthe Library of Congress, Slavic & East European Information Resources, 14:1, 72-91
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FIGURE 1 From 6 litografii Goncharovoi k stikham Churilina [Six lithographs by NataliiaGoncharova for poems by Tikhon Churilin]. Moscow: Kushnerev & Co., 1912. (Prints &Photographs Division, Library of Congress).
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Slavic & East European Information Resources, 14:72–91, 2013ISSN: 1522-8886 print/1522-9041 onlineDOI: 10.1080/15228886.2013.763015
A Preliminary Discussion of Russian ÉmigréMaterials at the Library of Congress
BARBARA L. DASHRare Materials Section, Library of Congress, Washington,
District of Columbia, USA
Materials at the Library of Congress (LC) by and about Russianémigrés take every form and are distributed throughout thelibrary’s many custodial divisions, classification schedules, cat-alogs, and Web pages. Identifying and locating these materials,whether in print, archival, or even digital collections, may requirecreative thinking and an understanding of the library’s some-times complex organization. The author attempts here to providea preliminary overview of the library’s Russian émigré collectionsand some guidance for beginning research on these collections.She includes examples as illustrations and inspiration for furtherresearch.
KEYWORDS archives, digital collections, émigré literature,Library of Congress collections, manuscripts, music, prints andphotographs, rare books, Russian diaspora, Russian émigrés, Sovietémigrés, special collections, Vladimir Nabokov papers
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS GENERAL COLLECTIONS ANDTHEIR ORGANIZATION
The sheer size of LC’s Russian collections, estimated to be at least 1.6 millionvolumes, including books and bound volumes of journals and newspapers,1
dictates that a great wealth of LC Russian émigré material can be found in
This article is not subject to US copyright law.A draft of this paper was originally presented on November 17, 2011 at the 43rd Annual
Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies in Washington,DC.
Address correspondence to Barbara L. Dash, Rare Materials Section, Library of Congress,101 Independence Avenue, SE, Washington, DC 20540-4272, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
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the general stacks. Beginning with the acquisition of the Yudin Collection in1906, the library set out to collect Russian subject matter and Russian authorsin a fairly comprehensive way, and throughout the twentieth century manyoriginal works arrived on the shelves in a routine manner, without fanfare.These include Russian and Soviet imprints by authors who later immigratedto the West, as well as works written in exile or immigration. Only nowdo we think of many of these volumes as coveted first editions. So far,no comprehensive effort has been made to identify them. This paper willattempt to acquaint the reader with LC’s divisions and collections, focusingbriefly on some with which the author is more familiar, and to demonstratehow a researcher might begin to isolate or quantify Russian émigré materialsamong the Library’s collections.
Russian holdings in the Library of Congress general collections are avast and little explored territory, and within this territory Russian émigréholdings are only very partially mapped or charted. Literature is one exam-ple. The Library of Congress Classification Schedules provide a separatearea for “Russian literature outside the Russian Federation” (PG3515 throughPG3550), but to date only about 900 titles, both general works about Russianémigré literature and the works of individual Russian émigré authors, havebeen classified there. In practice, the majority of Russian émigré works at LChave been classified, and so reside on the shelves, with all other works byor about Russian authors.2
This means that, for the most part, to find the works of émigré authors,one would have to determine who is an émigré and search each name indi-vidually. For some very prominent literary figures who have published inboth Russian and English, their Russian works are classified and shelvedunder a Russian literature call number (not a call number for “Russian lit-erature outside the Russian Federation”), and their English-language worksare classified with English or American literature. The works of VladimirNabokov and Joseph Brodsky are examples. To find other names, one couldemploy the major bibliographies that have emerged for this field, for exam-ple, by Ludmila Foster3 and David Arans.4 In his several articles in Solanusabout Russian émigré bibliography, Mark Kulikowski has described manyother recent Russian and Western publications that would contribute to thisend.5 Approached in parts, the task might not be so onerous.
This approach may be needed for children’s authors and illustrators aswell. Although the Library of Congress classifies many works of “juvenilebelles lettres” under the numbers PZ61 to PZ68, works by “noted authorsin foreign languages” are to be classified, and so shelved, with the author’sother prose or poetry.6
Another approach might be to search the LC online catalog7 for a placeof publication using the Russian form of the foreign place name, for example,Kharbin [Harbin] or Parizh [Paris].8 But for large numbers of foreign-language titles in our retrospective catalogs, the place of publication andthe publisher’s name are as yet absent from the online bibliographic record.
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A Preliminary Discussion of Russian Émigré Materials 75
In the LC Classification Schedules for Russian history in general (classletters DK), a number is set aside for “Russians in foreign countries” (DK35.5).There are at the moment (September 10, 2012) one hundred titles classifiedunder DK35.5, mostly general works about Russian émigrés and emigrationfrom all periods of Russian and Soviet history. A note in the classifica-tion schedule reads, “For Russians in a particular country, see the country.”Entries in the index of the Classification Schedule provide specific numbersfor “Russians in Armenia,” “Russians in Belgium,” “Russians in Germany,”and so on.
Other subject searches that may turn up works of interest include“Russian imprints–Foreign countries”; the subject terms Russia or Russianlimited to the holdings of a particular LC location such as Local History &Genealogy; the adjectival phrase Russian-American; or the subject head-ing Russian Americans. The classification number set aside for the subjectheading Russian Americans is E184.R9, which is found in the classifica-tion schedule for United States history. One of the 115 titles currently listedthere is for the electronic resource Russian America, a news portal aimed atRussians living in the US; the site has links to similar resources in individualUS cities and in Russia and other countries.
In the Russian history schedule under “Soviet regime, 1918–1991,” aclassification number is given for “Émigrés” (DK269). A search of LC’sonline catalog under DK269 yields, at the moment, 117 bibliographicrecords for works in Russian, English, French, German, and Chinese.They include LC’s collection of 483 microfilm reels of “Soviet and Russianémigré periodicals, 1917–1948”; the journal Volia/Freedom/Freiheit/Liberté,published in Munich beginning in 1952 by the Union of Former SovietPolitical Prisoners; Mushketer [Musketeer], a journal published in Harbinand San Francisco in the 1920s and 30s by Russian royalists; Soviet émi-gré memoirs; a 1930 work published in Paris by Zinaida Gippius aboutthe Russian diaspora (Chto dielat’ russkoi emigratsii [What the Russianemigration should do]); sociological studies about Russian émigrés andtheir children in Europe; and a variety of both pro- and anti-Bolsheviktreatises.
As another example, some publications associated with the HebrewImmigrant Aid Society (HIAS), which was founded by Russian Jewish immi-grants in New York in 1881 and which figured so prominently in the migra-tion especially of Soviet Jews in the 1970s, can be found under call numberE184; “American History. United States. Elements in the Population.” In addi-tion to Jews (E184.37), classification number E184 includes Azerbaijanis,Georgians, and other members of former Russian and Soviet geographicareas of influence. But the annual report of HIAS remains under theold classification number for “Political Science. Colonies and Colonization.Emigration and Immigration. Immigration. By ethnic group,” JV6348. Thepoint is, to find materials relating specifically to HIAS, one does best tosearch under the name of the organization.
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SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
This section will provide just a sampling of the immense and immensely var-ied special collections at the Library of Congress, again focusing on severalareas with which the author is more familiar. The Library of Congress homepage, http://www.loc.gov/index.html, provides portals to all areas of specialinterest within the library’s collections. The Web pages for the individualdivisions and reading rooms offer overviews, guidelines for research, linksto finding aids and digital resources, and means for contacting librarians ineach of those locations.
Rare Books and Artists’ Books
Contemplating rare Russian émigré works at the Library of Congress, onethinks first of Natalia Goncharova (1881–1962). The Library of Congressholds a wonderfully representative body of Goncharova’s book illustrationboth before and after her emigration in 1915 from Moscow to Paris, withexamples of her experiments in folk art, Rayonism, Russian Futurism, typedesign, French Impressionism, and vivid pochoir [color stencil] printing. Mostof these works are in the Rare Book & Special Collections Division, butsome pieces reside in the Prints & Photographs Division and the generalcollections. (See Figures 1 and 2.)
FIGURE 2 From 6 litografii Goncharovoi k stikham Churilina [Six lithographs by NataliiaGoncharova for poems by Tikhon Churilin]. Moscow: Kushnerev & Co., 1912. (Prints &Photographs Division, Library of Congress).
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A Preliminary Discussion of Russian Émigré Materials 77
Represented in the Rare Book & Special Collections Division are worksof another prominent member of the Russian avant-garde in Paris, Iliazd (IliaZdanevich, 1894–1975). These include an experiment in zaum’ [transrationalsound poetry] and collaborations with Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, andAlberto Giacometti.9 Also from this period are the works of Russian émigréSerge Charchoune (Sergei Sharshun, 1888–1975), a close associate in Paris ofMan Ray and Marcel Duchamp. The division has two artists’ books illustratedwith Charchoune’s striking woodcuts, Panorama général (poèmes inédits dePierre Lecuire) [unpublished poems by Pierre Lecuire]; 11 bois en couleursde Serge Charchoune [11 wood-blocks in color by Serge Charchoune](Paris, 1963), and Abracadabra: de signes, lettres, billets, triangles magiques,messages musicaux, écritures imaginaires, sphynx et serpents graphiques, sil-houettes et signatures du peintre Serge Charchoune, adressés à Pierre Lecuire[Abracadabra: signs, letters, tickets, magic triangles, musical messages, imag-inary writings, graphic sphinxes and serpents, silhouettes and signatures ofthe painter Serge Charchoune, addressed to Pierre Lecuire] (Paris, 1971).
The Rare Book Division has just purchased its fourth artist’s book by aninteresting émigré artist of the Third Wave, Mikhail Magaril (see Figure 3).Magaril’s books include illustrations for Nikolai Gogol and Oscar Wilde and acollaboration with New York printer Russell Maret on an illustrated edition ofthe children’s Passover song, “Had Gadya.”10 (With the latter work, Magarilpossibly was following in El Lissitzky’s footsteps.)
(a) (b)
FIGURE 3 Color lithographs from an artist’s book by Mikhail Magaril, Lenin na Okhote [Leninhunting]. New York: Mikhail Magaril, 2008. (Rare Book & Special Collections Division, Libraryof Congress). Photographs courtesy of the artist, reproduced by permission. (Color figureavailable online.)
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Russian émigré literature so far is represented unevenly in LC’s rare bookcollection. The collection includes seventeen works by Vladimir Nabokov(some are early works published in Berlin or Paris under the surname Sirin)and ten by Joseph Brodsky,11 but few by émigré authors less well knownoutside of Russian literary circles. Some works by Russian émigré authorsand illustrators may be discovered in the Children’s Literature Center, whichis part of the Rare Book & Special Collections Division. Other children’sbooks are housed in the general rare book stacks.
THE MANUSCRIPT DIVISION AND THE MUSIC ANDPERFORMING ARTS DIVISION
Original and in many cases unique Russian émigré-related materials arefound in LC’s Manuscript Division and in the Music and Performing ArtsDivision. Both divisions hold manuscript materials, typescripts, proofs, corre-spondence, and other ephemera, as well as photographs and original artworkassociated with particular collections.
The Manuscript Division
In 1959, Vladimir Nabokov gave his papers, comprising 7,000 items, tothe Library of Congress with the stipulation that they not be made avail-able to the public for fifty years. In 2009 LC opened Nabokov’s archive tothe public, and the Manuscript Division published a 21-page finding aid(“Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov Papers, 1918–1974,” http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/eadmss.ms009086) for Nabokov’s gift. Nabokov’s papers includecorrespondence with other prominent Russian émigré authors, includingAldanov, Bunin, Khodasevich, and even Rachmaninoff. (Figure 4 showsadditional manuscript material from Nabokov’s papers.)
Additional materials relating to Nabokov can be found in at least twoother archival collections in the Manuscript Division, the papers of WilliamMcGuire, an editor for the Bollingen Series, and the Bollingen FoundationRecords.
Additional background on the Nabokov Archive and on LC’s holdings ofthe papers of author Ayn Rand, actress Alla Nazimova, author and philoso-pher Hannah Arendt, and others is available at the reference desk in theManuscript Reading Room in a paper by Alice Birney, “Sharing Literary andCultural Manuscripts from the Library of Congress: Nazimova, Nabokov, andRand Return to Russia.”12
Examples of other Manuscript Division holdings are the records of thePoushkin Society in America (3,000 items); records of the Russian émigréliterary journal Vozdushnye puti [Airways], 1923–1967 (1,500 items includingannotated sheet music and photographs); the papers of Russian émigré art
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historian and theater critic Lydia Nadejena (2,450 items); American journalistNicholas Daniloff’s gift of the Russian-language memoir by his grandfather,General Iurii Danilov, deputy chief of the Russian General Staff from 1900 to1915; and the papers of former KGB operative Alexander Vassiliev, given toLC in 2009 (50 items).
Also in the Manuscript Division, archival materials relating to the life andwork of Alexander Solzhenitsyn are included in the records of the Am-RusLiterary Agency (the literary agency for Soviet writers seeking publication ortheatrical production in the US). Other Solzhenitsyn materials are found inthe papers of journalist Hedrick Smith and the papers of US General WilliamE. Odom. These and other Manuscript Division finding aids are available athttp://www.loc.gov/rr/mss/f-aids/mssfa.html.
Important in the history of LC’s Russian collections are the papers ofAlexis Babine (1866–1930), the LC staffer who was so central to the acqui-sition of the 80,000-volume Yudin Collection. Babine’s book on the YudinLibrary13 was for decades the only published source on LC’s founding Russiancollection. Himself a Russian émigré, Babine returned to Russia during theRevolution; his papers include the typescript of his eyewitness accounts ofthat period.14
The Music & Performing Arts Division
Some of the brightest gems of LC’s Russian émigré-related collections residein the Music & Performing Arts Division. Perhaps foremost among theseis the Sergei Rachmaninoff Archive, a collection of about 9,000 itemsincluding manuscript and published musical scores, correspondence, concertprograms, photographs, and two film reels (see Figure 5).
A full description of the Sergei Rachmaninoff Archive can be found in thefinding aid, “Sergei Rachmaninoff Archive [collection],” http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.scdb.200033806/default.htm, part of The Performing ArtsEncyclopedia, a guide to performing arts resources at the Library of Congress.The composer’s elegant desk and upholstered chair are on display in LC’sPerforming Arts Reading Room, gifts of the Rachmaninoff family.
Shedding light on the history of the Ballets Russes are several collec-tions acquired through gift or purchase. Prominent among these are theSerge Diaghilev and Serge Lifar Collection (1,350 items) and the SergeGrigoriev/Ballets Russes Archive (1,021 items). (Diaghilev founded theBallets Russes, Lifar was one of its principal dancers, later to work as balletmaster for the Paris Opera Ballet, and Grigoriev worked as rehearsal directorfor Ballets Russes and major ballet companies in London.) Artist, costumeand set designer Leon Bakst (1866–1924) is represented by an autographletter and several other early works in the Music Division as well as by asmall group of papers in the Manuscript Division and an original watercolorin the Prints & Photographs Division. In 2009 the Music Division purchased
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(a)
(c)
(b)
FIGURE 5 Sergei Rachmaninoff “in his youth” (1883?); as a young man in Russian garb; withhis wife Nataliia to his left and her sister and brother-in-law, Sofiia Satina and Vladimir Satin.From the Sergei Rachmaninoff Archive, Music & Performing Arts Division, Library of Congress.
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the Ida Rubinstein Collection, almost 7,500 items in French, Russian, andEnglish, including photographs, programs, music manuscripts, libretti, corre-spondence, and original art relating to the Ballets Russes, theatrical design,and the figures surrounding them.
Other music and dance collections are the papers of composer andpianist Victor Babin; the collection of dancer and choreographer AdolphBolm, who worked with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, Ballet Intime, AdolphBolm Ballet, San Francisco Opera, and other major companies; and col-lections of dancer Alexandra Danilova, composer and pianist NikolaiLopatnikoff, and composer and pianist Nikolai Medtner. Conductor SergeKoussevitzky’s archive of 13,000 items was given in part and later willed tothe Library of Congress by his widow.
Remarkable not only for its great size is the Nicolas SlonimskyCollection, comprising 118,600 items and occupying 500 linear feet of shelfspace. The collection chronicles Slonimsky’s work as musicologist, com-poser, conductor, lecturer, and author, and includes a variety of materials,including photographs, relating to other Russian émigré musicians.
The Prints & Photographs Division
The Prints & Photographs Division (P&P) holds original photographic printsor negatives of portraits of Vladimir Horowitz, Vladimir Nabokov, AndreiSakharov, and Alexander Solzehnitsyn, just to name a few. Many of theseportraits are by famous photographers. There are photographic portraits ofMarc Chagall as well as art prints by Chagall. P&P has a copy of a posterand handbill produced by the Union des Artistes Russes [Union of RussianArtists] in 1925 for the Bal de la Grande Ourse [Ball of the Great Bear], acostume ball in Paris. Although the online catalog record presently does notreflect the fact, contributors to the program included Goncharova, Larionov,Rodchenko, Mel’nikov, Picasso, and Leger.15
There are no doubt many other similar works among P&P holdings, butonce again, finding the works of Russian émigrés in most cases requires oneto know what one is looking for. Many items in the Prints & Photographscollections have digital images online that can be found with the help ofWeb addresses provided in catalog records or finding aids. Just one exampleis a 1938 three-quarter-length photograph of George Balanchine with LorenzHart aboard the cruise ship Santa Paula that can be viewed via its P&Pcatalog record at http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3c26708 (from the New YorkWorld-Telegram and Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection).
The Motion Picture, Broadcasting & Recorded Sound Division
It goes without saying that immigrants from the former Russian Empire andSoviet Union were central to the growth of the American music and film
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industries. LC’s collections of film and recorded sound are legion. As a spe-cific example, a fruitful online source is LC’s American Memory CollectionWeb page, “American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment,1870–1920,” http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/vshtml/vshome.html). The fol-lowing paragraphs provide a sense of the scope of the collections of theMotion Picture, Broadcasting & Recorded Sound Division and some meansfor approaching them.
Beginning in 1894, thousands of films were deposited at the Libraryof Congress as still photographs. In 1912, copyright law was extended tomotion pictures, and filmmakers began to submit their work on paper rollsor strips. In 1942, the Library began to collect motion pictures and motionpicture archives actively also through purchase, gift, and exchange. The LCMotion Picture and Television Reading Room Web site (http://www.loc.gov/rr/mopic/mptvrrsub.html) offers by now familiar advice: “Identifying filmsand videos by subject requires a variety of strategies, such as keywordsearching of our various databases and manual card files (including LC’sonline catalog) and compiling title lists from secondary reference sources.Since our staff cannot perform this time-consuming subject research forarchival/stock footage requests, a personal visit to the Library is oftenrequired. Another option is to hire a freelance researcher. A list of free-lance researchers in the Washington, DC area is available upon request.” Butthe site also provides lists of online reference sources (http://www.loc.gov/rr/mopic/findaid/mpfind.html), including finding aids, bibliographies, andguides to films and television archives.
According to the Library of Congress Recorded Sound ReferenceCenter’s Web site (http://www.loc.gov/rr/record/rechome.html), “theLibrary’s audio collections are now the largest in the United States andamong the most comprehensive in the world . . . Recordings represent over110 years of sound recording history in nearly every sound recording for-mat and cover a wide range of subjects and genres in considerable depthand breadth. The collection includes over 500,000 LPs; 450,000 78-rpm discs;over 500,000 unpublished discs; 200,000 compact discs; 175,000 tape reels;150,000 45-rpm discs; and 75,000 cassettes. Among the unusual formats inthe collection are wires, instantaneous discs, cylinders, music box discs, rolls,bands, dictabelts, and Memovox discs. The collection incudes most musicalgenres with particular strength in opera, chamber music, folk, jazz, musicaltheater, popular, and classical. LC’s collection contains more radio broadcasts(over .5 million) than any other library or archive in the United States.” Arelatively new source available on the LC Web site is the National Jukebox(http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/), an electronic resource that “makes histori-cal sound recordings available to the public free of charge.” The NationalJukebox may be searched by keyword, artist, title, genre, label, time period,language, ethnic or national target audience, and combinations of the above,or recordings may be browsed by most of the same categories.
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Other LC Special Collections
The Web pages of LC’s American Memory Collection (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html) include a link to a section entitled “Immigration,American Expansion.” At the time of this writing, a search in that immigrationsection for the keyword Russian yields 109 hits (http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query). Activities of Russian émigrés also are chronicled in the holdings,both tangible and electronic, of LC’s Veterans’ History Project (http://www.loc.gov/vets/) and of the Science, Technology & Business Division (http://www.loc.gov/topics/science.php), which includes both historical and cur-rent materials on aviation, industry, transportation, and all areas of science.
It is worth noting that rare materials in languages that use Middle Easternalphabets are held in the African and Middle Eastern Division. There onecan find a copy of Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovichin Yiddish (Eyn tog in lebn fun Ivan Denisovitsh) as well as publicationsrelating to the experiences of Russian Jews and the Russian Jewish diaspora.Materials in Turkic, Transcaucasian, and Central Asian languages are locatedthere. The Asian Division has custody of rare materials in Asian languages orsometimes materials published in Asia in other languages.
The staff of Library of Congress area studies, special collections, and spe-cial programs offices may offer insights into the activities of Russian émigréauthors who have been associated with the library. For example, LC’s Poetryand Literature Center has retained press releases and other materials relatingto public events that featured Joseph Brodsky, who served at the Library ofCongress as US poet laureate from 1991 to 1992 (see Figure 6). Although
FIGURE 6 Joseph Brodsky at the time of his appointment as United States poet laure-ate. Photo by Reid Baker. Courtesy of the Poetry and Literature Center, Office of ScholarlyPrograms, Library of Congress.
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their Brodsky archive is small, Poetry Center staff hope over the next severalyears to complete LC’s holdings of all of Brodsky’s published works.
OTHER RESOURCES AND OTHER MEDIA
Among the greatest treasures of the Library of Congress are its reference staffand specialized reference collections. The European Division, the branch ofthe Library with responsibility for most Russian-related questions, is wealthyin both regards. The European Division maintains an impressive referencecollection, including some recent sets of biographical dictionaries relating toRussian émigré authors and artists. The Local History & Genealogy Division(LH&G) is another weighty resource. LH&G’s holdings include passengerlists, all manner of local history catalogs, and rare family and county historiessometimes given to the library as gifts. (See, for example, the division’s page,“Immigrant Arrivals: A Guide to Published Sources,” http://www.loc.gov/rr/genealogy/bib_guid/immigrant/.)
Increasingly, Library of Congress treasures are on display on the library’sWeb pages. The Meeting of Frontiers digital collection, http://international.loc.gov/intldl/mtfhtml/mfhome.html/, presents photographs, maps, news-paper articles, and other ephemera representing the “meeting of theRussian-American frontier in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest,” includ-ing Russian church history in what would become the American frontier.A wealth of material on American immigrants from the Russian Empire andformer Soviet Union can be found in LC’s American Folklife Center Webpages, http://www.loc.gov/folklife/, as well as among the Folklife Center’svast print, manuscript, and recorded sound holdings.
RUSSIAN ÉMIGRÉS AS ADMINISTRATORS AND COLLECTORS
Research in Progress About Library of Congress Émigré Staff
Recently a young Russian researcher, Evgenii Pivovarov, has brought atten-tion to the contributions made by Russian (and Ukrainian) émigrés whoworked over the years as Library of Congress administrators or curatorsof the Russian collections. Several of these were prominent cultural fig-ures in their day. As a group, they helped to shape collection developmentpolicies or at least influenced the collection of Russian materials at theLibrary. In addition to Alexis Babine, influential émigré Library staff includedMichael Vinokouroff, Tatiana Fessenko, and Sergius Yakobson. A search ofthe LC online catalog will reveal their varied contributions and provide fur-ther resources on Russian émigré literature and bibliography. Pivovarov iscontinuing his research into the legacy of these and other figures, and welook forward to his further publications.16
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Émigrés as Collectors
The Library of Congress has been fortunate in recent years to acquire at leasta few important collections assembled by émigrés from the Russian Empireor Soviet Union. These collectors were from very different walks of life andfocused on different subject matter.
In 1999, as part of an initiative to celebrate its 200th anniversary, LCpurchased the Victor Kholodkov Collection of Russian Sheet Music Covers.Victor Kholodkov, educated as a physicist, is now a prominent art and bookdealer in San Diego. While still in Moscow, he had published a series ofarticles on the art of Russian sheet music covers, becoming the pioneer inthis field. In 1989 he published a color-illustrated article on the same topicin the Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts.17 Harold Leich’s brief,illustrated discussion of this collection was included in a recent issue of thepresent journal.18
Mr. Kholodkov’s collection of 2,052 illustrated sheet music covers pub-lished between 1880 and 1930 showcases the work of many leaders ofthe Russian/Soviet avant-garde. These include Mikhail Larionov and otherswho later emigrated. As yet without item-level description, the collection isavailable by appointment in LC’s Prints & Photographs Division.
Oleg Pavlovich Grushnikov, an official at the Soviet and then RussianAcademy of Sciences, was in his private life an expert on Soviet-era children’sliterature and illustration. Personally acquainted with many children’s authorsand illustrators, particularly in Moscow, Grushnikov amassed a collectionof more than 6,000 children’s books. Remarkably, he took the collectionwith him when he immigrated to Israel in the late 1990s, and in Augustof 2000, LC’s bicentennial year, Grushnikov donated the collection to thelibrary. Grushnikov’s books may be requested through the general read-ing rooms. A small exhibition of works from his collection is ongoing inLC’s Children’s Literature Center in the Thomas Jefferson Building. An arti-cle on the Grushnikov Collection appeared in a recent issue of the presentjournal.19
In 2003, the Library of Congress received a bequest from the widow ofRouben Mamoulian, the innovative Broadway and Hollywood director (seeFigure 7). Mamoulian was born in 1897 in Tbilisi, Georgia, where his motherwas director of the Armenian theater. While at the University of Moscow,Mamoulian became a protégé of Evgenii Vakhtangov at the Moscow ArtTheater studio. By the early 1920s, Mamoulian’s directing career took himto London, then the Eastman Theater in New York and the Theater Guild inManhattan. His triumphs included Porgy & Bess, Oklahoma, and Carousel.Later he became an innovator in motion picture technology and a director ofmajor Hollywood films (Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Queen Christina, Golden Boy,and Silk Stockings). Among his close personal and professional associateswere Greta Garbo, George and Ira Gershwin, and William Saroyan.
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The Mamoulian Collection comprises more than 2,100 books in thecustody of the Rare Book & Special Collections Division, many withauthors’ inscriptions, and 59,000 items in the Manuscript Division, includ-ing correspondence, diaries, play and film scripts, production material, andphotographs. The Manuscript Division’s online finding aid for the RoubenMamoulian Papers, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/eadmss.ms010225, is 52 pageslong. Mamoulian’s library includes treasures of Russian history, like the over-sized, lavishly illustrated program for the May 1896 celebration at the BolshoiTheater of the coronation of Nicholas and Alexandra, works on Russian andSoviet theater and film, and works by other Russian émigrés like EugeneLyons and Mark Aldanov.
The Contributions of A. I. Pliguzov
Mostly behind the scenes, Andrei Pliguzov (1956–2011), an émigré for manyof the last years of his life, made important contributions to the work ofthe library, especially to the Law Library of Congress. A scholar of Russianhistory and of printing and publishing, Pliguzov (or simply Andrei, as he wasaffectionately known to many LC staff) noticed in the early 1990s a referenceto early Russian manuscripts and law texts in the holdings of the Libraryof Congress. Andrei traveled from Moscow to Washington and convincedstaff at the Law Library of Congress to allow him to begin several projectsto identify these exceedingly rare materials, which had remained hidden formany years. In a way, he “collected” them for our benefit.
One result was the assembly and cataloging of the 18th-Century RussianLaw Collection, 128 titles including works of Peter the Great and othermonarchs, some in multiple copies, available for use in the Law LibraryReading Room as well as on microfilm. Andrei’s work led also to the identi-fication of a collection of forty-eight Russian manuscript scrolls (call numberKLA134.R87 1628) dating from 1628 to 1750, as well as of original copies oflegal decrees of Catherine the Great (e.g., at call number KLA148.R8714 1748,boxes 2, 3, and 4) and other Russian sovereigns. His research on these mate-rials is reflected in their online catalog records and in finding aids availablein the Law Library of Congress Reading Room.20 Andrei published severalarticles on LC collections in the Library of Congress Information Bulletin.21
His legacy at LC includes also his publications on early Russian history andChurch history and his books of poems in LC general collections, retrievablethrough the LC online catalog under the heading, Pliguzov, A. I.
CONCLUSION
This article is a preliminary attempt to identify Russian émigré treasures atthe Library of Congress and to provide at least a rough map for others to
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A Preliminary Discussion of Russian Émigré Materials 89
follow. In addition to the complexities presented by classification schedules,catalog conversions, and bureaucratic organization, this endeavor is compli-cated by the question, Who is a Russian émigré? Do we count Tsvetaeva,Solzhenitsyn, and Aksenov, who all returned to their homeland, as émi-grés? Another complication, as Angela Cannon has pointed out, is a politicalone. Throughout the Soviet period, the names and works of many Sovietémigrés were eliminated from official records and publications, includingstandard reference works. It is the author’s hope that her readers will helpto answer the questions raised here and to identify the wealth of Russianémigré materials awaiting discovery throughout the Library of Congress.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to thank several LC associates who helped herthink about these questions, led her to materials, or made other sugges-tions: Elizabeth Aldrich, David Arans, Lee Douglas, Natalia Jagannathan,Sybille Jagusch, Phoebe Peacock, Rosemary Plakas, Caitlin Rizzo, and NinaZanegina. Alice Birney, Laura Kells, and Kevin LaVine were especially gener-ous in identifying and making photographs from the Nabokov, Mamoulian,and Rachmaninoff archives available. Angela Cannon was particularly helpfulwith her review of and suggestions for this article. The author offers sincerethanks also to Victor Kholodkov, Mikhail Magaril, and Howard Garfinkel, toHarry Leich and Patricia Polansky, who proposed she join the November2011 ASEEES panel discussion on Russian émigré collections, and to AmirKhisamutdinov, who led the panel. Finally, the author is grateful to SEEIR’seditor, Karen Rondestvedt, and to the reviewers who made many helpfulsuggestions for this article.
NOTES
1. Harold M. (Harry) Leich, Russian area specialist in the Library of Congress European Division,estimates that “LC has about 800,000 print volumes . . . in Russian, and approximately the same numberof print volumes about Russia in other languages, primarily in English, French and German, also in otherlanguages of the former Soviet Union.” See Harold M. Leich, “Librarians of Congress and the RussianCollections of the Library from the 19th Century to the Present Day,” Solanus 22 (2011).
2. Konstantin Bal’mont is an example. The Library of Congress assigned Bal’mont his own classi-fication number, PG3453.B2. Among the eighty-one works listed under Bal’mont as the primary author,thirty-six are editions published during his lifetime either in Russia or abroad.
3. Liudmila A. Foster, Bibliografiia russkoi zarubezhnoi literatury, 1918–1968 = Bibliography ofRussian Émigré Literature, 1918–1968 (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1970).
4. David Arans, How We Lost the Civil War: Bibliography of Russian Émigré Memoirs on the RussianRevolution, 1917–1921 (Newtonville, MA: Oriental Research Partners, 1988); David Arans, Bibliografiiarusskikh knig, izdannykh za predelami SSSR: 1980–1989 [Bibliography of Russian books published out-side the borders of the USSR] (Washington, DC: D. Arans, 1990); and David Arans, Russkie knigi zarubezhom: 1980–1995 [Russian books abroad] (Moscow: Gosudarstvennaia istoricheskaia biblioteka,2001).
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5. Mark Kulikowski, “The Bibliography of Russian Émigré Publications Since 1917: An Update,”Solanus, n.s., 3 (1989): 89–102; Mark Kulikowski, “The Bibliography of Russian Émigré PublicationsSince 1917: An Update,” Solanus, n.s., 9 (1995): 15–23; Mark Kulikowski, “Russian Émigré Bibliography:Another Look,” Solanus, n.s., 14 (2000): 58–67; Mark Kulikowski, “The Tradition Continues: RussianEmigré Bibliography Since 1917,” Solanus, n.s., 17 (2003): 50–57; Mark Kulikowski, “Into the Mainstream:The Bibliography of Russian Émigré Publications Since 1917,” Solanus, n.s., 21 (2007): 76–86. ProfessorKulikowski is working on his next installment.
6. These instructions are provided in the Library of Congress Classification [schedule]: PR, PS, PZ:English and American Literature and Juvenile Belles Lettres. Washington, DC, 2008.
7. You may reach the Library of Congress online catalog at http://catalog.loc.gov/.8. Thanks to Natalia Montviloff for this insight.9. Books in the Rare Book & Special Collections Division illustrated by Iliazd include Lidantiu
faram (Paris, 1923); Poésie de mots inconnus [Poetry of unknown words] (Paris, 1949), in the Lessing J.Rosenwald Collection; Pablo Picasso and Iliazd, Le Frère mendicant, o, Libro del conocimiento . . . [Themendicant brother, or, The book of knowledge] (Paris, 1959); Prigovor bezmolvnyi [Silent sentence] (Paris,1961), cover by Georges Braque and portrait of Iliazd by Alberto Giacometti; Rogelio Lacourière pe cheurde cuivres [Rogelio Lacourière, brass fisherman], with Pablo Picasso, Aux quatre coins de la piece [In thefour corners of the room] (Paris, 1968); and Pirosmanachvili, 1914 with a drypoint by Pablo Picasso(Paris, 1972).
10. Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince, preface by Morris Jacobs, illustrated by Mikhail Magaril(New York?, 1997); Nikolai Gogol, The Diary of a Madman, illustrated by Mikhail Magaril (New York,1998); An Only Kid, monoprints by Mikhail Magaril (New York, 1998).
11. The Rare Book & Special Collections Division plans to increase its holdings of works by JosephBrodsky because of his tenure as poet laureate in 1991–1992.
12. Alice Lotvin Birney, “Sharing Literary and Cultural Manuscripts from the Library of Congress:Nazimova, Nabokov, and Rand Return to Russia,” undelivered State Department lecture, 2003, ReferenceDesk, Manuscript Reading Room, Library of Congress.
13. Alexis Vasilevich Babine, The Yudin Library, Krasnoiarsk (Eastern Siberia) (Washington, DC:[Press of Judd and Detweiler], 1905).
14. An article by Evgenii [here Eugene] Pivovarov devoted to Babine’s biography and bibliographyis available on LC’s European Division Web site: Eugene G. Pivovarov, “Alexis Babine at the Libraryof Congress,” http://www.loc.gov/rr/european/babine/bhome.html, and includes the container list forBabine’s papers in the Manuscript Division. Pivovarov is also the author of a biography of Babine: E. G.Pivovarov, A. V. Babin, 1866–1930 gg. (Saint Petersburg: Petropolis, 2002). Babine’s Revolutionary-eraexperiences are the topic of Alexis Vasilevich Babine, A Russian Civil War Diary: Alexis Babine in Saratov,1917–1922, ed. Donald J. Raleigh (Durham: Duke University Press, 1988). LC’s general collections holdas well a four-page typescript obituary for Babine by Frederick E. Brasch, “A.V. Babine, 1866–1930.” (Seealso Eugene Pivovarov, “Alexis V. Babine in the Library of Congress,” Slavic & East European InformationResources 3, no. 1 [2002], 59–68, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J167v03n01_06.—Ed.)
15. Union des Artistes Russes: Lazar Volovick, Serge Fotinsky, Pablo Picasso, Nataliia Goncharova,Mikhail Larionov, Fernand Léger, David Shterenberg, Marc Sterling, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Marie Vassilieff,Henri Laurens, Konstantin Mel’nikov, Alexandre Frenkel, Isaak Rabinovitch.
16. See E. G. Pivovarov, “Elektronnye resursy po istorii russkoi emigratsii na ofitsial’nom saiteBiblioteki Kongressa SSHA” [Electronic resources on the history of the Russian emigration on the officialsite of the Library of Congress of the USA], Berega: informatsionno-analiticheskii sbornik o ‘RusskomZarubezh’e,’ 3 (2004): 37; E. G. Pivovarov, Formirovanie kollektsii slavianskikh materialov BibliotekiKongressa SShA: 1800–1933 gg. [Formation of the Slavic materials collection of the Library of Congress ofthe USA: 1800–1933] (Saint Petersburg: Nestor-Istoriia, 2005).
17. Viktor Kholodkov, “The Art of Music Cover Design,” Journal of Decorative and PropagandaArts 11, Russian/Soviet Theme Issue 2 (Winter 1989): 68–91. The article is available also via JSTOR.
18. Harold M. Leich, “Illustrated Collections of Russian Satirical and Political Periodicals, and MusicCover Designs at the Library of Congress: An Overview,” Slavic & East European Information Resources11, no. 2/3 (2010): 142–155.
19. Barbara L. Dash, “The Grushnikov Collection at the Library of Congress,” Slavic & East EuropeanInformation Resources 11, no. 2/3 (2010): 110–119.
20. Andrei Pliguzov, “Eighteenth-Century Russian Imperial Decrees in the Law Library of Congress:A Finding Aid”; Andrei Pliguzov and Viacheslav Kozliakov, “Russian Manuscript Material in the Law
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Library of Congress”; “The Collection of Manuscript Scrolls and other Early Russian Materials in the LawLibrary of Congress.” The original Russian articles by Pliguzov and Kozliakov were published in Russia:“Kollektsiia rukopisnykh stolbtsov i drugie rannie russkie materialy v sobranii IUridicheskogo OtdelaBiblioteki Kongressa SSHA [The Collection of Manuscript Scrolls and other Early Russian Materials inthe Law Library of Congress of the USA],” Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik, 1998; “Russkie rukopisnyeknigi v IUridicheskoi Biblioteke Kongressa” [Russian Manuscript Material in the Law Library of Congress],Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik, 1999.
21. Andrei Pliguzov and Abby Smith, “Nicholas and Alexandra: Unpublished Romanov DocumentsAre in LC’s Law Library,” Library of Congress Information Bulletin 55, no. 2 (Feb. 5, 1996): 26–29; A.Pliguzov, “Kolchak’s Last Stand: Papers Describe Death of Anti-Bolshevik Leader,” Library of CongressInformation Bulletin 55, no. 3 (Feb. 19, 1996): 54–55; A. Pliguzov, “The Bolsheviks in Business: TheRussian Book Trade after the Revolution,” Library of Congress Information Bulletin 55, no. 5 (Mar. 18,1996): 102–103; A. Pliguzov and Barbara Dash, “18th Century Russian Books in the Law Library ofCongress,” Library of Congress Information Bulletin 59, no. 1 (Mar. 2000): 70–72.
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