GENESIS AND FEATURES OF THE FUNCTIONING OF ILLEGAL LIBRARIES IN UKRAINE: HISTORICAL AND SOCIO-POLITICAL FACTORS OF ACTIVITY
Authors: Sokolov V. Yu. 
Published: July 2021

Victor Sokolov’s article «Genesis and features of the functioning of illegal libraries in Ukraine: historical and socio-political factors» examined the peculiarities of formation, characteristics and peculiarities of illegal libraries, as well as socio-political factors, social conditions and main directions of these collections, mainly in Ukraine. The purpose of the proposed article is to identify and study the characteristics of illegal libraries, study their types, analysis and generalization of information about the peculiarities of the creation and operation of these collections in Ukraine, as well as characteristics of the main forms and directions of their activities. In his work, the author widely used general scientific and historical research methods: comparisons, analogies, deductions, descriptive, analytical, typological methods, as well as historical-comparative, historical-genetic and other methods of scientific research. The author proved that the most developed were the illegal libraries of political organizations and circles, which collected literature from various fields of knowledge, but most of them were publications in the social sciences (history, philosophy, sociology, etc.). Many illegal libraries, including marxist organizations and circles, were interconnected in centralized systems. In terms of the number of books, the funds of some illegal libraries of political organizations can be compared with the funds of public, church-parish, county and township libraries. However, most of them had up to 300 books. However, their activities had a certain impact on the socio-political life of society, on the formation of consciousness, cultural and educational level, mostly, the lower strata of the population. It was found that in the context of police persecution, «employees» of illegal libraries quickly adapted to new circumstances and needs of readers and often changed the forms, methods, principles of work in order to steadily pursue the main line of these collections – to disseminate certain ideas and principles of public life. Illegal libraries often operated under the guise of self-education, literary and artistic, public, women’s, family and leisure, educational and other societies and clubs. In general, they were characterized by the presence of almost all organizational and structural subsystems that had official public libraries: they had a fund of various types of documents, a catalog, a contingent of readers, facilities, library staff and documentation. In illegal libraries, for the first time, active forms and methods of book promotion were born, which were used and researched during communication with users of book collections, whose reading needs were also periodically studied. It was found that illegal libraries, including political organizations and circles, performed both educational and ideological tasks, and organizational (they became organizational centers of political struggle, in particular the premises of illegal libraries were a place of appearances, a point of agitation and propaganda, storage of revolutionary literature, etc.). A study of the history of illegal libraries, in particular, political organizations, educational and cultural-educational societies, proves that certain democratic, progressive elements of library development were formed in their activities, some of which were inherited and developed by domestic library science and practice.