Мир Книги

In 1928, during the days when the eleventh anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution was celebrated, A.V. Lunacharsky recalled how he met Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in the noisy corridors of Smolny. Vladimir Ilyich called the People's Commissar of Education to him: “I need to tell you two words, Anatoly Vasilyevich.” Well, I don’t have time now to give you all kinds of instructions regarding your new responsibilities, and I can’t say that I have any completely thought-out system of thoughts regarding the first steps of the revolution in the educational cause. It is clear that a lot will have to be completely turned upside down, redrawn, and put on new paths. Lenin talked about the need to expand access to higher educational institutions and attract proletarian youth there. And then the conversation turned to books and libraries. “The book is a huge force,” said Vladimir Ilyich, “The desire for it will greatly increase as a result of the revolution.” It is necessary to provide the reader with large reading rooms and the mobility of the book, which should reach the reader on its own. We will have to use mail for this, arrange all sorts of forms of movement. For the entire population of our people, in which the number of literate people begins to grow, we will probably not have enough books, and if we do not make the book flyable and do not increase its circulation many times over, then we will have a book famine. Lunacharsky finished his story like this: “Vladimir Ilyich shook my hand firmly and with his confident, quick gait walked into one of the then numerous offices, where new thoughts and a new will of the newly born proletarian state were swarming and being built.” A book is a huge force. In these capacious Leninist words there is recognition of the great role that the printed word has played in the history of human society. And - care that the book is used in the interests of the working people.