The State-Oriented Soviet Model of Library Support for Communication between Science and Society

Abstract

It is devoted to the history of the formation of the activities of Soviet libraries on communication between society and science. It is proposed to single out the state-oriented service model, which was formed in Soviet times as a tool of social management through political and scientific and technical education. The goals of the enlightenment were to involve the population in the construction of a new socialist society, industrial in nature. Technologically, this was realized during the library reading of specially selected scientific and popular science literature. This reading is of a controlled nature.
The formation of the model began in 1920. In its development, it went through three stages: formation (1920–1940), heyday (1950–1970s) and extinction, which occurred in the late 1980s – early 1990s. Its theoretical and methodological basis was the works by V. I. Lenin and N. K. Krupskaya. It is concluded that the Soviet model of the organization of library communication between science and society was 1) vertical, systematic and directive in nature, providing, on the one hand, the formation of a natural-scientific materialistic worldview, coupled with the propaganda of Soviet science and its achievements, on the other hand, countering “pseudoscience” and religious worldview; 2) effective in the fight against illiteracy and initial political and natural-scientific (scientific and technical) education. The achievement of a higher level of development by Soviet readers in the second half of 1970–1980 showed that this model gradually exhausted its potential. This, in turn, required the development of new forms of library management and library reading management technologies aimed at a well-educated and active reader. The beginning of the reform took place in the 1990s.