Collection “Book. Research and Materials” and the Study of the Reading History in 1959–1991 in Russia. Part 1

The historiographical tradition of studying reading in Russia started in 1890s and was interrupted in 1930s. When book studies got the status of a scientific discipline in the late 1950s, this issue appeared on the pages of professional collections and periodicals. That’s why the reactualization of scientific heritage is of heuristic value. Thanks to the sources introduced into scientific circulation, the developed methods for their interpretation, it is necessary to develop directions for future research. The article provides a quantitative and qualitative analysis of publications in the collections “Book. Research and materials” in 1959–1991, devoted to the history of reading. Using statistical and analytical methods it identifies the main subject fields and vectors of research. The historiographical review of the materials in the mentioned collections with the rationale for their periodization has been previously made. The novelty of this study lies in the choice of the subject matter – the history of reading in Russia. Of 1 193 articles in 63 collections 354 (30 %) ones have been selected for analysis on the research topic. The results show the great attention of Russian book critics to the “external history of reading” (56 % are articles on publishing houses, circulations, subscribers, and prices of printed products), and they are less interested in the “internal history of reading” (29 % are individual readers’ biographies and practices of political and cultural figures). The interest in the topic was not linear, it had a polynomial trend line. The topic chosen for the analysis has revealed the confrontation between Moscow and Leningrad schools of book studies. In the main collection of Soviet book critics, theoretical debates on the methodology of studying reading have not lead to the development of a unified concept.

The results of the study are presented in two parts. The first one provides the ideology of the research, general quantitative data and analysis of articles on the methodology of reading studies. The second one (it will be published in the next issue) describes reading practices and materials with reference to information and facts on readership, circulation, costs, etc., as well as general conclusions. They can be used in the future, since the history of reading is a promising area for studying book communicative function and its role in the history of culture.

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