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established lending libraries, the best-known among them
being Jakob Ploompuu in 1905. Until the end of the czarist
state another five were founded. Among them the big library
founded in 1917 at Taavet Mutso’s bookshop. It can’t be said
that the establishment of TLMAR led to the commercial
libraries dying out. There was enough work for everyone.
Moving over to libraries aspiring to educational goals –
they were called public – it must be said that the city council
rejected them completely. Perhaps the council thought that
the Estonian Public Library sufficed without looking into
what had become of it. But alongside the city council’s
rejection one must consider the public libraries’ legal position.
Men of commerce and societies with educational aims alike
received permits for their activities from the governor, but
for the latter additional conditions were established in 1884:
the library needed a set of statutes (this had to be confirmed
by the interior ministry), it had to have board of governors
(of which the provincial grammar school director had to be
a member), it had to have a guarantor (whose loyalty to the
state was to be confirmed by the gendarmerie). For public
libraries the list of banned books was still enforced. This
meant that one could buy a book passed by the censors in
the bookshops but it might still have been banned in the
library.
In 1890 the interior ministry divided libraries with
educational aims into two categories. The first included
those that were fee-paying (called public), the second those
that took no fee or asked for a small symbolic fee (up to
1 ruble a year). These were called people’s libraries and
the approved book lists were in force for them – if a book
wasn’t in the approved book list, it wasn’t permitted in the
people’s library. (The approved book lists were also enforced
in school libraries, a different one for every level.)
If the inspectors (police) found a banned book in a public
library, there was trouble. If they found a book not on the
approved list in a people’s library, there was again a lot of
trouble – the library was closed down, and the guarantor
had to answer for it with a heavy fine. So at a time when
the establishment of self-administrating libraries with
educational aims was spreading in Western Europe and
particularly the USA, things were going in the other
direction in Russia, where obstructions were being put up.
The purpose of the obstructions was clear to everybody: a
person who was rich or well-to-do could buy in a bookshop,
what the censor didn’t approve. Whoever was not very
well-to-do but still managed to pay 10–15 ruble annual
fee to the public library encountered the second step of
censorship. Those who wanted education but were poor
saw only what those in power regarded as useful to them in
the people’s library. The state had no fear of the rich; a rich
man could even buy Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital” (a Russian
translation appeared in 1872 and cost 3 rubles). A citizen
thirsty for knowledge didn’t find this in the public library (it
was banned), and in the people’s library there was no point
in even asking as it wasn’t on the approved list. Among the
banned books were those that the liberal Russian press was
so proud of (A. Herzen, N. Tshernõshevski and others),
among the approved books were those that can only make
a lover of literature feel ashamed – little booklets praising
the czar, the Orthodox Church and the fatherland. In the
middle of the 1890s only a small fraction was allowed of
Russian literature.
Did the system of banned and approved books, which
was intended for the whole of Russia, exist here under “the
special Baltic regime”? It did indeed, for the Russification
of administrative institutions, courts, schools and the police
begun in the middle of the 1880s ended the special regime,
and the amendment of the public library law in 1884
was like a free supplement to Alexander IIIs well known
Russification campaign. True, there was no list of German,
French and banned books, but all such literature was subject
to a