N a Rubakin is a writer and bibliographer. Rubakin Nikolai Alexandrovich. See what "Rubakin Nikolai Aleksandrovich" is in other dictionaries

Introduction

Alexander Nikolaevich Rubakin dedicated his book "Rubakin (Pilot of the Book Sea)" to his father Nikolai Alexandrovich Rubakin. The name of Rubakin at the present time says little to anyone, but then (1890 - 1900) this great talent, who often fought with censorship, was a slogan for writers who worked for the people. In 1962, the centenary of his birth was celebrated in the USSR, and all major newspapers and magazines in Moscow, Leningrad, and a number of cities in the USSR celebrated this date in one way or another. Rubakin was not forgotten, and even young people who did not know anything about him became interested in the man who worked most for the youth and whose books young people read for many decades before the revolution, whose books were destroyed by tsarist censorship.

People who knew Nikolai Alexandrovich Rubakin closely say that he was a very modest and quiet person. Old-fashioned, old-fashioned pedantic, outwardly all from the last century. For several decades, the inhabitants of the small Swiss town of Clarans every day, at the same hours, with a condescending smile, watched how a thick-set, well-knit old man with a flowing beard descends from a high hill to Lake Geneva for a walk. Merchants, owners of large and small workshops, shops and shops, hotels and cafes, people frozen in their arrogant well-being and disgust for anyone who does not look like them, forgave this man for his strange appearance, his wide-brimmed crumpled hat, black lionfish, even galoshes... After all, every city should have its own eccentric, and for the Clarans Rubakin was just such a quiet and harmless eccentric, a city landmark. They were of little interest: who is this Russian, what is he doing? They knew that the old man was famous for something, that he was the director of some international institute, that he had many honorary titles. They tolerated him, and they were not even annoyed by the fact that Rubakin, in whose eyes several generations of Klarans had grown up, spoke French with an unbearable Russian accent.

1. Biography and activities of N.A. Rubakin
On July 13, 1862, a son was born to the Oranienbaum merchant Alexander Rubakin, who was to live 84 years, which included the most intense and significant years in the history of mankind. Rubakin did not leave memoirs behind him - he had no time to write them. And he had something to remember! Whom only did not know, with whom only this former "merchant's son" did not communicate! Lenin and Plekhanov, Tolstoy and Rolland, Krasin and Lunacharsky, Plehve and Azef... Whatever secluded mountain the prophet of self-education chose to compose and send out the commandments of his faith there, this mountain was constantly washed by the stormy streams of great events. But Rubakin's childhood would have been hard to guess.

Rubakin began to collect books, still unable to read. At the age of eleven, he remade the notorious "Rocambole" into a play, at the age of twelve he composed an adventure novel and the play "Neither this nor that", at the age of thirteen he began to publish his own handwritten magazine "Strela", at the age of sixteen he published his first article in "Children's Reading" and received the first fee - 16 rubles.

Rubakin's abilities were brilliant. He studied at the natural faculty of St. Petersburg University, studied physiology with great enthusiasm, and was engaged in the same student scientific circle with Alexander Ulyanov. University graduated with honors. He loved the natural sciences and at the same time attended all the lectures at the historical-philological and law faculties. No, he did not scatter, he was not at all what in contemporary literature was called "carried away by nature." An unbridled desire for knowledge, and even more so for transferring it to people, in him perfectly combined with business acumen and merchant practicality in everything related to his favorite business. While still a student, Rubakin was an established educator and saw his vocation in this. He imagined extensive pedagogical activity, mass libraries, versatile courses, evening schools... As expected, reality made significant amendments to this plan.

Rubakin was more than indifferent to both academic and official careers. He had his own business, and in it he could rely only on his own strength. True, these forces were many. On Bolshaya Podyacheskaya Street in St. Petersburg, he opens his private "public" library. Rubakin based it on 6,000 books from his mother's library. Ten years later, there were 115 thousand in it. Only Rubakin's iron health could withstand the work that he took upon himself in order to have money to replenish his library! Rubakin wrote dozens of articles, edited books, kept proofreading books from various publishing houses, and was in charge of publishing popular science books in the firms of O. Popova, I. Sytin, and Gershunin. It was then that he developed the habit of starting work at five o'clock in the morning, a habit that he retained until the last day of his life.

Rubakin's library became the base for those very Sunday workers' schools that gave the revolutionary working-class movement its first worker-agitators, the first worker-Marxists. For them, Rubakin selected textbooks, progressive scientific literature, and illegal publications. For them, he, along with E.D. Stasova organized the first Museum of visual aids in Russia at the library. Rubakin's library, naturally, became a meeting place for revolutionaries, a place from where illegality spread throughout the outskirts of St. Petersburg. All this was done with the knowledge of the library owner and with his active participation. Rubakin himself was able to write a leaflet, distribute an illegal publication, and carry out a risky secret assignment.

And yet Rubakin was not a revolutionary and did not become one, just as he did not become an ordinary enlightener, acting "within the framework of the existing system." It was during this period of his life that the conviction developed in him that he had found the very link, grabbing onto which it was possible to break the chains of social injustice that fettered the Russian people. This link is education, knowledge. The course of Rubakin's thought was strictly direct, the conclusions - like any speculative conclusions - are immutable. Inequality in education is the most important weapon in the hands of the ruling classes. It is supported by the entire force of the police state, by the mighty apparatus of ecclesiastical obscurantism, by the activity of those educated people who have gone into the service of the reactionaries. It is necessary to break through this iron barrier and make - contrary to and in addition to the official system of education - knowledge accessible to all the people. Millions of popular books are needed, in which knowledge will appear in such a way that everyone can join them. Thousands of libraries available to all, a whole army of enthusiastic volunteers who will boldly and confidently guide the reading of millions of people. The plan is great, inspired and very naive. But for all the appearance of his cultural tregerism, he had nothing in common with the usual bourgeois enlightenment. Rubakin saw enlightenment as a revolutionary force, he believed that education could evoke great energy in disunited, downtrodden people, capable of breaking the existing social and political system.

There is no need to prove the utopian nature of this plan in the real conditions of Russia at the end of the last century, to oppose it to the only path of development that was created and developed by revolutionary Marxists and led to the creation by Lenin of the party - the main lever that turned Russia from the landowner-bourgeois system to the state of workers and peasants to build socialism. We only need to consider the dramatic story of how a man of great mind and fiery heart walked along a path on which he did much great and beautiful, but which led him to the top of Clarens Hill and made him not a participant, but more an observer of those great transformations to which he aspired all his life. This happened not only because Rubakin's ideas were utopian. The life of Rubakin himself turned out to be complex and confusing.

A feature of Rubakin - an educator, popularizer, bibliographer - was that he was never a pure "scribe". Any book was considered by him in its close relationship with the reader. It was interesting and significant for him only when it was read and did useful work. From this angle, he considered all those hundreds of thousands of books that he turned over in his long life. Back in 1889, together with a group of teachers from Sunday working schools, he compiled an "Experience in a Program for the Study of Literature for the People."

Rubakin published this work in the populist magazine Russkoe bogatstvo, and then published it as a separate book. The book was the result of a long and very interesting study. In his library, in the reading room behind the Nevskaya Zastava, in Sunday, workers' schools, Rubakin and his volunteer assistants organized a comprehensive observation of reading, of the reader's life of books. Rubakin developed special questionnaires, interviewed 3946 people, entered into active correspondence with many hundreds of readers.

His conclusions were harsh and disappointing. The vast majority of books - progressive, useful, written with the best of intentions - are inaccessible and little understood by the people. They are created in complete ignorance of the needs of the people, their spiritual needs, language. The intelligentsia, which creates spiritual values, does not know the general reader, does not focus on it, and does very little to familiarize ordinary people with knowledge and culture. These conclusions were developed by Rubakin in his book "Etudes on the Russian Reading Public", which was published in 1895 and caused a storm of responses. Based on extensive and skillfully compiled statistics, the author of this book with such a neutral title unfolded before the reader a picture of horrendous spiritual poverty, the conscious isolation of the working people from the progress of knowledge, and the isolation of the intelligentsia from the people. At the same time, Rubakin's book was imbued with admiration for the abilities of the Russian workers and peasants, for their thirst for knowledge and faith in their future.

Revolutionary moods pushed Rubakin not only to "research". He ran to meetings, wrote proclamations, protested against the beating of a student demonstration. In 1896 he was expelled from the capital to Ryazan. In 1901, he was arrested again and expelled from the capital for two years under police supervision. Rubakin spent these years in the Crimea, in a small Tatar village near Alushta. In the spring of 1903, while traveling abroad with his future second wife, Lyudmila Kolomiytseva (with his first wife, Ignatieva, Rubakin divorced in 1904, dividing the children: the youngest son remains with his mother, the eldest, Alexander, with his father).

Rubakin, according to his memoirs, began to publish very early - in 1875, at the age of 13 (he began to write even earlier). They were satirical poems. He published 350 journal articles, not counting newspaper articles, wrote and published 280 books and brochures, including 233 for readers of peasants and workers, among his brochures there were 15 manuals for self-education. During the same time, Rubakin compiled about 15 thousand individual programs for reading and self-education.

47 books written by Rubakin were banned and destroyed by the tsarist censorship immediately after their publication, seven books were crippled by the censorship. Rubakin's popular science books were published in 28 languages (foreign and peoples of our country).

How much Rubakin's books on science were loved by readers and intelligible can also be judged by the following fact: in the first years after the October Revolution, when terrible devastation intensified in the country, when a civil war raged, when there was not enough paper even for newspapers, the Soviet authorities Rubakin's books were reprinted in huge editions. Thus, in 1919-1920, the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies published 22 books and pamphlets in the amount of 1,420,000 copies. They were printed on very poor paper, looked very unimportant, but sold out instantly. The Soviet government considered it necessary to publish these books. "Among secrets and miracles" was republished by the publishing house of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Council of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies (Moscow, 1919). It is also - "The wildest people on earth", "Stories about affairs in the animal kingdom", in the same year the publishing house of the Union of Communes of the Northern Region republished "On floating ice floes in the Arctic Ocean" (Petrograd, 1919).

From 1923 to 1928, Soviet publishing houses republished another 23 books by Rubakin (with a circulation of 166 thousand copies), and, in addition, five books by Rubakin on natural science were imported into the USSR, published abroad with a circulation of 49 thousand copies.

How Rubakin was read in the first post-revolutionary years can be judged from an article published in the journal Krasny Librarian (1923, No. 4) “Which authors of scientific literature are popular with the reader-worker.” Here is what this magazine wrote: “According to the five shifts we are considering, Rubakin (his books on natural science and geography) is in the first place, leaving other authors far behind him. It should be noted that his readership significantly exceeds that of even fiction writers... Rubakin is read by both the elderly and the young, both men and women. He makes a special impression on underdeveloped, novice readers, they read some of his books several times.

From 1889 to 1928 over 20 million copies of N.A. Rubakin's books were sold. If we consider that each book was read not by one person, but by several, sometimes dozens of readers, then we can say that in pre-revolutionary Russia there was almost no literate person who did not read Rubakin's books. But we must remember that before the revolution, more than 75 percent of the population of Russia was illiterate, and even literate people could hardly read books written in an often incomprehensible, incomprehensible language.

After the revolution, when a thirst for knowledge, a passion for books, for learning flared up among the people with renewed vigor, the demand for Rubakin's popular science books increased many times over, and the ability to satisfy it due to a lack of paper, printing houses, authors, etc. dropped sharply. All the more we must appreciate the fact that in these difficult times for our country, the Soviet government found it possible to print these works in the first place.

It is necessary to highlight a number of popular science books by Rubakin, written by him already in exile in Switzerland and published by the European organization of the American "Christian Society of Young People" (UMKA). These books were officially imported and distributed in Soviet Russia, since Soviet organizations abroad bought them for Russia. In the first years after the October Revolution, these organizations purchased about 55,000 copies of these books and transported them to Russia, where they were immediately sold out.

In the USA, in New York, from 1921 to 1926, under the general title "Popular Science Lectures of the Day of Self-Education and Public Readings", a number of books by Rubakin were published, specially written for this: "How the Universe Works", "The Beginning of All Beginnings" (2 editions), “What is in the sky” (2 editions), “Substance and its secrets” (2 editions), “Perpetual motion”, “How stones live”, “Great words of life”, “New measures of length and weights introduced in Russia in 1918”, and many others. A number of other books in the same series were edited by Rubakin. The book "Substance and its secrets" was published simultaneously in Moscow by the publishing house "Earth and Factory".

The book "Among the Secrets and Miracles" was republished in Moscow by the Political Literature Publishing House in 1965-1967 in three editions each from 95,000 to 150,000 copies.

In 1975, in Moscow, the publishing house "Kniga" published, under the editorship of the younger Rubakin, the two-volume "Chosen One" by N.A. Rubakin. The publication sold out within a few days. In 1977, the same publishing house published his book "The Psychology of the Reader and Books", published for the first time in Moscow in 1929.

Even during the lifetime of N.A. Rubakin, a number of works were published in Germany, France, Italy and other countries on the new theory created by Rubakin - bibliopsychology.

But Rubakin was not limited to writing and publishing books, he maintained and expanded a close relationship with his readers through personal correspondence and personal acquaintances. From 1889 to 1907 he corresponded with 5,189 readers, chiefly from the working classes, and from 1911 to 1915, with 5,507. Even after his departure abroad, he continued to correspond with many thousands of old and new readers, in spite of all the difficulties of this correspondence. They were also joined by friends whom he acquired abroad. Rubakin's correspondence with his readers was, so to speak, business correspondence, in which he not only talked to readers, but directed their self-education.

Rubakin had the great fortune to live to see the victory of our Motherland over Nazi Germany. He was already 83 years old when the great news of this victory sounded to the whole world. And for him it was also a considerable and personal joy, since he learned that I, his son, had been released from a fascist concentration camp and arrived in Moscow.

On November 23, 1946, N.A. Rubakin died in Lausanne. The urn with the ashes of Nikolai Alexandrovich Rubakin was transported from Lausanne to Moscow in 1948 and buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery.

Conclusion

Nikolai Alexandrovich Rubakin lived for almost 85 years. He lived in the most stormy, the greatest era in the history of our country. He also witnessed in his life the struggle of Narodnaya Volya against the tsarist autocracy, and the defeat of this organization, the birth of a new, Marxist trend in Russian revolutionary thought, and the dark reaction of the late 60s and early 90s of the last century, and the powerful upsurge of the revolutionary movement at the beginning of the century, and the first grandiose uprisings of the proletariat in 1905, and a new rampant bloody reaction in subsequent years, and again the upsurge of the revolutionary movement, and, finally, the Great October Socialist Revolution. He survived the Russian-Turkish war of 1876-1877, and the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905, and the first imperialist world war, and the great war of the Soviet Union against German fascism. And he participated in almost all these events in one way or another, all of them were reflected in his public and personal life. He lived for almost 40 years in Switzerland, far from his homeland, and at the same time worked only for his homeland.

The era in which Rubakin lived was also the era of the greatest technical conquests. He saw the birth of the age of electricity, the appearance of the first cars, the first airplanes, the wireless telegraph, radio, television, and many hundreds of other inventions that expressed the human genius and mind that Rubakin glorified.

List of used literature

1. Acceleration L.V. The last encyclopedist. // Living voice of science. M .: Children's literature, 2010. - S. 159 - 193.
2. Rubakin A.N. Rubakin (Pilot of the book sea). M.: Mol. Guard, 1979. - 204p.
3. Shishkin M. Russian Switzerland: literary and historical guide. M.: Vagrius, 2014. - 656s.

Born into a merchant family, his father, Alexander Iosifovich Rubakin (1830-1896), was the mayor in Oranienbaum (now the city of Lomonosov).

Collaborated with publisher Alexandra Kalmykova.

His son, Professor Alexander Nikolaevich Rubakin, wrote:

In 1948, the entire library of his father, which he bequeathed to the Soviet people, was transferred to Moscow to the State Library named after V.I. Lenin. In the Lenin Library, it occupies an entire half-floor of the book depository and is listed under the letters "Rb Fund" - all of it stands there entirely as a monument to his thought and creativity. It is used to study his system of classification of books and knowledge. All the book wealth accumulated by the father returned to the Soviet people. The urn with the ashes of Nikolai Alexandrovich Rubakin was transported from Lausanne to Moscow in 1948 and buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery, near the Wall of the Old Bolsheviks, at the cemetery where the best Russian people, scientists and writers, artists, musicians, artists are buried. A modest stone urn, standing on a ledge in the wall of an ancient Russian monastery, looks like a seal lying on a stone book, on which the words are engraved: "Long live the book - the most powerful tool in the struggle for truth and justice!" - the motto to which Rubakin was true all his life.

This exhibition is conceived as evidence of boundless respect for an amazing person - Nikolai Aleksandrovich Rubakin.

We are accustomed to being abstractly proud of our wonderful compatriots, especially if they lived in quite old times. It is a pity that this natural feeling of pride, as a rule, does not develop into a desire to imitate them at least in something, not to mention the desire to continue their glorious deeds.

Here is Rubakin - he worked tirelessly, helping his contemporaries "unfold, deepen, expand their lives, make it fuller, deeper, sublime, more intense, and therefore more beautiful ..." This is how he spoke of people seized by "excruciating thirst" craving for knowledge, for solving difficult issues, for understanding the laws of life.

Well, today there seems to be no need to strive for knowledge: everything you need “will be found - over time” on the Internet. We are overwhelmed by waves of information, and we are increasingly wearily turning away from them. How strange and ridiculous we must have seemed to Nikolai Aleksandrovich Rubakin!

Celebrating his 150th birthday, we will try to deviate from the usual canon and will not provide biographical information about the hero of the day. Rubakin's life is the path of a true Russian intellectual, a deeply moral intellectual and an unsurpassed specialist who put his knowledge at the service of people. For those who want to learn more about the life path of Nikolai Alexandrovich, we recommend an excellent book written by his son - it is presented at the exhibition. Here are just a few numbers. So, Nikolai Alexandrovich Rubakin collected more than 230,000 books in 84 years of his life. Read 250,000 books. Corresponded with more than 11,000 correspondents. I sent out about 15,000 individual programs for reading and self-education to these correspondents. He wrote and published 350 magazine articles, not counting newspaper articles, as well as 280 books and brochures (47 of which were immediately banned by censorship and another 7 were distorted by it). And finally, Rubakin's works have been translated into 28 languages.

One of these languages was Yiddish, which is not accidental. The Jews of Eastern Europe, like most of their contemporaries belonging to other peoples, strove for knowledge, education, and culture. Similarly, they lacked books. And Rubakin's books - interesting in content, varied in subject matter, and finally, simply and clearly written - were translated into Yiddish very willingly.

The earliest edition of Rubakin in Yiddish, Miracles in the World, was published in 1895 as a textbook for public schools on the recommendation of the Ministry of Public Education. Subsequently, the authorities ceased to favor Rubakin, and there were no more official publications. And this turned out to be for the best, since the translation of "Miracles" was frankly boring, and the quality of the print was quite consistent with the meager amount of government money.

Three years later, a compilation of Rubakin's works was published by the prestigious Vilna publishing house of the Widow and the Romm Brothers. It turned out a deluxe edition called "Pictures from the life of animals." At the end of the book, indeed, there are as many as 12 sheets of “pictures”, the naivety of which today causes an involuntary smile. The storytelling style is somewhat heavy-handed, but that doesn't hinder perception at all.

Rubakin's next books were published at the beginning of the 20th century. in Warsaw. The first two were published with the participation of Avrom-Hirsh Kotik (1867-1933) in the translation of Hillel Vihnin (1879-1942). A.-G. Kotik was a fairly well-known public figure and did a lot for public education in the broadest and fullest sense of the word. In particular, he founded a special "Bureau of Scientific Knowledge" in Warsaw and the "Obrazovanie" publishing house in Bialystok. He published popular books, gave lectures, attracted the best employees to the cause. One of them was G. Vikhnin, a staunch admirer of Leo Tolstoy and a translator of his books into Yiddish. Together with A.-G. As a cat, they published perhaps Rubakin’s most famous books at that time “Grandfather “Time”, or the Development of the Universe, the Earth and Everything That Lives on It” and “Amazing Achievements” (the title of the original is “Stories about the exploits of the human mind”).

In 1906, two more books were published by Duberish Tursh (1863–1930s), also the owner of a large publishing house, writer and publicist. Both of them were devoted to the struggle of man with nature, and came out in the publisher's own translation.


Grandpa Time. 1901	amazing achievements. 1904	Tales of exploits human mind. 1904	Eternal War man with nature. 1906	As a man conquers nature. 1906

Talking about the publication of Rubakin's books in Yiddish, one cannot but touch upon some interesting and glorious, but, unfortunately, little-known pages in the history of Russian Jews. For example, today only narrow specialists know about the organization with the magnificent name "Society for the dissemination of education among Jews in Russia". Meanwhile, the mentioned Society (it was often called OPE) existed for more than half a century - from 1863 to 1929, and during this time made a significant contribution to world culture. It was an era when Russian Jewry was rapidly changing its appearance. The OPE changed along with it and gradually gained more and more influence and public recognition. In the last decade before the revolution, the OPE was the actual understudy of the Ministry of Public Education in everything related to Jewish culture. During the First World War, it made truly heroic efforts to preserve it. Undoubtedly, the OPE managed to do a lot for the formation of the Russian-Jewish intelligentsia - to realize how important this is, it is enough to recall the names of the sculptor Antokolsky, the artist Levitan, the composer Gnesin and many, many others.

In the post-revolutionary years, the Society of Enlightenment narrowed down to a circle, which included the entire color of the intelligentsia, who cherished the legacy of the past. You can talk about this for a long time, but do not deviate too much from the topic. Let's return to Rubakin. In Petrograd, engulfed in famine and devastation, the OPE published four of his books, united in the series “The Beginnings of Human Culture”.

The publication of this book series was undertaken on the initiative of Seraphim (Sarra-Leah) Gershberg. Unfortunately, almost nothing is known about her - only that she was a talented historian and bibliographer. Most likely, it was she who translated and prepared for publication Rubakin’s books: “How old is our Earth - When and where did the first people appear”, “How did primitive people live (People of the Stone Age)”, “How did prehistoric life change: the New stone era and metal epoch" and "Prehistoric language and how many other languages \u200b\u200bdeveloped from it." All of them were published in 1919 on poor paper and without illustrations, but the thoroughness of the translation and the high scientific level of the series certainly do credit to its publishers.

In addition to the OPE, others worked in the field of Jewish culture. In Kyiv in 1918, the legendary Kultur-League was created. Much has been written about this organization today. And although it was formally dissolved in the early 1920s, the publishing activities of the Kultur-League did not stop - a cooperative publishing house under the same name was simply founded. Until the early 1930s, when the Kultur-Liga was finally closed, its publishing center produced thousands of titles of books in Yiddish. Many were initially grouped into series, among which the extensive "Popular Science Library" stood out. One of the first publications was Rubakin's "History of an Airplane" with many interesting drawings and photographs.


How did the primitives live? People. 1919	Knorring Vera Department of Literature Asian and African countries

July 2017 marks 155 years since the birth ofNikolai Aleksandrovich Rubakin, Russian bibliologist, bibliographer, popularizer of science and writer.

“Rubakin is a great encyclopedist, or, better put, he himself is already an encyclopedia of modern Russia” - this is how Romain Rolland spoke about Nikolai Alexandrovich in his “Diary” in 1917.

The department for coordinating the activities of libraries in the region prepared mmethodological recommendations for this event. Nikolai Alexandrovich Rubakin (1862-1946) - educator, scientist, writer, bibliographer, an outstanding specialist in the field of reading science - a man who loved the book and believed in its irresistible and bright power. The scale of his activities cannot but amaze anyone who has touched his work.

“... The father of Nikolai Rubakin, Alexander Iosifovich, came from an old merchant family. The Rubakins were from the Pskov province, they, in the words of local residents, were "skop". Nikolai Alexandrovich was very fond of saying that he came from “the most democratic Russian republic - Pskov”, that Pskov is a purely Russian place, even the Tatars did not reach it in the 13th century, and therefore he has only Russian blood in his veins ... "

Rubakin A.N. "Pilot of the Book Sea"

"Pilot of the Book Sea"

To the 155th anniversary of the birth of N.A. Rubakin.

“What is a book business? This business is life itself and struggle.

“Each person is a tangle of life - that point of the Universe,

where all sciences merge».

ON THE. Rubakin

The fundamental work of N.A. Rubakin "Among the Books", the like of which was not in the world bibliography. This work is of great importance for other sciences as well. This is a truly bold and innovative work of an interdisciplinary nature, consisting of four parts.Nikolai Alexandrovich Rubakin is called the pilot of the "book sea", who has read and viewed over 100 thousand books in his life. Almost from childhood, he outlined his life path and followed it strictly. Rubakin set himself the goal of being a scientist. And achieved it. Then he decided to become an encyclopedist. And he became. He attended not only the course of the natural department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, but also the courses of two other faculties - law and history and philology. Rubakin's lifelong passion was reading. In the library, among the books, he sat literally for days. He knew how not only to read, but also to use the knowledge gained from books in his works, which were very popular among the widest circles of Russian readers: “Etudes on the Russian Reading Public”, “Among the Books”, “Letters to Readers on Self-Education”.
The total circulation of his books published in Russia reached 20 million copies. The figure for pre-revolutionary times is truly astronomical. In addition, Rubakin corresponded with tens of thousands of readers.

On the eve of the anniversary, we recommend using such forms of work as book exhibitions, evenings of one portrait, library readings, which can be combined into cycles, months. We offer you to get acquainted with the life and work of N.A. Rubakin from different angles.

· Quotes N.A. Rubakin

· The most important works of N.A. Rubakin, available in the POUNB fund

“I am already 65 years old, but I have never considered and do not consider myself an old man, but I have been working without Sundays and holidays for 50 years now, and since my youth I have been and am in the closest relations with the youth whom I love and know and who, as far as of my strength and how I can help in her bright aspirations for light, air and warmth and in the difficult work of clarifying and assimilating the great principles of the labor system and social and personal life. And 40 years of correspondence and communication with such young people have never given me the opportunity to turn sour, lose heart, give up and consider myself an old man. No, the aspirations of youth are also my aspirations, the mood of struggle is also my mood, faith in the full possibility of implementing a social system on the principles of really new, just, labor principles - this is my faith until now and to the end of days.

N.A. Rubakin. Letter to I.I. Lebedev dated 5/IV 1928

Rubakin in numbers

“The name of Rubakin at the present time says little to anyone, but then (1890-1900) this great talent, who often fought with censorship, was a slogan for writers who worked for the people. Pilgrimages of young novice writers and students were literally made to him, ”the writer M.V. wrote in her memoirs. Yamshchikova, known under the pseudonym A. Altaev.

In 1962, the centenary of his birth was celebrated in the USSR, and all major newspapers and magazines in Moscow, Leningrad, and a number of cities in the USSR celebrated this date in one way or another. Rubakin was not forgotten, and even young people who did not know anything about him became interested in the man who worked most for the youth and whose books young people read for many decades before the revolution, whose books were destroyed by tsarist censorship.

No, Rubakin was never a people's commissar and never held any official government position. All his life he was a writer, educator, bibliographer, and his activity in the field of education is enormous.

Nowadays, people especially like to express everything in numbers. Nikolai Aleksandrovich Rubakin also loved numbers. It is not for nothing that in his popular science books all sorts of facts are supported by figures, it is not without reason that he wrote the wonderful book “Russia in Figures”, which was so appreciated by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Let us also turn to figures in order to, so to speak, mathematically accurately show what Rubakin did during his long life. He himself cites such figures in unpublished autobiographical notes. He compiled a (still incomplete) list of his published works in 1934, but even after that, until 1946 - the year of his death - he wrote a lot.

Rubakin, according to his memoirs, began to publish very early - in 1875, at the age of 13 (he began to write even earlier). They were satirical poems.

He published 350 journal articles, not counting newspaper articles, wrote and published 280 books and brochures, including 233 for readers of peasants and workers, among his brochures there were 15 manuals for self-education.

During the same time, Rubakin compiled about 15 thousand individual programs for reading and self-education.

This alone shows how original and attractive was the form in which Rubakin clothed his exposition of scientific questions.

A rare writer can boast that his books have been translated into so many languages.

How much Rubakin's books on science were loved by readers and intelligible can also be judged by the following fact: in the first years after the October Revolution, when terrible devastation intensified in the country, when a civil war raged, when there was not enough paper even for newspapers, the Soviet authorities Rubakin's books were reprinted in huge editions. Thus, in 1919-1920, the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies published 22 books and pamphlets in the amount of 1,420,000 copies. They were printed on very poor paper, looked very unimportant, but sold out instantly. The Soviet government considered it necessary to publish these books. "Among secrets and miracles" was republished by the publishing house of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Council of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies (Moscow, 1919). It is also “The Wildest People on Earth”, “Stories about Affairs in the Animal Kingdom”, in the same year the publishing house of the Union of Communes of the Northern Region republished “On Floating Ice on the Arctic Ocean” (Petrograd, 1919).

How Rubakin was read in the first post-revolutionary years can be judged from an article published in the journal Krasny Librarian (1923, No. 4) “Which authors of scientific literature are popular with the reader-worker.” Here is what this magazine wrote: “According to the five shifts we are considering, Rubakin (his books on natural science and geography) is in the first place, leaving other authors far behind him. It should be noted that his readership significantly exceeds that of even fiction writers ... Rubakin is read by both the elderly and the young, both men and women. He makes a special impression on underdeveloped, novice readers, they read some of his books several times.

The book "Among the Secrets and Miracles" was republished in Moscow by the Political Literature Publishing House in 1965-1967 in three editions each from 95,000 to 150,000 copies.

In 1975, in Moscow, the publishing house "Kniga" published a two-volume "The Chosen One" by N.A. Rubakin. The publication sold out within a few days. In 1977, the same publishing house published his book "The Psychology of the Reader and Books", published for the first time in Moscow in 1929. Even during the lifetime of N.A. Rubakin, a number of works were published in Germany, France, Italy and other countries on the new theory created by Rubakin - bibliopsychology.

Interest in Rubakin and his works is not weakening, but, on the contrary, is growing at the present time. So, in England, in London, the Clive Bingley publishing house began to publish a series of books by classics of bibliography and bibliography. The first in 1968 in this series was a book about N.A. Rubakin. It contains in English three of his works on bibliopsychology and his biography written by his son, Professor A.N. Rubakin, the author of these lines, and a bibliography of N.A. Rubakin's works.

The accessibility and comprehensibility of the language of Rubakin's books is one of the secrets of their enormous distribution among the people.

But Rubakin was not limited to writing and publishing books, he maintained and expanded a close relationship with his readers through personal correspondence and personal acquaintances. From 1889 to 1907, he corresponded with 5189 readers, mainly from the working classes, and from 1911 to 1915 - from 5507. Even after his departure abroad, he continued to correspond with many thousands of old and new readers, despite all the difficulties of this correspondence. They were also joined by friends whom he acquired abroad. Rubakin's correspondence with his readers was, so to speak, business correspondence, in which he not only talked to readers, but directed their self-education.

We add that during his life Rubakin collected two huge libraries. The first, in 130 thousand volumes, he presented in 1907 to the St. Petersburg League of Education. The second, almost 100 thousand volumes, even more valuable for the selection of books, he bequeathed to the State Library named after V.I. Lenin in Moscow, where it is currently located.

These are the figures reflecting the life and scientific activity of N.A. Rubakin.

In his biography, the most important thing is what he did in the field of serving the people, serving science, serving the revolution. And here one has to wonder how a person, whose life was constantly intruded by external events, and internal experiences, and sorrows, could manage to do so much as he did. What a will to live, what efficiency, purposefulness one had to have in order to do everything that he did!

From an early age until the last days of his life, Rubakin worked in one direction - the study of the book, the reader, the author, and all his other works are grouped around this main theme. And his writing of popular science books and works of art, and the creation of libraries, and the compilation of catalogs, and correspondence with readers - all this was closely connected, "The Last Encyclopedist" (as the writer Lev Razgon called him), writing on a wide variety of topics, possessing wide, deep and varied knowledge, he set them all to achieve one goal - the enlightenment of the people, the struggle for the book and for the glory of the book, for the reader and for the sake of the reader. The expression "great goals give rise to great energy" is especially applicable to him.

He never deviated from the path he had chosen, he never betrayed him. His life shows what can be achieved if it is made purposeful. Therefore, his biography is of considerable interest. We can rightly talk about the wonderful life of a wonderful Russian man, writer, fighter, revolutionary, whose motto was "Long live the book - the most powerful tool in the struggle for truth and justice." But this phrase becomes even clearer when another phrase is added to it, which he himself said: "Cultural work is a means, revolution is an end."

Nikolai Alexandrovich Rubakin was born into a merchant family on July 1, 1862 according to the old style, July 13 according to the new one. Rubakin's passport indicated that he was born on July 3. The fact is that his metric burned down in a fire in 1864 and was restored from memory by the rector of the Oranienbaum church, who baptized the boy. The Rubakins lived in the small town of Oranienbaum, located near St. Petersburg and, nevertheless, retaining all the features of a deaf Russian provincial town.

Nikolai Rubakin's father, Alexander Iosifovich, came from an old merchant family. The Rubakins were from the Pskov province, they, in the words of local residents, were "skop". Nikolai Aleksandrovich was very fond of saying that he came from "the most democratic Russian republic - Pskov", that Pskov is a purely Russian place, even the Tatars did not reach it in the 13th century, and therefore he only has Russian blood in his veins.

Nikolai Alexandrovich, in fact, remembered little about the Oranienbaum period of his life, since his family moved to St. Petersburg in 1873, when he was only 11 years old. He only remembered that in Oranienbaum his father forced him and Misha to sell brooms at the entrance to the bathhouses and make sure that the clerks did not plunder the cash register.

The boys spent a lot of time with their grandfather's workers in the bathhouses, at the timber exchange, listening to the stories and tales of the workers. What Nikolai Rubakin was forced to do by his father, in his words, "infused a lot of pettiness and penny into his soul."

Rubakin's love for books manifested itself very early, and the understanding of the meaning of books came only with time. In his autobiography, Rubakin says: “While still in a real school, in 1875, I persuaded my mother to open a library. She sold two winning tickets, bought books for 60 rubles, and borrowed the rest. In total, about 600 books were bought. It was October 22, 1875 - the library of L.T. Rubakina was opened on Mogilevskaya street. I was a boy in this library and rummaged through the books ... while teaching at the 2nd real school. Mother and I understood absolutely nothing in books. Twenty years later, the library of L.T. Rubakina, thanks to Nikolai Rubakin, became the largest private library in Russia.

Rubakin began to write very early and from childhood he dreamed of becoming a writer. At the age of nine, he compiled a list of his future works, writing off their titles from the Epoch magazine for 1864, took the list to the printing house, attached two kopecks to it ... for printing and ran away. In 1871, that is, at the same age, he compiled a geographical dictionary, wrote something, made extracts from books and magazines.

Nikolai Rubakin also started writing scientific articles, and, moreover, of a brightly popular character, very early. In 1878, that is, when he was only 16 years old, he published his first scientific article “On the Worship of Animals” in the journal “Children's Reading”, I even received a fee of 16 rubles for it - a large amount at that time, which immediately elevated him to in the eyes of his father, who did not attach any serious importance to his son's writing inclinations.

In 1879, Rubakin published the second scientific article in Sophia Kaptireva's "Family Evenings" "Did people always know how to write", and then a number of others. The very title of this article is characteristic of Rubakin's future activities: he always gave such titles to his articles and books that aroused the reader's interest even before they were read. So, later he wrote the works “How people learned to speak each in their own language”, “The wildest people on earth”, “Will there be enough land for everyone if it is unfolded correctly”.

In 1879 - 1880, Rubakin began to write poems of a predominantly satirical content and published them in Dragonfly, Alarm Clock and other humorous magazines of that time, usually under pseudonyms ("R.", "Rn", "Oranienbaumsky", etc. ).

In 1880, Rubakin got acquainted with the philosophy of Auguste Comte and his "religion of humanity" and immediately became interested in them. He retained his passion for Comte until the end of his days and was probably the last "Continian" in the world. He was especially seduced by the classification of sciences according to Comte and the principle of encyclopedic education. Therefore, having entered St. Petersburg University in 1880, he decided to study at all three faculties at once. He entered the natural faculty, as they studied the "exact sciences", the basis of all sciences, according to Comte, but at the same time he attended lectures of two other faculties and took their courses. As he himself writes, "for 5 years I have overcome all three faculties systematically." Together with him, according to him, his comrades at the university, later famous scientists, also graduated from three faculties - chemist V.I. Vernadsky, botanist and geographer A.N. Krasnov, physicist I.P. Lebedev, historian I. M. Grevs.

But this kind of intensive training took a toll on his health. In 1881, he suffered from overwork and, as he himself writes, became a neurotic. In addition, in the same year, 1881, he suffered from typhus, which forced him to postpone his examinations from spring to autumn. But these same studies developed in him an extraordinary capacity for work, which he retained all his life.

Already in the early 1980s, Rubakin joined, as he himself said, "the socialist current of Russian social thought" and began to intensively study socialism in the legal and, even more so, in the illegal literature of that time. He immediately devoted himself wholeheartedly to the cause of socialism, began to distribute socialist literature, and from 1882 began to write in various underground publications. A real warehouse of such literature was kept in the apartment where he lived with his mother.

When Rubakin graduated from the university, his father persuaded him to go to the civil service, to become an official, convincing him: "You will be able to write then." The same advice was given to him by his mother. But Rubakin always felt disgust for the service. He persuaded his father to rent a paper mill in Strelna. His father took over the commercial side of the business, his brother Misha, as a process engineer, took over the technical side, and Nikolai Alexandrovich, as he writes, "began to manage business with factory workers." It was there that he first really got to know the workers, their way of life, their demands, and tried to propagate among them "with realities and without any terrible words." This factory went bankrupt three years later, so they even had to sell two houses to cover the costs of its liquidation.

"Cultural work is a means, revolution is an end"

By the 900s, Rubakin had already finally formed his views on the so-called folk literature, and he vigorously put them into practice.

To understand the role of N.A. Rubakin in the creation of folk literature, you need to know how prominent Russian writers and public figures used to treat this literature. From the beginning of the 19th century, progressive Russian social circles were very far from the people. The gap between the intelligentsia and the people was very great. The proportion of illiterates among workers, peasants, artisans, even at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, exceeded 75 percent, and among women it was even higher. And yet, the circle of readers among the people gradually expanded.

But even literate people from the people had nothing to read, since the books published by publishing houses were incomprehensible to an uneducated reader, and very few books were published. For the entire 18th century, only 125 books (titles) per year were printed in Russia on average; 23852 and in 1912 - 34,630. At the same time, in 1887 only 24 million copies of books were printed throughout Russia, in 1895 - 42 million and in 1912 - 134 million, that is, about one book per year per every resident.

Education and reading were the property of a relatively small circle of people. This situation led to a rather strange reaction on the part of many Russian writers in their attitude to what the people should read.

Rubakin, in his early youth, put forward the slogan: "Long live the book, the most powerful tool in the struggle for truth and justice." It speaks not of the book as an instrument of truth and justice, but of the book as an instrument of struggle for truth and justice. Rubakin wrote that an uneducated revolutionary is harmful and dangerous. Revolution is a struggle based on knowledge, on understanding. The book is for life, not life for the book - that was Rubakin's motto.

Rubakin did not neglect any way to convey knowledge to the masses. Sytin, on the initiative of Rubakin, started the publication of a special "Library for Self-Education". He also became the first to publish the "People's Calendar", in which articles were published on various branches of knowledge, many of them were written by Rubakin. The calendar reached a colossal circulation for those times - over 2 million copies a year. It was available in almost every peasant family.

Rubakin always said that he not only teaches his readers, but also learns from them. Studying their speech, their language, their range of concepts, Rubakin developed his own, unusually simple and clear language, with numerous repetitions and questions. To some, he seemed monotonous, poor. However, in fact, the enormous power of popularization in the works of Rubakin lay in the fact that the most complex issues of science in his presentation were accessible to the understanding of even a completely illiterate person.

Rubakin said: “In order for a person to understand you, you need to express yourself in few words, and perhaps in fewer words and always understandable. Take the word "body" for example. For a physicist, and for an educated person in general, it can be any solid object. But for an illiterate peasant or worker, the "body" is only a human body. And from this it is necessary to proceed, and not to be wiser. Not only foreign words, but also Russian ones can be incomprehensible.”

Nikolai Alexandrovich Rubakin, from the very beginning of his conscious life until his death, lived among books, lived in libraries, at libraries, for libraries. Rummaging through books has always been a favorite pastime, a kind of recreation for Rubakin, as well as for most scientists and writers.

For Rubakin, books were also capital, but not in the same way as for bibliophiles. For him, books were the capital of the human mind, human knowledge, human search for truth and justice, a call to fight for a better future. He loved books not for their appearance, but for their content. His libraries were not a collection of rare and luxurious expensive books for bibliophiles, but a treasury of human knowledge and achievements from which everyone could draw knowledge. On this principle, his libraries were built and selected.

Books gave him the opportunity to leave behind a huge literary legacy, and the library became for him, as he later put it, "a reflection of the universe."

Rubakin's libraries were inextricably linked with his work, with his life. His libraries were not a simple and random collection of books - they were logically built systems where books really reflected the life of the universe.

The libraries he collected not only reflect the nature of all his work, but also give an idea of his interests, his methods of work, and its content.

Libraries are a huge part of his life. Without them, he would not have taken the place in the history of Russian education that he did.

Nikolai Alexandrovich was the first librarian and bibliographer of the library of L.T. Rubakina. As a boy, he compiled the first catalog for her, which included a total of 1,500 books and 26 magazines. In 1892, the library passed completely under the jurisdiction of Nikolai Aleksandrovich Rubakin.

The library was widely used by writers, professors, and scientists.

Many workers were direct subscribers to the library of L.T. Rubakina, and they received books free of charge. They turned for advice and directly to Rubakin. An even greater number of workers, especially from the factories of the Shlisselburg and Narva tracts, used the library indirectly.

In one of her letters to Rubakin, Krupskaya recalled: "Rubakin's library was the first among the legal paid libraries in St. Petersburg, which supplied Marxist self-education circles with books free of charge."

Books got into workers' circles mainly through acquaintances of teachers and teachers of Sunday and technical schools.

The library also served for revolutionary work. Attendance was given to it, revolutionary illegal literature was spread through it. Meetings of revolutionary groups were held at the library during the congress of the Free Economic Society. In the library, meetings and conferences of workers from different parties—Socialist-Revolutionaries and Social Democrats—were arranged for several years.

The subscription fee to the library was negligible, but it did not even allow paying the costs of renting an apartment and paying for the librarian and servants, since Rubakin spent all the money received from subscribers on its maintenance and on the purchase of books. So, in the estimate of the library for 1903, 8500 rubles are listed in the income column - this is a fee for reading, deposits from readers, income from the sale of catalogs and bibliographic indexes, etc. At the head of the expenses is 8440 rubles - for the maintenance of the premises, the salaries of librarians (excluding Rubakin himself), the purchase of books and periodicals, binding, office expenses, etc. Total "net profit" 60 rubles a year. In other words, the library did not bring Rubakin any income and, nevertheless, lived and prospered, satisfying the reading needs of a huge mass of the population.

Since 1892, when Rubakin took over the library, its rapid growth began. By 1900 - by the time of its 25th anniversary - the library already had 57,000 volumes (40,000 titles). Its funds began to flow partly through purchases, partly as a result of donations and gifts from other libraries of private individuals. It received the libraries (entirely) of the then famous teachers A.N. Betkher, I.F. Rashevsky, A. Kirpotenko, professor N.I. Nezelenov.

The library has acquired in full the publications of F.F. Pavlenkov, K.T. Soldatenkov, L.F. Panteleev, O.N. "Public Benefit" and others.

From 1892 to 1907, the library's book fund increased more than 15 times - from seven thousand books to 115 thousand. The fund expanded not only through the purchase of individual private collections and libraries - a number of large private libraries were bought at very low prices, purchases of books from publishers, but also through free receipts. Rubakin knew how to get books by all means - from authors, from publishers, from acquaintances, everything went into a common pot.

In 1900, there were about a thousand private libraries in Russia, as well as local circle and public libraries. Rubakin got in touch with them to exchange books, to make it easier for them to purchase new books at a cheap price, sent them his author's copies, sent out doublets, and so on.

From 1894 to 1902, more than 10,000 books were sent out in this way. A network of interlibrary relationships was created, something that became so widespread later on.

It seems simply incredible how one person could write hundreds of popular science books and articles, manage departments in publishing houses, correspond with readers and manage dozens of libraries, not counting his own. At the same time, everything was done by him disinterestedly, most of his undertakings, with the exception of his own writing work, were completely free, this could be called an investment of mind and knowledge in the treasury of public education.

Having received the library at his disposal, Rubakin immediately began to rebuild it. Its restructuring was characteristic and new for that time. In contrast to other private libraries, Rubakin decided to focus on scientific literature, and not on fiction, and above all on popular science literature. It was a big risk, but Rubakin decided to continue the business in this form, even if the library initially showed a loss.

In 1900, summing up the activities of the library in connection with its 25th anniversary, Rubakin wrote: “The scientific department should be in the first place in a properly organized library. On the second should be the department of literature, fiction. This department includes the works of the best poets and masters of prose, who managed to take a well-known place in the history of literature of the past and present, as well as the works of moralists, publicists and critics. The composition of this section should be especially extensive and rich, since the majority of readers use primarily fiction. Spokesmen for social movements, artists, critics and publicists should occupy the same place in this department as they occupied in the history of social movements. In this setting, the fiction department is a reflection of the history of human aspirations."

To disseminate knowledge, Rubakin had little library. Supporting the initiative of a group of teachers, he organized at the library in 1892 the "Mobile Museum of Teaching Aids". The institution is original, it was the only one of its kind not only in Russia, but probably in Europe as well. The museum contained rather rich collections of exhibits on mineralogy, botany, zoology, and physics. All these exhibits were given out to subscribers - and those were mainly schools - in the same way that books are given out in a library.

Yakobson, M.I. Devel, E.D. Stasova, A.M. Kollontai and others. Here is what E.D. writes about the museum in his memoirs. Stasova: “The Mobile Museum of Textbooks played a big role in our work. It was created by Sunday school teachers, as we were in great need of these manuals. Each of the teachers brought what she had: some herbarium, some minerals, or alcohol preparations, or a magic lantern and pictures for it, or illustrations cut from magazines and illustrated publications. All this was placed in a small room, which N.A. gave us at his library. Rubakin. Mathematics teacher Maria Ivanovna Strakhova was at the head of the museum. All items from the museum were given out like books in libraries.

Gradually, the museum grew and occupied several rooms in the same house on Bolshaya Podyacheskaya, and then one of our subscribers, Countess Sofia Vladimirovna Panina, built a house for the museum on the corner of Prilukskaya and Tambovskaya streets, with an astronomical observatory, laboratories and a large auditorium.

From the very beginning of his work in the library, Rubakin approached completely new views on the role and significance of libraries. The library has become not some kind of shop in which the role of the librarian was reduced to the issuance of books at the request of readers; she became the center of education, and the librarian became the head of reading and choosing books, the reader's adviser.

In 1895, in the book "Etudes on the Russian Reading Public", Rubakin wrote about the purpose of libraries in the following way:

“In order for the library to work correctly, and so that it can serve not only the satisfaction of personal and all other tastes, so that it is not only entertainment, but a powerful instrument of education, what should be the book, and even more so the totality of books - literature, total labor the best minds of mankind, the treasury of his knowledge, thoughts, feelings, aspirations and hopes - in a word, for a library to be what it should be, it must contain a certain cycle of books. It is in this cycle or, if I may say so, the core of the library, that the center of gravity of each library lies, so that it can take its place in the general system of public education, and not just lend books, receiving payment or not receiving anything. There are books that should be in every library open to the public, and the absence of which has a very unfavorable effect on its activities ... If I may say so, the library should be a bookish reflection of the universe. The library composition should be based on a system of sciences, a philosophical scheme that distributes all the phenomena of world life in a certain sequence and order, for example, at least O. Comte’s scheme of sciences, which, at the same time, is also a scheme of world phenomena ... But the scheme is not the point . The whole point is to fulfill the main condition: on the basis of the classification of natural phenomena, the library composition must also be determined, i.e. core composition. This core should be an encyclopedia, although a special encyclopedia - compiled from different works of different authors, different publishers, different times and peoples. This encyclopedia, going from the general to the particular, should contain a certain minimum of sciences, abstract and concrete (descriptive) "pure" - theoretical and applied. This minimum encyclopedia is a must for every more or less decent library...

But one cycle of sciences does not yet completely define the core of the library. The library should not only have books distributed according to the cycle of sciences, but should make it easier for everyone who wants to get to the science that is of interest to him at the given time. In a good library for each science there should be a selection of such books that could introduce people of all degrees of education, from the lowest to the highest, into the field of knowledge.

These statements of Rubakin already contain the basic propositions that he later developed in his theory of bibliopsychology. It is interesting that such thoughts were expressed by him more than 25 years before the creation of this theory.

The Rubakin Library was probably the first private library to publish catalogs of both the books already in it and the books that needed to be purchased.

Not only to give books to the reader, but to give him the opportunity, even before reading, to get acquainted with their content and direction, to choose what he needs or what interests him - this is the purpose of these catalogs. The role of the library, therefore, is moving from passive to active, the library goes towards the reader, reveals all its riches to him - choose what interests you. Therefore, Rubakin considered the compilation of catalogs and recommendations of books not at all as some kind of mechanical work that could be entrusted to any library technician.

Bibliographic indexes and a catalog, according to Rubakin, should not only serve for this library, that is, for the one led by him. They were supposed to form the basis for the compilation of any library, becoming, so to speak, what is now called "standard projects". As Rubakin wrote: “... the catalog is a guiding principle for purchasing books for the library, and not just a listing of everything that is available there. Books included in this catalog may not yet be acquired by the library for financial reasons, but they are immediately acquired at the first request of subscribers.

The library compiled over 20 recommendatory catalogs, and their goal, as he wrote himself, was to "revolutionize the book business." Some of them were intended for workers' and peasants' circles, others for propagandists and agitators, others for young students, fourth for librarians, fifth for teachers, and so on. This already shows that they were not drawn up mechanically, but taking into account the situation of those to whom they were intended. But this provision also included the ability of these individuals to conduct revolutionary propaganda work. It is curious that these catalogs were usually printed without the signature of N.A. Rubakin.

If a library, according to Rubakin, is “a reflection of the universe,” then properly constructed catalogues, or rather a system of catalogues, should reflect the book composition of the library and, at the same time, attract and bring books closer to readers. Rubakin developed a whole system of catalogs, considering them the best remedy against the "staleness" of books, including little-read, "forgotten" ones. The catalog should be compiled in such a way that the reader can read it with interest and choose books on it.

“The center of the library,” wrote Rubakin, “is not a book, but a living person and a social group.” Accordingly, Rubakin also formulates the goal of each library: it is "to equip the reader with knowledge, understanding, and an active mood in the work on self-education." “The library,” he said, “is not a place for passive issuance of books to the reader, as they sell goods in a shop; this is a weapon, and a sharp weapon, these are sparks that kindle a person with an interest in science, knowledge, and struggle.

For Rubakin himself, the library served as the material from which he drew the content of his popular science books. He could write only in the library, surrounded by bookshelves lined with books, magazines, newspapers, brochures, catalogues. He processed the book material collected and studied by him on the basis of studying the language of readers, their requests, and interests.

Most librarians have studied major libraries—academic, public, national. Rubakin took a different path. Proceeding from his conviction that the book and the library should go to the reader, and not just the reader to the library, he attached particular importance to the libraries of circles and libraries for self-education. These libraries were in direct living contact with readers, and it was easiest to judge the interests and wishes of readers from them. And all of Rubakin's theories about the book business referred mainly to such libraries. These libraries were supposed to be encyclopedic - to have books on all branches of science. It was for them that Rubakin developed the theory of the "library core", that is, the main group of books that they should have.

For the first time he developed these theories in 1893 in the report "Book impoverishment", made in the Free Economic Society in St. Petersburg.

Rubakin was not in principle opposed to the decimal system of classifying books in the library, but for general education libraries he proposed his own system based on the natural classification of natural phenomena and areas of life.

Here, the theory of selection of books for the library core was also presented: on the basis of the classification of mental and social types of readers. In his opinion, the general educational library should have books for all the main types of readers, the most common in this area.

This essentially left the librarian with the difficult task of identifying the types of books in his library and determining the types of readers. This obliged the librarian to be in close contact with the readers, to talk with them, to make a psychological diagnosis, taking into account their class position, their mental type. The librarian became something like a doctor making a diagnosis at the bedside of an unknown patient. Just as a diagnosis is made to prescribe the right treatment, so the diagnosis of the mental type of the reader is made for recommendations appropriate to this type of book.

Rubakin spoke about libraries: “We must make the library a living organism. We must make this organism a kind of nursery for the most useful social microbes. Each book should be such a microbe, these microbes should fly in all directions ... And not where the wind will fly, but where we ourselves need them to fly.

A whole series of Rubakin's works was devoted to the development of this theory, which has the goal, as he himself said, "the maximum introduction of books into the readership." Here he proposed and implemented a “social-psychological theory of book recommendations”, based on the theory of consonance and dissonance between types of books with types of their readers and assuming a technique adapted for this purpose for the organization and functioning of libraries, lending books, maintaining library statistics. Rubakin tried to implement all these principles starting from 1901 in his St. Petersburg library. Thus, this library did not have the character of any commercial enterprise at all - it became a major pedagogical center, a center for enlightenment and self-education of readers.

Nikolai Alexandrovich Rubakin believed that the creation of a new psychological theory, which he called "bibliological psychology" or "bibliopsychology", was the main scientific achievement of his life. Meanwhile, of everything he did in his life, it was precisely bibliopsychology that aroused the most objections and criticism from our scientists, and it was precisely because of it that Rubakin's work began to be sharply criticized in the 30s.

The creation of this theory began when Rubakin was a very young man, when his first popular science books were published. Moreover, he began to write these books, taking into account the needs of readers and their mental types.

"Introduction to bibliological psychology" - the first fundamental work on bibliopsychology - was noted only by specialists. Already in the 1920s, Rubakin published a number of articles in Russian that developed his thoughts in this new area: “On Saving Time and Effort in Self-Education” (1914), “Etudes on the Psychology of Reading” (1914), “Bibliological Psychology as a theory and practice of book business” (Prague, 1921), “What is Bibliological Psychology” (1924), “The Psychology of the Reader and the Book” (1929). Rubakin and created a classification of types of readers and types of books. Everyone understands how difficult it was to make this kind of classification and how much it was necessary to know those books that could be recommended to readers of this type. Rubakin did a colossal job of classifying the types of books, and on the basis of this classification, he, on the other hand, having determined the type of reader, recommended to him books that corresponded to his mental type.

Rubakin compiled questionnaires for readers to find out their mental type. The questionnaire contained 37 questions, briefly formulated. But then Rubakin notices that "answers to directly posed questions are not indicative." Particularly significant is what is recorded in the questionnaire reflectively, unconsciously, thoughtlessly. Therefore, the compiler of the questionnaire must be a very subtle, thoughtful person, perfectly familiar with the social and psychological conditions of the place and time to which the questionnaire refers.

“Bibliopsychology,” says Rubakin, “should become an objective science. It should become such in order to enable any worker in the book business to objectively navigate in all the complexity of this business at any time and in any place ... An objective classification of books should help us navigate the endless variety of book treasures ... An objective classification of authors should to help us navigate the history of literature... This means that its (bibliopsychology) ideal must be exact knowledge.”

The last years of the life of N.A. Rubakin

Rubakin never took part in public disputes and generally did not know how to argue and argue. He told about himself that only once, as a student, he spoke as a speaker at a student meeting, and then he could not say anything, and he was dragged from the podium by the tails.

He naively disliked polemics, although, in fact, he constantly used it in his books. Living for the last forty years in a quiet, calm environment, seeing world events only from afar, from the fertile silence of the Swiss outback, he could not understand the feelings that possessed people who took a direct part in these events. And the close people around him, with their "Tolstoy" mood and worldview, could by no means help him understand the events properly. They imperceptibly dragged him onto a different path, gave his fighting temperament and character a different shade, distracted him from what he really wanted and aspired to. They carefully erased in his mind the concepts of classes, of the class struggle, replacing them with the words "humanity", "people", "the struggle for justice for all", "the denial of any kind of dictatorship of man over man."

He was an ardent hater of the ruling classes. After all, it was he, one of the first in literature, who noticed and described a new type of revolutionary worker, strong and firm, beginning to realize the power of his class, and contrasted him with the “demagnetized intellectual” - a popular expression that at one time became a walking designation of decadence.

It can be said that all his life Rubakin struggled with tsarist and capitalist oppression and their faithful servant - religion. His first printed scientific work was called "The Deification of Animals" and exposed the primitive forms of religion. All his scientific books were written in such a way that their content, in one way or another, hit on religion.

Rubakin had the great fortune to live to see victory over Nazi Germany. He was already 83 years old when the great news of this victory sounded to the whole world. He thought about the development of the Institute of Bibliopsychology, about the publication of his finished and manuscript novels "Cain's Seed", "Multi-storied Conscience", in which he deduced the Russian intelligentsia of the middle of the last century.

Until his very end, Rubakin lived and worked for Russia, for the Russian-Soviet people, he thought about him all his life, he was faithful to him.

Everything he had, he gave to the Russian people - his knowledge, his talent, his books.

When the war ended, Rubakin was lying in bed - he had a severe leg fracture that could not heal. On November 23, 1946, he did not wake up: in the morning, when they entered his bedroom, he lay dead in bed, with a quiet and calm expression on his face. Thus ended the life of one of the greatest educators of the Russian people, full of work and passion.

The urn with the ashes of Nikolai Alexandrovich Rubakin was transported from Lausanne to Moscow in 1948 and buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery, near the Wall of the Old Bolsheviks, at the cemetery where the best Russian people, scientists and writers, artists, musicians, artists are buried. A modest stone urn, standing on a ledge in the wall of an ancient Russian monastery, looks like a seal lying on a stone book, on which the words are engraved: "Long live the book - the most powerful tool in the struggle for truth and justice!" - the motto to which Rubakin was true all his life.

Alexey Maksimovich Gorky wrote in a letter to Rubakin dated October 18, 1922: “Someday reasonable people will be able to appreciate your persistent, enormous work of a true democrat. Much has been done by you to spiritualize the masses of the people, I know this very well.”

Rubakin was not forgotten in the Soviet Union. When the centenary of his birth came in 1962, hundreds of articles and notes appeared in the newspapers, and they celebrated this centenary and Rubakin's services to the Russian people. A number of books dedicated to him have been published, including his biographies, published by the Znanie and Kniga publishing houses.

Rubakin's quotes:

“Life always teaches much more than the best of the best books. The book is only a tool and a guide. It is not life that needs to be checked by books, that is, by theories, but just the opposite. The advice “read more” is far from suitable for all people.”

“Knowledge should serve the creative ends of man. It is not enough to accumulate knowledge; they should be disseminated as widely as possible and applied in life.

“Choosing books to read for yourself and others is not only a science, but also an art.”

"Never stop your self-educational work and do not forget that no matter how much you study, no matter how much you know, there are no boundaries or limits to knowledge and education."

Dates of life and activity of N.A. Rubakin:

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Rubakin(-) - Russian book critic, bibliographer, popularizer of science and writer.

Biography

Born into a merchant family, his father, Alexander Iosifovich Rubakin (1830-1896), was the mayor in Oranienbaum (now the city of Lomonosov).

Collaborated with publisher Alexandra Kalmykova.

His son, Professor Alexander Nikolaevich Rubakin, wrote:

In 1948, the entire library of his father, which he bequeathed to the Soviet people, was transferred to Moscow to the State Library named after V.I. Lenin. In the Lenin Library, it occupies an entire half-floor of the book depository and is listed under the letters "Rb Fund" - all of it stands there entirely as a monument to his thought and creativity. It is used to study his system of classification of books and knowledge. All the book wealth accumulated by the father returned to the Soviet people. The urn with the ashes of Nikolai Alexandrovich Rubakin was transported from Lausanne to Moscow in 1948 and buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery, near the Wall of the Old Bolsheviks, at the cemetery where the best Russian people, scientists and writers, artists, musicians, artists are buried. A modest stone urn, standing on a ledge in the wall of an ancient Russian monastery, looks like a seal lying on a stone book, on which the words are engraved: "Long live the book - the most powerful tool in the struggle for truth and justice!" - the motto to which Rubakin was true all his life.

Main achievements

The merits of N. A. Rubakin - a scientist and writer - were recognized both in the Russian Empire, and abroad, and in Soviet Russia (in particular, he had positive reviews from V. I. Lenin himself - for the recommendatory index "Among the Books") . His literary and scientific heritage is enormous: 280 books and brochures, over 350 journal publications.

Bibliopsychology

Creator of bibliopsychology - the science of text perception. Author of the book "Psychology of the reader and the book." Developed the ideas of Emile Ennequin, author of Estopsychology. His ideas are widely used in psycholinguistics.

Scientific writings

"Russia in Figures" was written on the basis of a generalization of the materials of the All-Russian population census of 1897, according to experts, one of the most successfully carried out in the history of Russia. Reissued in 2009.

Rubakin N. A. Letters to readers about self-education. (1913)
Rubakin N.A. On saving time and effort in self-education. (1914)
Rubakin N.A. The practice of self-education. (1914)
Rubakin N. A. Among the books. (not completed), (1911-15)
Rubakin N. A. Introduction to Bibliological Psychology (in French). (1922)
Rubakin N.A. What is bibliological psychology? (1924)
Rubakin N. A. Psychology of the reader and books. (1928)
Rubakin N. A. Among miners. Story. (with illustrations by S. T. Kravchenko). - Kyiv: Fiction, 1958.
Rubakin N.A. How to engage in self-education. Compiled by T. K. Kruk. - M.: Soviet Russia, 1962.
Rubakin N. A. Favorites, 2 volumes. (Introductory article by B. A. Smirnova. Real commentary by A. A. Belovitskaya. - M .: Kniga, 1975. - Proceedings of domestic bibliologists)
Rubakin N. A. Psychology of the reader and books. - M.: All-Union Book Chamber, 1977. - 230 p.

Literary works and non-fiction works

Rubakin N. A. "From the world of science and from the history of thought",
Rubakin N. A. "Stories about the friends of mankind"
Rubakin N. A. "Trials of Dr. Isaac"
Rubakin N. A. "Stories about the great and terrible phenomena of nature" (4th ed.),
Rubakin N. A. "Water" (4th ed.),
Rubakin N. A. "Stories about affairs in the animal kingdom" (2nd ed.),
Rubakin N. A. "Stories about Western Siberia" (2nd ed.),
Rubakin N. A. "Stories about the exploits of the human mind",
Rubakin N. A. "The Adventures of Two Ships" (2nd ed.),
Rubakin N. A. "Miracle at the Sea" (2nd ed.)
Rubakin N. A. “What is in the sky? The story of the structure of the universe "
Rubakin N. A. “Substance and its secrets. How the universe is built from various substances
Rubakin N. About the development of language development, or Yak and if people have learned to move their skin language / N. Rubakin; Zukrainizuvav P.K. - New York: Voice of Pravda, 1918. - 48 p.

Memory

In 1967, in honor of the bibliographer, the 2nd Lower and Kolkhoznaya streets in Lomonosov were renamed and merged into a single Rubakin Street.
The Central Library of the Lomonosovsky District (Lomonosov, Shveytsarskaja st., 14) bears the name of N. A. Rubakin.
In November 2016, a memorial sign to N. A. Rubakin was installed in the city of Lomonosov. The author of the sign is a sculptor, artist, honorary citizen of the city of Lomonosov - Nikolai Karlykhanov.

Notes

Literature

Rubakin A. N. Rubakin. Pilot of the Book Sea. - M .: "Young Guard", 1967; 1979. - biographical book from the ZhZL series, written by his son.
Rubakin A. N. Nikolai Alexandrovich Rubakin // "Soviet Bibliography". Issue. 45. M., 1957.
Rubakin A. N. Among the books // "Znamya", 1964, No. 4.
Aizenberg A. Ya. The most prominent theorist and practitioner of self-education (to the publication of "The Chosen One" by N. A. Rubakin) // "Soviet Pedagogy", 1976, No. 7, p. 141-143.
Arefieva E. P. Questions of theory and practice of library science in the works of N. A. Rubakin. Abstract of Ph.D. thesis. M, 1965.
Arefieva E. P. N. A. Rubakin as a collector and his libraries in the Soviet Union // "Book", collection VIII, ed. All-Union Book Chamber. M., 1963.
Ivanova L. M., Sidorova A. B., Charushnikova M. V. Archive of N. A. Rubakin. Letter from V. A. Karpinsky to N. A. Rubakin // “Notes of the Department of Manuscripts” of the State. library named after V. I. Lenin. Issue. 26. 1963.
Lenin V.I. Full coll. cit., vol. 25, 48.
Mavricheva K. G. N. A. Rubakin - an outstanding propagandist of the book // "Soviet bibliography". Issue. 45. M., 1957.
Mavricheva K. G. ON THE. Rubakin (1862-1946). - M.: Book, 1972. - 176 p. - (People of the book). - 6,000 copies.(reg.)
Osovtsev S. The man who enriched Russian culture // Neva, 1959, No. 12.
Overclocking L.V. The last encyclopedist // Living voice of science: Sat. M., "Children's Literature", 1970.
Acceleration L. The last encyclopedist // Ways into the unknown: Sat. M., "Soviet writer", 1964.
Acceleration L. Under the code "Rb". M., "Knowledge", 1966.
Acceleration L. Not only history // "In the world of books", 1976, No. 12.
Snitarenko I. A., Balashova L. P., Charushnikova M. V., Volkova E. P., Sidorova A. V., Gapochko L. V. From the archive of N. A. Rubakin // “Notes of the Department of Manuscripts” of the State. library named after V. I. Lenin. Issue. 25, 1962.