Libraries of Russia: The exhibition in St. – Petersburg to show the library of Shlisselburg fortress

The exhibition “History of Library of Shlisselburg fortress in the end of XIX – beginning of XX century” will open on November 10 in the building of Trubetskoy bastion of Peter and Paul fortress.

The exhibition will represent 50 original books from the Library of Shlisselburg fortress, the books from the collection of the State Museum of history of St. – Petersburg and State Museum of the political history of Russia. The organizers of the project claim that these books give a clear idea about the prison library’s collection of Shlisselburg fortress. These are the editions in Russian, English, German, French, Polish and Lettish. Among them are represented the philosophical treatises of Nietzsche, Kant, Spinoza, Dante, Descartes and Schopenhauer. 

In 1849 the Regulations on conditions of prisoners’ detention was adopted in Shlisselburg fortress. Its main requirement was the complete isolation of convicts. But the Article 4 of these Regulations implied the prisoners’ right to read. The unique collection was founded in 1890-s and was enlarged on money of convicts, earned in the prison’s workshops and donations of the “Support Groups of political convicts of Shlisselburg”. By 1917 the collection of books amounted to 10 thousand items.