Spetskhran (russian: Спецхран an abbreviation for "Special Storage Section", отдел специального хранения) were limited access collections and archival reserves in

libraries A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

and

archive An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual ...

s of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

, as part of the system of

censorship in the Soviet Union Censorship in the Soviet Union was pervasive and strictly enforced. Censorship was performed in two main directions: *State secrets were handled by the General Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets in the Press (also known as Glavl ...

. Access to materials from Special Storage was conditional on special permission: a person had to either have the corresponding level of security access or to have a written permission from the

First Department The First Department (russian: Первый отдел) was in charge of secrecy and political security of the workplace of every enterprise or institution of the Soviet Union that dealt with any kind of technical or scientific information (p ...

from the person's job. Special Storage was for two major types of publications: those deemed "ideologically dangerous" and classified information whose disclosure could threaten the economy and defense of the state. Examples: *Early Soviet publications associated with the "banned" names (

Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian M ...

Nikolai Bukharin Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (russian: Никола́й Ива́нович Буха́рин) ( – 15 March 1938) was a Bolshevik revolutionary, Soviet politician, Marxist philosopher and economist and prolific author on revolutionary theory. ...

, etc.) *Early Russian non-communist publications *Russian émigré publications *Foreign language publications deemed threatening to the Soviet State. *Foreign scientific and technical publications were normally available to general readership, with "threatening" pages cut out, and full versions available from ''spetskhran''. *Various classified publications, such as Soviet classified dissertations ("Диссертация для служебного пользования"), classified technical references, etc.

References

Censorship in the USSR and the Russian State Library
*Stelmakh, V. D

Libraries & Culture - Volume 36, Number 1, Winter 2001, pp. 143–151,

University of Texas Press The University of Texas Press (or UT Press) is a university press that is part of the University of Texas at Austin. Established in 1950, the Press publishes scholarly books and journals in several areas, including Latin American studies, Texan ...

Archives in the Soviet Union Censorship in the Soviet Union {{Soviet-stub

See also

References