Masha Stepanova, Miami University (Ohio)
Cornell & Columbia Libraries (2CUL)
The Cornell and Columbia Slavic, Eurasian and East European collections―in existence for 134 and 112 years, respectively―continue to build collections in a variety of languages and subject areas. In addition to current imprints via approval, both libraries regularly acquire e-resources, and rare and often unique older materials via gift and purchase.
Current Approval Acquisitions
In FY 2016-2017, 2CUL received a combined total of 18,181 items on approval. Materials were received via approval plans with vendors in 25 core languages (ranging from Albanian to Uzbek), and 28 minority languages of Russia (from Adygei to Yakut).
In addition to established collaborative collection development agreements with ReCAP offsite facility partners NYPL and Princeton, the beginning of the current (2017-2018) FY marked the initiation of new non-duplication agreements with Harvard in Albanian, Belarusian, Hungarian, Polish, and Romanian. This exciting new partnership promises to further expand coverage of resources in these areas, and make them available via existing ReCAP, BorrowDirect, IvyPlus, and MaRLi networks, in addition to traditional ILL.
Digital Projects
Columbia’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library now offers access to the digitized interviews (and transcripts of same) conducted by Thomas de Waal, Senior Fellow, Carnegie Europe. Note that the collection must be accessed onsite. The collection of interviews with policymakers and participants from all sides of the late 20th century conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh and Chechnya is a trove of unique primary source materials. For a very recent interview with Mr. de Waal, see: Masha Udensiva-Brenner, “Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus,” in Harriman Magazine, Fall 2017: 32-41. Harriman Magazine
Early Soviet Sheet Music
A Princeton graduate student has written an essay to contextualize the the Early Soviet Sheet Music digital collection. It is hoped that the remainder of the collection, approximately 95 additional scores and decorative covers, will be digitized in the new FY.
academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:76hdr7sqwp
Antiquarian Acquisitions
Cornell made a major purchase of sixty Czech modernist books from the collection of the late Robert Leibowits and his wife June―one of the greatest private collections of the avant-garde art of Central and Eastern Europe in the United States. This group of books includes the work of many of the greatest modern Czech book designers, including Karel Teige (1900-1951), cofounder of the Devĕtsil movement and chief theorist of the Czech avant-garde, as well as Ladislav Sutnar (1897-1976), Zdenek Rossman (1905-1984), Josef Čapek (1887-1945) and Vojtĕch Tittelbach (1900-1971).
Cornell acquired a collection of thirty issues of an important and rare Soviet periodical, Tsirk [Circus; also entitled Tsirk i estrada] (M., 1925-1930). A lively, heavily-illustrated chronicle of circus performances, it also served to inflect Soviet ideology into the rich popular tradition of the Russian circus. Of particular note are the vivid color covers, by artists such as Mikhail Getmanskii (b. 1900), Dmitrii Moor (pseud. of Dmitrii Stakhievich Orlov, 1883-1946), Z. Makhlina (dates unknown), F. Kiselev (dates unknown), and N. Rogacheva (dates unknown), among others.
The historic Human Sexuality Collection at Cornell has added fourteen rare interwar Czech antiquarian items since last fall. In many cases, Cornell is the only North American holding library. These included Lucius Apuleius’s (124-170 ce) Amor a Psyche (Praha, 1923), bound in abstract, textured paper-covered boards and containing sixteen original lithographs by Hugo Boettinger (1880-1934), number 11 of 15 copies (the regular edition was produced in a run of only 100!); two illustrated books of erotic songs by Josef Hodek (1888-1973): Zpěvník 25 českých er. písniček [Songbook of 25 Czech Erotic Songs] (Plzeň, 1925), number 6 of 106 copies, with full-page lithographs by Hodek, and his Zpěvník po půlnoci: patnáct lidových písniček [Songbook for after midnight: Fifteen Folk Songs] (Plzen, 1927), number 5 of just 10 copies, produced by the artist in his studio and individually hand-numbered and signed; Karel Matěj Čapek-Chod (1860-1927), Psychologie bez duše: bizarerie filosofická [Psychology Without a Soul: Philosophical Fantasticalness] (Praha, 1927), with custom paper-covered boards with constructivist design and original linotypes by Alexandr Vladimír Hrska (1890-1954); V.H.B: Z krásné knihy plné parády [From a Beautiful Book Filled With Fun] (Praha, 1929), numbered 141 of 300 copies, a portfolio with plates by Brunner, many of an extremely graphic nature; and Jiří Rais (dates unknown), Vánek a oblaka: Chlapecké verše 1936-1938. [Breeze and Clouds – A Boy’s Verses 1936-1938] (Praha, 1948), illustrated with full page plates.
Two items pertaining to human sexuality dating from the Russian Imperial and Soviet periods were also purchased: a samizdat book on sex, circa 1970s, which is a Russian translation of a British book for married couples printed in the 1960s, and a folding lubok from 1917.
Cornell’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library also acquired Stavbu dráhy Handlová-Hornia Štubnia a tunelu [Construction of the Handlová-Hornia Track and Tunnel] ([Slovakia, ca. 1930]), an album of 100 large-format photographs showing the construction of the complex private railway line through the hills and valleys of central Slovakia from 1928-1930, and [Scenes of Crimea] ([Crimea, Ukraine, ca. 1880]), 27 unique photographs of scenery and buildings in Crimea. Trained as a military topographer, Dmitri Ermakov (1846-1916) took part in the Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878) and then ran photographic ateliers in Georgia.
Columbia also made a number of important purchases on the antiquarian market. One of the most spectacular recent acquisitions was a large-format photogravure album Svobodná Podkarpatská Rus: svým osvoboditelům = Svobodnai Podkarpatskaia Rusʹ: svoimʺ osvoboditeliamʺ = Fre [sic] Carpathian Ruthenia: to her liberators, a unique album (unregistered at the Czech National Library) produced in Prague by UNIE, circa 1923.
This hefty album contains twenty-one large-format photogravures, and one map with brief captions in multiple languages. It also includes photographs of notables including Vice-Governor Petr Ehrenfeld (1866-1944). (I am grateful to Edward Kasinec for establishing the connection with the dealer, Brooklyn’s David Winter).
The album complements an album titled Karpatská Rus, of circa 1920 photos of Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia, which was acquired at the New York Antiquarian Book Fair last spring. The seller of that album, James Steerman of Red Hook, New York, kindly donated a related title, the very rare Jaroslav Zoha’s Podkarpatská Rus [Sub-Carpathian Rus’] (Praha, 1935), a collection of woodcuts issued in an edition of 150 copies.
With generous support from the Columbia University Libraries’ Primary Resources Fund, we acquired a convoy of rare Georgian interwar serial titles, including Memarts’kheneoba [Leftism] მემარცხენეობა (Tbilisi, 1927), an extremely important and rare journal of the Left Front of the Arts, a wide-ranging association of writers, photographers, critics and designers existing in Soviet Georgia from 1924 until the late 1920s. Only two issues of the magazine were ever published. The journal was a platform for key figures of the Georgian avant-garde, including the creators of H2SO4, such as Irakli Gamrekeli (1894-1943), Demna Shengelaia (1896-1980), Nikoloz Chachava (1901-1974), Beno Gordeziani (1894-1975), Nikoloz Shengelaia (1901-1943), among others; issue no. 1 for 1927 of Nakaduli [A Stream] ნაკადული (Tiflis, 1904-1927), a children’s magazine published by the People’s Commissariat for Education from 1904 to 1927; the first issue of Merts’khali [Swallow] მერცხალი (Tiflis, 1926), a monthly art and literary publication of the Georgian Association of Proletarian Writers. Only four issues appeared; a 1924 issue of Ch’veni gza [Our Path] ჩვენი გზა (Tiflis, 1923-1926), the first ever Georgian women’s magazine; an issue of Sanakhaoba [Sight] სანახაობა (Tiflis, 1925-26), a weekly supplement to the Georgian magazine Art. The last issue features Kirill Zdanevich’s design for the play ‘The Robbers,’ based on a drama by Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805), staged by the Tbilisi Red Theatre in the mid-1920s; and finally, nine issues of Drosha [The Flag: Weekly Artistic and Literary Magazine] დროშა (Tiflis, 1923-1935).
Following two large purchases in Spring 2017 of Bulgarian modernist imprints circa 1919-1940, this fall Columbia added six additional rare titles, including issues of the journal Arena [Arena], an illustrated monthly journal of art, literature and criticism (Sofia, 1926), and Chavdar Mustafov (dates unknown), and Geo Milev (1895-1925), ed., Antologiia na bulgarskata poeziia [Anthology of Bulgarian Poetry] (Sofia, 1940).
Columbia supplemented holdings of rare Soviet film brochures with the acquisition of Amok ([Moscow-Leningrad, n.d.]), and Kogda rastaet sneg [When the Snow Melts] ([Moscow-Leningrad, n.d.]), both promotional prospectuses sold along with the newspaper Kino and the journal Sovetskii ekran. Amok was a 1927 Georgian silent film by Kote Marjanishvili (known in Russian as Konstantin Mardzhanov, 1872-1933); Tess of the Storm Country was a 1922 film by the actor and director John S. Robertson (1878-1964) starring Mary Pickford (1892-1979) and Lloyd Hughes (1897-1958).
Columbia also added a group of Czech and Polish film- and theater-related publications and ephemera, including fifteen photographic programs for films imported or produced by Merkurfilm, the vast majority composed of photomontages; Charlie Chaplin: Světla velkoměsta, [Charlie Chaplin: City Lights] a photogravure promotional brochure for the April 17, 1931 premiere of Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece, held at the Bio Alfa Cinema in Prague; Ročenka Kruhu solistů Městských divadel pražských [Yearbook of the Prague City Theater Soloists] (Praha, 1933) with twenty-four full-page photomontages of the most popular Czech stage actors of the period; Magdaléna Robinsonová (1924-2006), Hercova tvár [Herc’s Face] (Bratislava, 1955) containing over 100 full-page photogravure portraits of important Slovak theater personalities, actors, writers, designers, and individually signed by twenty-four of the subjects, on the text pages opposite their portraits; Production 1964/1965 Polish Films, Warsaw: Socialist Film Production Board, [1965], a spiral-bound catalog of recent Polish films. Each photographic montage/collage page faces a short description of the film; and finally Zlatou Knihu Metropolitan-Filmu [Golden Catalog of Metropolitan Films] (Praha, 1937), a catalog distributing RKO Radio Films in Central Europe, with photomontages.
Gifts
Columbia received three large unrestricted gift collections this fall:
I would also like to thank Anna Frajlich-Zajac for contacting her fellow poet Eda Ostrowska, based in Lublin, who graciously donated seven volumes of her works lacking in Columbia holdings. This gift was in turn supplemented by Anna, who donated two additional volumes of Eda’s work.
Archival
Columbia’s Bakhmeteff Archive acquired the papers (approximately 180 linear feet) of Edward Kline (1932-2017), a publisher and a co-founder of the Helsinki Watch Group. Kline founded the Chekhov Publishing Corporation in 1968, issuing works of Soviet dissident writers, and in 1973 he co-founded Khronika Press. In 1990, he helped establish the Andrei Sakharov Foundation. Also acquired by Bakhmeteff in 2017 was a collection of archival documents and photos pertaining to the Lithuanian revolutionary Ivan Adamovich Rachgus (b. 1895), and his daughter the sculptor Monna Ianovna Rachgus-Dokshitser (b. 1921). The Rachgus family suffered persecution during the Stalin Era.
(Robert Davis, Columbia, Cornell)