Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2016 number

The article is devoted to comparative analysis of reforms in the book business in Russia during the Soviet and post-Soviet eras. The author proves that reforms of the 1920-1930s were undertaken in order to form and strengthen a “vertical” (centralized) system of state management for the book publishing and book trade. Partial transfer of power from the government to the regional level during the period of the “new economic policy” was a retreat from the mainstream. Along with the structures of Gosizdat of RSFSR which had a monopoly on book business, state-run co-operative societies appeared in the province - the joint-stock association “Sibkrayizdat”in Siberia and the joint-stock company “Knizhnoye delo” in the Russian Far-East. They represented a regional “vertical of power” and contained some elements of “horizontal” system of developing the country’s book culture, oriented towards the creation of territorial societies of publishers and bibliophiles. However, the next reform of 1930-1931 swept away all attempts to weaken the “vertical”, having established rigid centralization in the Russian book business. Territorial systems of book business were transformed into local branches of a single monopolistic structure - Union of State Publishing Houses of RSFSR (OGIZ) and its book trading division (KOGIZ). Further on they transfomed into regional publishing houses and book trading units of the USSR Goskomizdat system. Reforms of the 1990-2000s, on the contrary, destroyed the “vertical of power” in the Russian book business, having determined as a priority the “horizontal” ties between book traders whose motley mosaic build up today territorial societies of members of book industry. “Horizontal” scheme of book business development is aimed at better satisfying growing and increasingly varied demands of modern society in the regions of Russia. Rudiments of the “vertical” system that remained in a form of provincial and territorial state publishing houses in the 1990s-2000s suffered a breakup one by one.