Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2017 number

The article’s objective is to reveal the share of spiritual-moral literature in reading of inhabitants of Tomsk province under conditions of modernizing the Siberian society. The research methodological basis is the theory of the traditional society modernization. Data systematized and summarized by the author from the numerous reports of libraries in Tomsk province on book circulation in the catalog divisions make it possible to determine the place of spiritual-moral literature in reading of residents; to trace the modernization processes entering the Siberian hinterland, and to reveal the secularization of reading during the period under review. They show that spiritual-moral literature maintained its presence in reading of provincial inhabitants, but it was uneven and determined by the person’s education, age, occupation, place of residence. The most widely spiritual-moral literature reading was distributed among the rural population, mainly peasants, and representatives of the older generation. It was increasingly replaced by fiction, special literature, periodicals among urban residents and youth. Spiritual-moral literature dominated in peasantry home libraries along with representatives of other classes in the province peasants went to libraries mainly to get fiction. Public readings were carried out on a broad program. Books on art, Russian history, hygiene, natural science, ethnography, and other topics besides texts of spiritual-moral content were read in their course. Revealed data make it possible to clarify and supply the regional and all-Russian picture of reading in the late imperial period, its dynamic development under conditions of modernization.