History of the Collections
Legal deposit collection
The Slavonic Library's legal deposit collection is a historical entity formed during the era when Finland was a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire. At that time, thanks to an imperial decree issued by the Emperor in 1827, the University of Helsinki was granted the right to obtain a copy of every book printed in Russia for its collections. The Russian legal deposit collection contains approximately 110,000 volumes and is internationally significant.
The credit for ensuring that the books subject to legal deposit rights were genuinely delivered to the Library in Helsinki belongs to the Russian scientist Jakov Grot, the University of Helsinki's first Professor of Russian history, statistics, linguistics and literature. Grot separated the University Library's Russian books as an independent entity and subsequently functioned as the first librarian of the thus formed Russian Library - as the Library was first named - until the 1850s (Maria Widnäs, "Jacob Grot och Universitetets Ryska bibliotek," Miscellanea Bibliographica, 5. Helsinki, 1947, 144-163).
Russian Émigré Literature
The Slavonic Library has traditionally also acquired so-called Russian Émigré literature published outside Russia for its collections. Andrej Igelström, who was the librarian of the Russian Library during the 1920s, took care to ensure that the Library obtained a substantial collection of publications authored by emigrants who had fled the Russian Revolution of 1917.
The Soviet Era
After the Russian Revolution and the independence of Finland in 1917, the University's library no longer obtained books from Russia as legal deposit copies. The Slavonic Library began to acquire books through purchases or by exchanges with various libraries in the Soviet Union. After World War II, the Library's contacts with the Soviet Union improved, and the volumes of books procured grew substantially, approximately 3,000 - 4,000 annually.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, hundreds of publishing firms of varying sizes replaced the highly centralised governmental printing agencies, and book publishing became increasingly diversified. Following this change, the Slavonic Library has attempted to keep pace with the country's development and establish contacts with the different parts of the Russian publishing world. After 1995 it became easier to acquire books from Russia, and the Slavonic Library now procures books from Russia regularly and systematically. The Library has also successfully established new book acquisition channels in other CIS countries and Eastern Europe.
