Public library users in USSR

In USSR, the consequence of the State ideological pressure on cultural and information world was that users frequented libraries less and less. To recover their cultural space, the most cultivated readers circumvent this control by making up their own library and by resorting to the black market of books. Surveys made by sociologists from the Lenin Library determined - through such informations as the presence of books at home and individual subscriptions to joumals - not only that users who still came to public libraries had a low cultural level, but also that the bookstock of those libraries did not answer to their needs. Only fundamental reforms of the whole system would allow the libraries to satisfy their users' needs and to make the other readers come back to the library.
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