Books for Russia: Glenview sends aid to Soviet students, 1946

In February 1946, the residents of Glenview joined a nationwide drive to collect books for students in the Soviet Union. The ‘Books for Russia’ campaign replenished the shelves of war-ravaged Soviet libraries. Many of these books are still in the libraries of former Soviet republics, where they are preserved as important artifacts. The generosity shown by Glenview and other American communities has not been forgotten.

Glenview collects books for the Soviet Union

The Village of Glenview was sympathetic to the plight of European civilians devastated by the Second World War. Less then a year after the conflict ended, residents in Glenview participated in the nationwide ‘Books for Russia’ campaign. Organized by Russian War Relief, a charity registered in New York, the aim of the campaign was to collect one million books for the Soviet Union, which lost many libraries and millions of books during the war. The book drive began in mid 1945 with Elizabeth V. Truman appointed as honorary chairman.¹

Committees formed all across the country to assist in the campaign. In Chicago there were two, with one tied directly to Russian War Relief. This committee ambitiously set out to collect one hundred thousand books. Its first chairman was Joseph A. Brandt, later succeeded by Kenneth W. Colegrove in September 1945. Assisting them in the drive was a committee formed by the Chicago Jewish Council.²

Donations had to meet specific criteria. Acceptable volumes were works by British and American authors, either fiction or non-fiction, printed in English, and in good condition. Students in the Soviet Union needed these books to study English, taught as early as the sixth grade.

Special bookplates were provided to donors. A patriotic image of the American and Soviet flags was surrounded by an inscription: ‘To the Heroic People of the Soviet Union, From the People of America, via Russian Relief’. In the center of the image a blank space was left for donors to write their personal information.

It was February 1946 when Glenview launched a two-week long drive to collect books for Russia. The village-wide drive coincided with National Brotherhood Week, 17-24 February, initially established as a single day in the 1930s, which promoted interracial and interfaith understanding.

A local newspaper ran a front page announcement on 14 February:³

The Glenview public library will be a receiving depot for books for Russia. The Russian government is teaching English to students in the sixth grade and above and is in need of good fiction and non-fiction books. Mrs. Eileen Bruhn, librarian, asks that the books should be brought into the library before February 20.

Excerpt from the Glenview Announcements

The drive in Glenview ended on Sunday the 24th, designated by local churches as the day to bring in books for Russia. A final appeal for donations was made in Glenview’s newspapers. Partaking in this collection was Our Lady of Perpetual Help, the First Methodist, and the Glenview Community churches. All three supplied bookplates to donors. The point of contact for information was Mrs. John Sharon.⁴

How many books contributed by Glenview residents to the campaign is unknown. Whether or not the Chicago committee of Books for Russia met its one hundred thousand book quota is also unclear. Nonetheless, over 250,000 books were shipped to the Soviet Union by May 1946.⁵ The book drive is largely forgotten in the United States, where it is considered a minor episode of the Home Front during the Second World War. Peoples in the former Soviet republics, on the other hand, have not forgotten about the generosity of average Americans.

Remembrance in present day Russia

Little significance was attached to the Books for Russia in the Soviet Union. At the end of the Cold War in 1991, these books were readily available on library shelves for check out. Today the situation is much different in the former Soviet republics. Libraries are increasingly removing their Books for Russia from general circulation and placing them into rare book collections. This change in attitude came about in the 2000s when libraries realized that the campaign was a humanitarian effort, and not a Lend-Lease program.

As Olga Sak of the Oles Honchar Kherson Regional Universal Scientific Library in Kherson, Ukraine, so eloquently wrote, paper books have a soul and acquire a history of their own, and what the Books for Russia represent is the ‘selfless contribution of the American people’.⁶

Many others in Russia and Ukraine share Olga’s sentiment. The appreciation of the books is most apparent in Russia and by 2011, a network of twelve libraries were cataloguing their gifts from the American people.⁷ Since then more libraries across the country have taken an interest in the subject. Besides cataloguing, libraries have educated the public by putting on exhibits and bringing in students for interactive learning.

Connecting librarians, teachers, enthusiasts, and others, in both Russia and abroad, is a Facebook page titled ‘Books for Russia’. Founded in 2019 by Guliya Shaykhutdinova, an educator living in Salavat, Russia, the page is a wonderful resource for those wanting to learn more about the campaign.

Click here to be directed to the Books for Russia page on Facebook.

1. The exact title granted to First Lady Truman was honorary chairman of the Classics Collection of Books for Russian War Relief. ‘First Lady gathers books for Russians’, The New York Times, 11 July 1945, pg.1. Retrieved from ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times. Accessed 31 January 2022.
2. ‘Colegrove Named Chicago Head of Books-For-Russia Drive’, The Sentinel [Chicago, IL.], vol. 139, no. 13, 27 September 1945, p.24. Retrieved from Illinois Digital Archives: http://www.idaillinois.org/digital/collection/p16614coll14/id/61857 (accessed 31 January 2022); ‘Chicago Jewry to participate in Books for Russia dive’, The Sentinel, vol. 139, no. 10, 6 September 1945, p.47. Retrieved from Illinois Digital Archives: http://www.idaillinois.org/digital/collection/p16614coll14/id/66176/rec/1 (accessed 2 February 2022).
3. ‘Books for Russia may be left at library’,  Glenview Announcements, 14 February 1946, p.1, Glenview Newspapers on Microfilm collection [GNMC], Glenview Public Library [GPL].
4. ‘Sunday is Books-for-Russia Day at churches’, Glenview Announcements, 21 February 1946, p.1, GNMC, GPL; ‘Russians appeal for books to use in their schools’, The Glenview View, 22 February 1946, p.1, GNMC, GPL.
5. Merle Curti, American Philanthropy Abroad (New York: Taylor & Francis Group, 2017), p.511.
6. Olga Sak, ‘Russian War Relief’, news post on Museum of Books, Oles Honchar Kherson Regional Universal Scientific Library, 2 January 2012. Retrieved from: https://museum.lib.kherson.ua/en-slidami-odniei-publikatsii.htm (accessed 03 February 2022).
7. Ksenia Dubicheva, ‘Americans gave their books to the Russians’,  Rossiyskaya Gazeta [in Russian], 16 June 2011. Retrieved from https://rg.ru/2011/06/16/reg-ural/knigi.html (accessed 31 January 2022).