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Central Library of Vyoshenskaya is 115

The Vyoshenskaya central district library is one of the oldest in the Upper Don region. The jubilee session dedicated to its 115^th anniversary was joined by the readers including those from the National M.A.Sholokhov Museum-Reserve. The deputy director for the Museum Development Y.N.Dyomin warmly congratulated the staff of the library on the jubilee and presented an art panel in the frame “The Estate of M.A.Sholokhov in Vyoshenskaya”.

A local ethnographer A.P.Gribanov wrote: “In 1897, in Stanitsa Vyoshenskaya, in the People’s House there opened a library and a reading room on Saturdays and Sundays. The library fund was made up from voluntary donations. First librarians were volunteers from teachers, office workers”. The papers haven’t preserved the names of the first librarians of the stanitsa. In 1908 – 1915, the teachers Vladimir Ivanovich Soldatov and Nadezhda Andreyevna Soldatova worked in the library of the People’s House.

In the 20-s of the XX century, the library was housed in the building of the former 2-year male school and was called a readers’room. The work of the Vyoshenskaya library in the 30-s and later on was closely connected with the name of Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov. In 1934, in the article “To Live a Cultural Life in the Collective Farm” for the newspaper “The Bolshevist Don” the writer sharply raised the questions about the librarianship in the district. He suggested to all the collective farms to allocate funds for the purchase of books and magazines “for every collective farm to have a small library in 1935”.

Before the war the stanitsa’s library had got a good book fund. Many residents became its readers. In 1942, the library building was completely destroyed by the fascist airstrike and the book fund was lost. In 1943, the library of Vyoshenskaya resumed its work. The readers collected for the library more than a thousand books.

Since 1978, the library of Vyoshenskaya has become a methodological centre for the 16 village branch libraries. The central library carries out a great deal of cultural and educational work, takes part in the program of the regional festival “Sholokhov Spring”, holds annual library ”Sholokhov Readings”, History classes for schoolchildren. Some informal clubs for hobbies work in the library.

Today the library fund has risen to 32 thousand books, the library is attended by more than 6000 readers.

Serghei Gribanov