Narodniki
The Lavrov-Goc Library
This library was acquired by the IISH in 1938. This collection has its origins in the personal library of Petr L. Lavrov (1823-1900), who also inherited some of the Russian books owned by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels note 1.
Later the library was supplemented with the collections of Michail R. Goc (1866-1906) and Egor E. Lazarev (1855-1937). From 1902 it served as the library of the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (PSR). At that time the library was located in Paris. It was moved to Prague in the early twenties. At the end of 1938 and the beginning of 1939, when Germany had already occupied the Sudetenland, Annie Adama van Scheltema, IISH’s librarian in those days, managed to have the library, ‘some 200 small boxes’, transported from Prague to IISH in the very nick of time note 2. Handwritten alphabetical and numerus currens catalogues form part of the collection.
The inventory of the Lavrov-Goc Library Collection can be found at http://www.iisg.nl/archives/en/files/l/10758482.php.
note 1 In the IISH catalogue these books can be traced using Collection Code ‘Marx-Engels Library’. See also H.-P. Harstick, Zum Schicksal der Marxschen Privatbibliothek, in International Review of Social History, 1973, vol.1, pp. 208-210 (IISH callno. ZO 56761)
note 2 About the acquisition of the Lavrov-Goc Library and other collections in the founding years of the IISH see also A. Adama van Scheltema-Kleefstra, Herinneringen van de bibliothecaresse van het Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, in Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis, 1978, pp. 141-176 (IISH callno. ZO 54334) , and Maria Hunink, De papieren van de revolutie: Het Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1935-1947. Amsterdam, 1986, pp. 90-97 (IISH callno. 322/42)