Russian State Library

The Russian State Library is the largest public library in the country and in continental Europe, and one of the largest in the world. The complex is located in the historic district of Staroye Vagankovo near the Kremlin and comprises two main buildings — the old Pashkov House and a monumental block with a multi-tiered book depository. The library serves as the leading scholarly and methodological center for Russia's library network and receives a legal deposit copy of all printed publications in the country.

The institution opened on July 1, 1862, upon the merging of the new Moscow Public Museum with the book collection of Count Nikolai Rumyantsev — around 28,000 volumes, 710 manuscripts, and more than a thousand maps. The idea of transferring the collection from St. Petersburg to Moscow was put forward by museum curator Vladimir Odoevsky, and the decision to establish the new institution was taken by the capital's authorities in 1861. In 1924 the library was renamed in honor of Lenin, a year later it was given the status of the State Library of the USSR, and its present name was adopted in 1992.

The complex brings together buildings from different eras: Pashkov House was built in 1784–1786 to a design by Vasily Bazhenov and has served as a book depository since 1861, while the monumental main building was erected in 1928–1941 to a design by architects Vladimir Shchuko and Vladimir Gelfreikh in the spirit of late Soviet neoclassicism. Bronze bas-reliefs of scholars and writers — from Archimedes and Copernicus to Lomonosov and Pushkin — were placed between the pylons of the façade, and sculptors Matvei Manizer and Vera Mukhina took part in decorating the interiors. The columns were faced with polished gabbro, and the façades with limestone and black granite.

Construction proceeded in stages: the foundation stone was laid by library director Vladimir Nevsky, and nearby the "Biblioteka imeni Lenina" metro station opened in 1935. During the Great Patriotic War, books were moved from the fire-hazardous wooden Pashkov House to the new reinforced-concrete book depository within ninety days. Buildings A and B were completed in 1957–1958, and the complex finally took its final form by 1960. In 1997, a French investment loan of ten million dollars was allocated for the reconstruction of the depository.

The nineteen-tier book depository is designed to hold twenty million items and occupies an area of about 85,000 square meters. As of early 2017, the library's holdings numbered 46.9 million catalogued items, including 18.7 million books and pamphlets, along with collections of maps, sheet music, dissertations, and manuscripts. Of particular value are more than two hundred personal collections donated to the library over the century and a half of its existence by Russian scholars, bibliophiles, and cultural figures.

Today the Russian State Library remains the country's principal book repository and one of the symbols of Moscow's intellectual life. It combines the functions of a national archive of print, a research center, and a public library, welcoming thousands of readers and researchers from around the world every year.