Libricide : the regime-sponsored destruction of books and libraries in the twentieth century

290 Pages·2003·1.069 MB·English

by  Rebecca Knuth

LIBRICIDE
The Regime-Sponsored Destruction
of Books and Libraries in the
Twentieth Century
Rebecca Knuth
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Knuth,Rebecca,1949–
Libricide:theregime-sponsoreddestructionofbooksandlibrariesinthetwentieth
century/RebeccaKnuth.
p.cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN0–275–98088–X(alk.paper)
1.Censorship—History—20thcentury—Casestudies. 2.Librariesandstate—
History—20thcentury—Casestudies.3.Libraries—Censorship—History—20th
century—Casestudies.I.Title.
Z659.K582003
363.31(cid:1)09(cid:1)04—dc21 2002044542
BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationDataisavailable.
Copyright(cid:2)2003byRebeccaKnuth
Allrightsreserved.Noportionofthisbookmaybe
reproduced,byanyprocessortechnique,withoutthe
expresswrittenconsentofthepublisher.
LibraryofCongressCatalogCardNumber:2002044542
ISBN:0–275–98088–X
Firstpublishedin2003
PraegerPublishers,88PostRoadWest,Westport,CT06881
AnimprintofGreenwoodPublishingGroup,Inc.
www.praeger.com
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica
Thepaperusedinthisbookcomplieswiththe
PermanentPaperStandardissuedbytheNational
InformationStandardsOrganization(Z39.48–1984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Preface vii
1. Books, Libraries, and the Phenomenon of Ethnocide 1
2. The Evolution and Functions of Libraries 19
3. A Theoretical Framework for Libricide 49
4. Nazi Germany: Racism and Nationalism 75
5. Greater Serbia 105
6. Iraq, Kuwait, and the Politics of Thuggery 135
7. China’s Cultural Revolution 165
8. Tibet: A Culture in Jeopardy 199
9. The Collision of Ideas 235
Index 255

PREFACE
“Questions are the engines of intellect. . . . There can be no
thinking without questioning, no purposeful study of the past,
nor any serious planning for the future.”
(Fischer 1970, 3).
Booksandlibrariesoccasionallyfallvictimtodisaster.Theyare,afterall,
fragile material objects. In 1966 floods in Florence damaged two million
books,manyofthemrareandpreciousmanuscripts.In1988,adevastating
fire claimed 3.6 million books in Leningrad’s Academy of Sciences Li-
brary. While we are saddened by such catastrophes and feel a sense of
loss, we respond differently to the destruction of books in “natural” di-
sasters than to the deliberate violation of books. In natural disasters, hu-
man agency is, atmost,asecondaryforceatplay,anddamagetocultural
materials does not raise questions about the basic order of society. The
case is entirely different when books and libraries are systematically
looted, bombed, and burned, for then a deliberate and calculated attack
onthecultureofagroupislaunched,andtheworldrespondsfromasense
that the whole of human culture has come under attack. In the pages to
come, I will argue that this is, in fact, the case, and for this reasonalook
backatthetwentiethcentury’splagueofbookdestructioniscriticalifwe
are to understand such behavior and, subsequently, take active steps to
protect the common cultural heritage of the world.
viii PREFACE
My project began with these two questions: What really distinguishes
those who mourn the destruction of books and libraries from those who
willingly,evenjoyfully,throwbooksintothefires?Andhowcantheideals
of human progress be reconciled with the mass violence and destruction
of culture that characterized the twentieth century? In formulating these
questions, I was seeking to address what seems to me a lack of analysis
inaccountsofthedestructionofbooksandlibraries.Oftenemotionaland
bewildered, witness accounts describe the damage, and then proceed to
attribute the violence—a violation of something they consider to be in-
herently good—to latent barbarism and a specialized evil. This is a se-
ductive but non-productive mindset becauseit failstocometogripswith
twocriticalfactors:thepoliticalnatureofwrittenrecordsandthefactthat
suchdestructionfollowsacommonpattern.Farfrombeingamereproduct
ofevil,thedestructionoftextualmaterialswasgoal-orientedandcarefully
rationalizedwithinstrugglesbetweencompetingworldviewsthatwracked
the last century. Seeking Utopia, extremist regimes crossed every imagi-
nable boundary as their belief systems metamorphosed into radical
ideologies.
Inthechaosachievedbyextremistaggression,genocideandethnocide
emergedasrecognizablephenomena,clearlylinkedtoideas,andIpropose
that a third pattern, libricide, exists and falls within the same theoretical
universe.“Libricide”isdefinedintheOxfordEnglishDictionaryasarare
term, denoting simply “the killing of a book.” It combines the idea of
bookandslaughter(inthesamewaythat“homicide”referstothemurder
of a person) and its etymology reflects a link to genocide and ethnocide.
In this book I have chosen to use “libricide” to refer specifically to the
twentieth-century,large-scale,regime-sanctioneddestructionofbooksand
libraries, purposeful initiatives that were designed to advance short- and
long-termideologicallydrivengoals;libricideisanidentifiablesecondary
pattern or sub-phenomena occurring within the framework of genocide
andethnocide.Likeotherkindsofsocioculturalviolationscommitteddur-
ingwarorcivilunrest,libricidehasremainedlargelyinvisibleatthesame
time as technological advancements, centralized leadership, extremeide-
ologies,andmodernmentalitiesofwarhaveenabledthiskindofviolation
to become systemic. It is because of its social consequencesthatprobing
the dynamics of libricide is of immediate importance.
Toestablisharudimentarysenseofthisdynamic,IhavebeguninChap-
ter1withanexplorationofreactionstobookdestruction,buildingacase
that libricide exists, and establishing its connection with genocide and
ethnocide.Chapter2discussestheevolutionandfunctionsoflibrariesand
links libraries to history, collective memory, belief systems, nationalism,
PREFACE ix
and societal development. While most of the literature on librarianship
focuses on the operational aspects of libraries—i.e. the retrieval, preser-
vation,anddisseminationofinformation—thischapteridentifiestheirso-
cial and political functions, which are key to their becoming the targets
of violence. In Chapter 3 the stage is set for the five case studies by the
proposalofatheoreticalframeworkforlibricideinwhichbeliefs,co-opted
by extremists and transformed into ideologies, rationalize the identifica-
tion of textual materials as tools of the enemy or as enemies themselves.
Thetriggerfactorsthatactivatecommonpatternsworldwideareidentified.
Chapters 4 through 8 contain cases that were selected to demonstrate
the viability of the framework and illustrate the dynamics of such de-
struction: libricides committed by Nazis, Serbs in Bosnia, Iraqis in Ku-
wait, Maoists during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and Chinese
CommunistsinTibet.Thechoiceofthesecaseswasinfluencedbyaccess
to source materials, issues of geographical and political representation,
and the ability of the case to advance understanding of the perpetrators’
motivationanddemonstratethevaryingpermutationsofthephenomenon.
NaziGermanywasselectedbecauseitistheprototypicalcaseoflibricide
by a racist, right-wing, and nationalistagent;also,aplethoraofmaterials
was available. A study of Imperialist Japan was excluded because the
motivationwassimilartothatoftheNazisandtherewerefewerresources.
Bosnia was an essential case because of its currency, and because of
insights to be gleaned from ethnic cleansing; I chose to focus on Serbian
atrocitiesratherthanCroatianbecauseSerbiafarsurpassedCroatiainthe
scale and intensity of damage to books and libraries. I wanted to include
a case from the Middle East and decided against the Turkish destruction
ofArmeniantextsduringWorldWarIinfavorofthemorecontemporary
Iraqi invasion ofKuwait, which hadaninterestingmixtureofideological
motivations. While probing left-wing or Communist libricide, it became
evident that the Soviet Union, in the interest of extinguishing national
identity among its constituent nations, was guilty of some of the most
egregious cultural destruction; however, the necessary information has
yet to be mined from Soviet archives. China, therefore, represented the
bestroutetounderstandingleft-wingorrevolutionarydestruction;further,
thefateofbooksandlibrariesduringtheCulturalRevolutionisanaston-
ishinglycompellingstory.IcollectedinformationaboutCambodiaduring
PolPot’sregime,butdecidedthatthemoresignificantandcomplexstory
was the Communist annihilation of the cultural materials of the quasi-
medieval Tibet. More space has been devoted to China and Tibet than
totheothercasesinordertodojusticetothecomplexitiesoftheCultural
Revolution and establish the full scope of Tibet’s written heritage before
x PREFACE
addressing its destruction. The book concludes in Chapter 9 with an
exploration of deeper issues and attention to the development of inter-
national law and mechanisms for the prevention of libricide. It argues
that twentieth-century libricide reflected battles between extremist ide-
ologies and democratic humanism and internationalism.
Perhaps the most difficult theoretical dilemma I encountered was the
handling of the immense destruction of books and libraries by Allied
bombing in World War II. The Germans lost between one-third and one-
halfoftheirbooksduringthewar,themajorityasaresultofBritishcarpet-
bombing of cities. The Japanese lost about half of their books in the
Americans’ firebombing of Japan’s cities. There are some who equate
these strategic bombing campaigns with genocide (Markusen and Kopf
1995); however, most scholars hesitate to label thesecampaignsasgeno-
cidal because the Allies were motivated by self-defense and were not
targeting groups per se for extinction. The Allies’ campaigns did not fit
mydefinitionoflibricideeither:thedamagetobooksandlibrariesinurban
bombing raids was collateral, and the Allies’ tactics were dictated by
short-term defensive objectives rather than long-term political goals.
However,thequestionablepairingofhumanandculturaldamagehaunted
me, and I subsequently wrote a paper that probed these bombings, par-
ticularly in terms of intense militarism and the logic of total war(Knuth,
unpublished manuscript).
Libricideisinformedbymaterialsandperspectivesfromhistory,political
science,psychology,ethics,communications,libraryandinformationsci-
ence, international relations, and literature. The book’s cross-cultural
scope and comparative methodology made the identification of general
patternspossiblebutdictatedarelianceonsecondarysources.InLibricide
Iwasconcernedwithassemblingandanalyzingdiffused,interdisciplinary
source material and subsequently fashioning a compelling argument.
Great care was taken to avoid the jargon or highly specialized terms
and positions that often characterize intra-disciplinary monographs. This
is an inclusive work that is aimed at a broad community of scholars and
intelligent people in general, based on my belief that there is a public
interest in moving beyond emotionality to the mechanisms of systemic
destruction.Afterall,thewayinwhichthefateofbooksandlibrarieswas
entwined with that of human casualties is one of the great stories of the
twentieth century.
While the overall framework (and some portions of the case studies)
would not be new to political scientists, specialisthistorians,orgenocide
scholars, I think they might be interested in the comparative scope and
PREFACE xi
the application of theories of political violence to a previously under-
explored topic. In writing the book, I am aware that I violate a scholarly
taboo against comparative genocide (and, by extension, comparison of
relatedphenomena).However,IstandwithIsraelCharny(1996,xi)inthe
belief that “all cases of genocide are similar and different, special and
unique, and appropriately subject to comparative analysis.” Genocide
studies as a whole, especially the “uniqueness” arena, need to move be-
yond remembrance, denial, and factionalism to a truly comparative ap-
proach, which focuses on the universality of the phenomenon (Knuth
1999).
Toavoidterminologicalminefields,Ihavetriedtoconstructoperational
definitions of contestable terms such as ideology, race, and imperialism.
Except for “libricide,” I used common terms with a history of usage that
was appropriate to my subject. Nevertheless, a few terms benefit from
advance clarification. I have used “books” to refer to any long writtenor
printed works, and “libraries” to signify all informational materials (in-
cluding books, documents, manuscripts, maps, photographs, archival re-
cords, electronic databases, etc.) that have been gathered together and
preserved. A library can be the millions of items in a national library
collection, the working library of a scholar, a small personal library that
includes genealogical records, an archive, a government records collec-
tion, or a shelf of holy texts. When I use the word “destruction,” I am
referring,inthecaseofabook,toitsphysicaldestruction(usuallythrough
burning or pulping) or to gross damages. When used with reference to
libraries, “destruction” may refer to thephysicaldestructionofitscollec-
tion,ortothedismantlementanddispersalofacollectionthroughlooting
orwidespreadpurging.Thedestructionofalibraryinvolvesnotonlyloss
or damage to its material contents, but curtailment of its ability to serve
personal,sociocultural,andpoliticalfunctions.Tothegreatestextentpos-
sible, I have, in the case studies, presented the functional losses as well
as quantifying the physical losses.
Reliable figures on losses, however, are hard to come by for several
reasons. First, the varied format of items, particularly those in archival
and historical collections, resists quantification. Second, catalogues and
documentation may never have existed—or may have been lost with the
books.Becauselibricideusuallyoccursduringwarormassivecivilunrest,
booksandevenentirecollectionsbecomeflotsamastheyundergogeneral
looting, random vandalism, combat conditions, and urban bombing. In
addition, calculations can be conflated by political factors, such as post-
war revenge or cultural restitution motives or ongoing authoritarian con-
trols on information. For example, the Soviet Union claimed immense