Moscow Library On Fire, Contains Rare Documents

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A Moscow library containing rare UN documents, ancient Slavic texts, and 14 million books is on fire

The Moscow library known as INION—the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences—went up in flames on the evening of Jan. 29.

Interfax reports that the fire, which started on the building’s third floor and spread to 2,000 square meters, is now contained. But damage already appears to be extensive, with at least part of the roof having fallen in.

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According to RIA, the library was founded in 1918, and is home to more than 14 million books, including rare texts in ancient Slavic languages, as well as documents from the League of Nations, UNESCO, and parliamentary reports from countries including the US dating back as far as 1789. One of Russia’s most important libraries, INION maintains a book exchange with 874 partners in 69 countries.
Injuries have been reported, but not yet confirmed (link in Russian). (source/more)

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(Some Russians are comparing it to the destruction of the library in Alexandria in ancient Egypt.)

For those interested in Austrian Economics, among the destroyed volumes were some of the books owned by Ludwig von Mises. When my wife, Anna, and I were in Moscow in the autumn of 1996 recovering photocopies of Ludwig von Mises’ “lost papers” from a formerly secret KGB archive, we realized that the collection of books that the Nazis had plundered from Mises’ Vienna apartment in 1938 and captured by the Soviet Army in 1945, had also been brought to Moscow after the war and absorbed into the general collection of the INION library.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56Y1DNB7GmY

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Ludwig von Mises' Books Lost to the Flames in Moscow Library Fire
Blaze devastates Russian academic library housing unique documents