Pacific Rim Russian Librarianship: Forgotten Collectors for the Hoover Institution on Manchuria

Abstract

Collecting efforts by the Hoover Institution among Russian émigrés in China is a little-known story, told in this article through the biographies of Harold H. Fisher, Elena A. Varneck, Ivan I. Serebrennikov, and Robert V. Smith. The collection of documents, diaries, reports, books, and periodicals focuses on two broad topics: the Russian civil war in Siberia and the Far East, and the history of the Chinese Eastern Railway. The problems involved in collecting materials connected to events that recently occurred largely centered around money (especially the lack of it) and trying to decide whose materials were the most valuable.