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Visit of Alexander I to the library in 1812.

Visit of Nicholas I to the library in 1853.

The Russian National Library in St Petersburg, known as the State Public Saltykov-Shchedrin Library in 1932-92 (i.e. in the Soviet era), is the oldest public library in Russia. It should not be confused with the Russian State Library, located in Moscow.

It was established as the Imperial Public Library in 1795 by Catherine the Great, who inaugurated its collection with the domestic libraries of Voltaire and Diderot, which she had purchased from their heirs. The foundation and cornerstone of the library came from the Załuski's Library from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (250,000 volumes) ^[1]. Those Polish books were transferred to Poland by the Russian SFSR in 1921 ^[2] In 1811 funds of the library began to grow rapidly, because since then a copy of each book, published in the Imperial Russia was deposited with the library. And by 1914 the library contained 3,000,000 volumes. ^[2]

The library's main building on the Nevsky Prospekt was built to a Neoclassical design by Yegor Sokolov in 1796-1801. Several annexes were added in the course of the following century, notably the Gothic Hall (1857). For two decades after its foundation, the institution was run by Count Alexander Stroganov, who secured for the library some of its most invaluable treasures, namely the Ostromir Gospel, the earliest book written in Russian language, and the Hypatian Codex of the Russian Primary Chronicle.

The library was officially opened on January 3, 1814 in the presence of Gavrila Derzhavin and Ivan Krylov. Its second director was Aleksey Olenin (1763-1843), during whose term in office Krylov, Konstantin Batyushkov, Nikolay Gnedich, Anton Delvig, Mikhail Zagoskin, Alexander Vostokov, and Father Ioakinf joined the library staff. Sergey Uvarov served as the deputy director. The library's doors were opened to all kinds of readers, including women and peasants.

From 1849 to 1861 the library was run by Count Modest von Korff (1800-76), who had been Alexander Pushkin's school-fellow at the Lyceum. He added to the library's collections the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament (the Codex Sinaiticus from the 340s) and the Old Testament (the so-called Leningrad Codex). Korff was succeeded in office by Ivan Delyanov.

In 1939 the library was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour. In 1948, the Neoclassical campus of the Catherine Institute on the Fontanka Embankment (Giacomo Quarenghi, 1804-07) was assigned to the library. By 1970, the Library contained more than 17,000,000 items. The modern building for the book depository was erected on the Moskovsky Prospekt in the 1980s and 1990s.

St. Petersburg Bede (746)	Trebizond Gospel (10th cent.)	Ostromir Gospel (1056)	Spiridon Psalter (1397)
Guyart de Moulin's Bible Historiale (1350s)	Simon Marmion's Grandes Chroniques de France (1450s)	Breviary of Mary Stuart (1490s)	Lancelot du Lac (ca. 1500)

1. ^ Малый энциклопедический словарь Брокгауза и Ефрона, published in the Imperial Russia in the early 1900s
2. ^ ^{a b} Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd. edition

• Official site of the library
• Russian National Library on the Fontanka Embankment
• Russian National Library on the Moscow Prospect
• The personal library of Voltaire as exhibited in the RNL

Coordinates: 59.933516° N 30.335634° E