The Library of Grand Dukes Vladimirovich in a “Dark Mirror” of New York Public Library

The article analyzes information about collections of rarities exported from the Soviet Russia abroad in the 1920s and 1930s in connection with the sale of its most valuable collections.The focus of attention is on information from a rare American reference book published by Norman Ross Publishing Inc. in 1999 and containing information about the history of replenishment of the book collections of the Hoover Institution, Harvard University, the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress. For the history of Russian book culture, it is important that among the 639 bibliographic descriptions there are about 300 items of storage that previously belonged to the library collection of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, whose own library after 1881 merged with the library of his father, Emperor Alexander II.