Director of the Imperial Public Library D. P. Buturlin

Director of the Imperial Public Library D. P. Buturlin left behind contradictory, but mostly negative memories of his contemporaries, based on his activities as chair of the censorship Committee on April 2, 1848, which went down in history as the “Buturlin Committee”. In the shadow of his position as the chief censor of the country, his fruitful activity as director of the first national library in Russia remained. The article presents new archival materials, important testimonies of the Library staff who served under him, and an attempt is made to objectively reproduce all the good undertakings of this director and point out the miscalculations he made.