Natalia Vasilyevna Varbanets (24 October 1916; Odessa – 17 February 1987; Leningrad) was a Soviet bibliographer and medievalist. She worked at the National Library of Russia from 1938 to 1982 (with interruptions). She authored more than thirty scientific works, including the first Russian-language monograph on Johannes Gutenberg (1980). She is known for her professional and personal relationships with historians V. S. Liublinsky and L. N. Gumilev. She also associated with poet Anna Akhmatova and pianist Maria Yudina, and left memoirs about the latter.

Natalia Varbanets came from the family of an engineer –ethnical Croat– on her mother's side, she belonged to the Rosset family. She spent her entire conscious life in Leningrad. In the 1930s, she graduated from the Higher Foreign Language Courses, and starting in 1934, she began working in various Leningrad libraries. Thanks to her acquaintance and long-term personal relationship with V. Liublinsky, in 1938 she was hired by the State Public Library. She completed her secondary education with distinction and was admitted without exams to the Leningrad State University. In 1941, she enrolled in nursing courses; subsequently, she was drafted into the Red Army (demobilized in December 1942) and until 1945 worked in a hospital as a civilian employee. She was awarded medals. From 1947–1949, she closely associated with L. N. Gumilev (until his arrest). In 1954–1956, they resumed correspondence, with more than fifty letters preserved. During Lev Gumilev's imprisonment, Varbanets maintained contact with his mother Anna Akhmatova. According to one version, Akhmatova, believing Varbanets to be an informant for the competent authorities, turned Gumilev against her, leading to a painful breakup. The adoptive daughter and heir to N. Varbanets' archive was the theater artist M. Kozyreva – goddaughter of Lev Gumilev; her archive preserves many documents from those years, as well as several watercolors in a primitive style, reflecting the moods and feelings of N. Varbanets in the early 1950s.

After returning to the staff of the Public Library, N. Varbanets mainly worked in the rare books department, where her professional activity focused on incunabule. In 1952, she graduated by correspondence from the N. K. Krupskaya Library Institute, and in 1972 defended her dissertation there for the degree of Candidate of Philological Sciences. Based on the dissertation, in 1980 the monograph Johannes Gutenberg and the beginning of printing in Europe was published, receiving positive reviews from professional medievalists. Until the end of her life, N. Varbanets worked on compiling a catalog of early printed editions of ancient texts, begun jointly with V. Liublinsky. This catalog was published only in 2007.

Biography

Librarian The main sources for the biography of N. V. Varbanets are her personal file at the Russian National Library and the memoirs of her heiress, M. Kozyreva. Natalia Vasilyevna was born in Odessa in the family of Croatian engineer Vasily Efimovich Varbanets (1886 – after 1940) and Olga Pavlovna Russet, belonging to the Rosset family. Her parents divorced after the revolution, and she was raised by her mother, who moved to Petrograd in 1923. In 1931, she graduated from seven grades of the 17th secondary school, from where she transferred to the final cycle of the Higher State Courses of Foreign Languages, but did not take state exams. Almost her entire professional life was connected with books: in June–November 1934, Natalia worked as a librarian at the Central Park of Culture and Recreation (where she met V. Lyublinsky); in 1935–1936, she served as a librarian at the House of Engineering and Technical Workers named after Molotov; from March 1936 to November 1937, at the library of Leningrad Institute of History, Philosophy, and Linguistics.

Thanks to her acquaintance with V. Lyublinsky, in 1937 N. Varbanets was hired on a contract basis in the manuscript department of the National Library, and in December 1938 she was transferred to the staff. In her personnel record sheet, she indicated knowledge of French, German, and Latin languages. In 1939–1941, she studied at the adult secondary school No. 21 and the first year of the Philological Faculty of Leningrad State University, where she was admitted without exams. After the start of the Great Patriotic War, she was drafted into the Red Army, served as a nurse in Leningrad Hospital No. 1448, and survived the Siege of Leningrad. She was demobilized on 31 December 1942, worked as a civilian employee in the same hospital until 10 January 1945. She was awarded the medals "For the Defense of Leningrad" and "For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945". Returning to work at the GPB, she participated in sorting the library collections returned from evacuation. She was then enrolled in the staff of the newly created rare books department of the GPB in 1946, where she began preparing a catalog of incunabules; the first issue was compiled in 1948 in co-authorship with V. Lyublinsky. The department was located in the "Faust's Study", across the hall from which were the collections of the library of Voltaire. G. V. Nikolskaya, who knew Varbanets earlier from the library of the House of Engineering and Technical Workers, also served in the department. In 1947–1950, Natalia Varbanets was the trade union organizer of the rare books department; in 1949, due to the arrest of department employee L. S. Gordon (his daughter Maryana settled with Natalia Vasilyevna) and the forced dismissal of V. S. Lyublinsky for three years, she was transferred to the cataloging department. A denunciation against her mentioned that Varbanets' father was exiled from Leningrad in 1935.

Scholar-bibliographer In 1948–1952, Natalia Varbanets studied by correspondence at the Library Institute named after N. K. Krupskaya, graduating with a specialty in bibliography. She developed a method for constructing a catalog of incunabule and ways of describing them, and prepared the first "Instructions for Cataloging Incunabules" in the USSR. She participated in the preparation of the catalog of the library of Voltaire, published in 1961. In 1961, N. V. Varbanets, together with other colleagues, was part of the authorial collective of the first guide to the collections of the rare books department of the GPB. The guide, printed on rotaprint in an edition of 100 copies, instantly became a bibliographic rarity. N. V. Varbanets' career progressed: in 1953, she became a bibliographer in the rare books department ("due to the appearance of a vacancy"), in 1965 – junior research associate, in 1975 – chief librarian, in 1977 – senior research associate. In 1969, the rare books department was abolished and merged with the manuscript department, which worsened the position of N. V. Varbanets, who prepared bibliographic and archaeographic references, conducted consultations, excursions, and classes with students. A significant part of her time was spent on documentary verification of collections, reconciliation, and editing of card catalogs. On 18 February 1971, N. Varbanets held an off-site meeting of the bibliophile section of the Leningrad society of collectors in the incunabule room of the GPB on the topic "At the Dawn of Book Printing".

In 1972, at the Leningrad Institute of Culture, N. V. Varbanets defended her dissertation for the degree of Candidate of Philological Sciences Johann Gutenberg and the Beginning of Book Printing in Europe, published in monograph form in 1980. This monograph made Natalia a recognized specialist in the history of early printed books. In the 1970s, she continued the work begun with V. Lyublinsky on compiling a catalog of ancient authors in 15th-century editions, and this topic was included in her work plan. Later, there were many conflicts in the library staff, in which N. Varbanets wrote disapprovingly to M. Kozyreva. Partly they were provoked by Varbanets' reluctance to hand over the manuscript of the incunabule catalog she had prepared to the library's disposal. In February 1982, Natalia Vasilyevna Varbanets was dismissed from the GPB due to reduction. By order of the Minister of Defense dated 6 April 1985, as a defender of Leningrad during the blockade, N. V. Varbanets was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd class. She died in 1987 (on the 17th or, according to other sources, 18 February) at the age of seventy.

The obituary for N. V. Varbanets was published by the English Slavist John Simmons, who had previously paid tribute to the merits of V. S. and A. D. Lyublinsky. Simmons' obituaries appeared in the "Memorials" series; each of the eight published issues included a bibliography of the deceased scholar and his portrait; they expressed the author's personal gratitude.

Scientific contributions

Bibliographic work

The problem of continuity between manuscripts and early printed books At the Public Library, N. V. Varbanets' main work involved processing incunabule, which included their study, verification of condition and the presence of specially preserved copies, and reconciliation with the alphabetical catalog. Becoming a specialist, N. Varbanets began studying the invention of printing in Europe in a broad historical-cultural context. She was also interested in the design of the first typographic fonts, their evolution from manuscript hands, and the features of the layout of early printed books: initials, headings, rubric signs, illustrations. She substantiated the enormous importance of these questions in numerous theoretical and methodological publications of the 1960s–1970s. Through her own experience working with incunabule collections, Natalia Varbanets became convinced of the direct continuity between manuscript and early printed traditions, which was expressed in the anonymity of editions (there were printers who deliberately preserved anonymity, not indicating names in colophons, and their identity was revealed only thanks to later archival discoveries) and the colossal variety of typefaces, often determined by the hand of the manuscript from which the typesetting was carried out. The fonts of early printers were individual, as they served as an additional distinctive mark of skill: a master sought to maintain a monopoly on his own font. This was an additional opportunity for attributing editions lacking publication data. On this principle, the systematization of 15th-century fonts by printing houses was built, which allowed incunabulists to sometimes attribute even fragments of surviving editions. In a sociocultural sense, the font constituted the printer's main capital and the most labor-intensive and expensive part of the technical equipment. Thus, printers long used the same font, and by the end of the century, trade in fonts and joint use of one master's fonts by several printing houses became common. However, due to the principle of font changes when transferring to another owner (even in minor details), opportunities for discoveries arose, in particular, in the repertoire of texts relevant to their time.

Incunabule studies