Prometheus Research Library

The Prometheus Research Library is a working research facility for a wide range of Marxist studies and also the central reference archives of the Spartacist League of the U.S., section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). Library holdings include substantial materials on the organizations inspired and led by Marx, Engels... , Lenin, and Trotsky, as well as works on related topics, sometimes remote. The purpose of the PRL is to collect, preserve, and make available the historical record of the international workers movement and to assist Marxist scholarship. It is both a strength and weakness of the library that its documentary collection centers on the early American Communist and later Trotskyist movement. We seek to acquire documents from all sides of the internal debates so as to facilitate the study of the development of party struggles with objectivity, consistent with the tradition of our forebears. Citing Lenin, the masthead of the first issue of the American Trotskyist Militant proclaimed in 1928: He who takes somebodys word for it is a hopeless idiot. The Librarys collection, which does not circulate, grew out of the accumulated and organized holdings of James Robertson, both correspondence and printed materials. The collection now includes over 7,000 books, pamphlets, and periodical volumes, 270 reels of microfilmed documents and periodicals, and over 200 linear feet of archival documents and bulletins. Particular emphasis is on minutes of leading committees and internal discussion material. Approximately three-quarters of the holdings are in English. There are significant materials in Russian: over 300 titles covering much of the record of the Bolshevik Party in the form of stenographic records of Congresses and Conferences, public leaflets, internal party documents, early Cheka reports, memoirs, as well as publications and exile correspondence of the Left Opposition. Holdings in German, French, Spanish, Polish, Chinese, Greek, and other languages are also significant. Books ...Read More