The ICCROM community is shocked and saddened by news of the weekend blaze that consumed an estimated 1 million historic titles belonging to the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences (INION) in Moscow, the principal Russian library for humanities and Slavic languages, founded in 1918. In addition, the Institute houses centres for Franco-Russian and Germanic studies, as well as British, American and Italian works dating back to the 18th century.
The loss has been compared to the Chernobyl disaster by the president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Dr Vladimir Fortov.
The Director-General and staff of ICCROM express our deep sadness at this tragic loss of irreplaceable research materials, though we note with relief that no lives were lost.