[3] It is a federal library[a] overseen by the Ministry of Culture, including being under its fiscal jurisdiction.

There are items in 247 languages of the world, the foreign part representing about 29 percent of the entire collection.

These, as well as approximately 200 paintings and more than 20,000 prints, which had been selected from the collection of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg,[16] could be seen in the Pashkov House (a palace, established between 1784 and 1787, in the proximity of the Kremlin).

Tsar Alexander II of Russia donated the painting The Appearance of Christ Before the People by A.

After the October Revolution the contents again grew enormously, and again lack of space became an urgent problem.

Part of the collections, in particular the Western European art and antiques, were thus transferred to the Pushkin Museum.

Pashkov House (at 3 Mokhovaya Street) was renamed the Old Building of the Russian State Library.

In 1925 the library was renamed the V. I. Lenin State Library of the USSR (Russian: Государственная библиотека СССР имени В. И. Ленина (ГБЛ), romanized: Gosudarstvennaja biblioteka SSSR imeni V. I. Lenina (GBL)).

[20] Design of the new buildings of the Lenin Library was to be decided through a competition announced in December 1927.

[32][27] The last component of Shchuko's plan, a 250-seat reading hall, was opened in 1945; further additions continued until 1960.

Lenin Library was one of two institutions that were permitted to take part in international book exchange until 1955.

[38][35] International books coming into the library during this period numbered to over 40,000, mainly science related.

[48] Until 1961 only Lenin Library was decently furnished to handle and copy adequate numbers of microfilm.

[50] In 1968 the building reached its capacity, and the library launched construction of a new depository in Khimki, earmarked for storing newspapers, scientific works and low-demand books from the main storage areas.

[9] In that year the library received over 357,000 thousand copies of documents including foreign items.

[73] The holdings include a manuscript collection dating to the sixth century,[9] family and estate archives including those of industrial and land-owning dynasties, personal papers of notable individuals from across the spectrum, and an autograph collection.

[74] The collection includes a Gutenberg Bible,[75] Ivan Fedorov's "Apostles" (1564) and first editions of works by Nicolaus Copernicus, Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton.

[79] The United Nations' Memory of the World Programme saw involvement with digitized items such as the Arkhangelsk Gospel (year 1092) and old Russian newspapers, maps, posters.

[82] With regard to music, digitization of old printed music allows for its preservation and easier distribution and access to those interested including researchers; the digitization attempts to capture the artistic nature as well, including the art on covers and markings by owners and so on.

As its size grew with yearly additions, the number of virtual reading rooms of the Digital Dissertation Library also increased, including those in other countries.

[87] The Lenin Library, including its Bureau of Library Guidance and Research, had a numerous publications– collections, manuals and catalogues, book promotions, bibliographic lists, works on socio-political topics, technical publications, and art related publications.

[88] Bibliotekovedenie (Russian Journal of Library Science) [ru] was founded in 1952 and received its current name in 1993.