Soviet Encyclopedia

Большая советская энциклопедия

Language	Russian
Subject	General
Publisher	Советская Энциклопедия
Publication date	1926–1981 (printed version)
Media type	30 volumes (hardbound) in 1981
OCLC	14476314

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (GSE) (Russian: Большая советская энциклопедия, or БСЭ Bolshaya sovetskaya entsiklopediya) is one of the largest Russian-language encyclopedias. published by the Soviet state from 1926 to 1990, and again since 2002 by Russia (under the name Bolshaya Rossiyskaya entsiklopediya or Great Russian Encyclopedia). The GSE claimed to be the first Marxist-Leninist general-purpose encyclopedia.

The idea of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia emerged in 1923 on the initiative of Otto Schmidt, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In early 1924 Schmidt worked with a group which included Mikhail Pokrovsky, (rector of the Institute of Red Professors), Nikolai Meshcheryakov (Head of Gosizdat, the State Publishing House), Valery Bryusov (poet), Veniamin Kagan (mathematician) and Konstantin Kuzminsky to draw up a proposal which was agreed by the in April 1924. Also involved was Anatoly Lunacharsky, Commissar of Enlightenment (Narkompros), who had previously been involved with a proposal by Alexander Bogdanov and Maxim Gorky to produce a Workers' Encyclopedia.

There were three editions. The first edition of 65 volumes (65,000 entries, plus a supplementary volume about the Soviet Union) was published during 1926–1947, the chief editor being Otto Schmidt (until 1941). The second edition of 50 volumes (100,000 entries, plus a supplementary volume) was published in 1950–1958; chief editors: Sergei Vavilov (until 1951) and Boris Vvedensky (until 1969); two index volumes to this edition were published in 1960. The third edition of 1969–1978 contains 30 volumes (100,000 entries, plus an index volume issued in 1981). Volume 24 is in two books, one being a full-sized book about the USSR, all with about 21 million words, and the chief editor being Alexander Prokhorov (since 1969). In the third edition, much attention was paid to the philosophical problems of natural sciences, physical and chemical sciences, and mathematical methods in various branches of knowledge.