Dmitry Andreyevich Balika (1894 – 1971) was a pedagogue and library figure.
He was born in the settlement of Sednev in Chernigov Governorate into a peasant family. In 1911 he successfully graduated from a Realschule in Chernigov and entered the Polytechnic Institute in Saint Petersburg; from the age of 17 he lived on his own earnings — his father was unable to help him. During his student years he became involved in the revolutionary movement, taking part in the work of an underground circle.
As a result he was unable to finish the institute: he was exiled to the Urals under police surveillance. Here began his path as a teacher and educator, to which Dmitry Balika would remain faithful his whole life. He worked as head of a zemstvo district library and as a librarian, and from May 1917 as an instructor of out-of-school education in the town of Belebey. In 1919 the Party sent him to Tomsk, where for three years he headed a polytechnic college and successfully studied at advanced pedagogical courses. Upon completing them Dmitry Andreyevich himself began teaching pedagogy at the history and philology faculty of Tomsk State University. However, his parents' illness soon called him to Kyiv… There he again worked for a time as a librarian, and from 1925 to 1930 as a scholarly bibliographer of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, heading postgraduate studies in book studies and bibliography. In 1930 Dmitry Andreyevich moved to work at the Nizhny Novgorod Pedagogical Institute. From 1936 to 1944 Balika worked at our regional library: its holdings exceeded 2 million items, and it needed a specialist such as Dmitry Andreyevich. As head of the bibliography department he pursued independent scholarly work; among his discoveries were the personal library of Maxim Gorky, the printed works of I.N. Ulyanov, and highly valuable early-printed and rare books. Over these years Balika published more than 100 scholarly works, articles, and notes. From the autumn of 1944 Dmitry Andreyevich returned to teaching at the Gorky State Pedagogical Institute (GGPI), and from 1 September 1945 he was a professor at the department of pedagogy of the Gorky GGPI. Here he would work until the end of his life. The contribution of D.A. Balika as a scholar-bibliographer is hard to overstate: he studied readers' social groups, developed methods for cultivating reader interest, methods for organizing a subject catalogue, and examined the problem of studying the reading process from the standpoint of psychology. Dmitry Andreyevich studied the history of libraries in pre-revolutionary Russia and wrote articles about illegal workers' libraries in Sormovo. Balika published fascinating studies of marginal notes in the books of Maxim Gorky and P.I. Melnikov-Pechersky. More than 200 of his printed works are devoted to bibliography. Dmitry Andreyevich carried on extensive correspondence within the USSR and abroad and had a passion for literary studies, but he considered scholarly and teaching work in the field of pedagogy to be his main pursuit — his pen produced more than 100 works on various questions of pedagogical theory and practice. D.A. Balika's authority is also recognized in the history of pedagogy: he studied the pedagogical views of V.G. Belinsky, L.N. Tolstoy, N.K. Krupskaya, and I.N. Ulyanov.
For his conscientious work Balika was awarded the badge "Excellent Worker of Public Education" and the medal "For Valiant Labour in the The Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945", as well as an Honorary Diploma of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR.
Balika forever inscribed his name into the history of pedagogy and librarianship on Nizhny Novgorod land.