Maria Bloshteyn writes for Punctured Lines about her family’s library, painfully assembled and now being disposed of equally painfully (her essay is preceded by Yelena Furman’s brief introduction):
The books are a heartache. I have been dreading this moment for years. My mother, the adored and formidable matriarch of our small family, had moved into a nursing home after struggling with dementia for the past several years. She doesn’t care now what will happen to the family library, but I do. These are, after all, the books that we brought with us from the Soviet Union, when we left it forever in 1979. I grew up looking at their spines both in our Leningrad flat and in our Toronto apartment: light brown for the complete edition of Pushkin, mauve for Heine’s poems, beige for Tolstoy’s collected works. The classics, the translated classics, the poetry chapbooks, the art albums, the subscription editions, children’s literature—they are all here. Once, they provided the continuity between the two vastly different worlds: one that was forever lost to us and the other that we were slowly learning to inhabit. Reading and rereading them kept me sane as I, rarely at a loss for words, found myself suddenly language-poor and unable to either defend myself against nasty verbal attacks I faced in school as the Russian kid, or to express myself adequately to friendlier others.
These are the books that I am now packing into large cardboard boxes, as I am deciding their fate. Lowering them in, one by one, I think of the books that we weren’t allowed to bring with us as we left: most prominently, unfairly, and painfully, the single volume of Pushkin’s poems that my grandfather, part of the 13th Air Army during World War II, sent to my mother, evacuated to a village in the Urals. We weren’t allowed to take it, because it was published before some arbitrarily assigned cut-off year, which made it, ridiculously, a possible antiquity of value to the State. The passage of years hadn’t dimmed my sense of outrage.
The books that we were allowed to bring were mostly purchased by my parents during the years of their marriage. My father, whose promising law career was tanked by a prison term received as a result of taking the Soviet Codex of Labor Laws at face value, worked as an auditor for Dom knigi, the largest and most famous bookstore in Leningrad, located in a landmark building on Nevsky prospekt. Once a month, he would bring home a list of books available for purchase. It was a privilege extended to the associates of Dom knigi. And a real privilege it was.
The Soviet Union proclaimed itself to be the best-read country in the world. This boast was largely true. If you got onto a bus or a streetcar in the seventies, most passengers would be reading. Entertainment at home—where television meant two or three channels of largely boring programming—was also reading. Yet, if you walked into a book store, the selection of books available to an average customer without special connections was pathetically limited. You could choose from Leonid Brezhnev’s speeches and, if you were lucky, Lenin’s collected works. There was, however, a thriving black market for books. Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s collected works, for example, fetched ninety roubles on the black market—the monthly salary of an engineer. Books were a hot commodity and having access to books at the official prices (helpfully stamped onto the back cover) was a coveted benefit. Not that anyone ever resold books in our family—we bought our books for keeps.
I remember that Dom knigi on Nevsky prospekt, and the wretched selection of books available there (fortunately I was able to buy the books I wanted in Helsinki); I can imagine the joy of having access to real books under such circumstances. I can also imagine the pain of having to give them up:
The books were there for us as no friends could ever be—a 24/7 resource to be reached for as support, entertainment, escape, and a source of wisdom. They were there as I grew up, went to university and to graduate school. They were there as I amassed my own library of books, in Russian as well as in English, got married, and had kids. My husband is Canadian-born and has no connections with Russia except through me. My kids read in English. The books that I am taking from the family library now will therefore be for my own use. I can’t possibly keep all or even most of them—our many bookshelves at home are already overflowing with books and I have given up many of my other books to make space as it is. So now I’m deciding which books to keep and which books to donate to our multicultural resource library. They won’t be put on the library shelves—they’ll go to the book sale section, where anyone can purchase them for a symbolic sum that goes to fund the library. I know the book-sale section well. I picked up all kinds of treasures there over the years, all in fierce competition with other book hunters.
The books I’m leaving at the book sale will be someone’s windfall to be treasured. Yet, I still feel like I am betraying the books. Their aged, weathered covers exude reproach. I might as well, like Shakespeare’s Prospero, be drowning them deeper than did ever plummet sound. I go again through the books that I’m giving away, pull several out of the boxes and set them aside, take a deep breath, and drive the boxes to the library. One of the librarians is Russian—she knows what I’m going through. If it wasn’t for Covid, I’d get a hug. “Don’t worry,” she says, “they’ll find good homes.” Maybe, but still… I go through the boxes again, just in case. I take the lid off one box and eight volumes of the collected works of Anatole France stare up at me. I never liked Anatole France. I can’t imagine dipping into one of his books for pleasure. But my mother loved his ironic detachment and reread his books more than once. Maybe that’s what I need now, I think to myself—ironic detachment… I pull out all eight volumes from the box, holding them close as I struggle to balance them in my arms. “I’m taking these home,” I say to the librarian. “I’m not letting go of them just yet.”
There’s even a photo of “The author holding Anatole France’s collected works.” Ah, the joy of the book!
I think of the books that we weren’t allowed to bring with us as we left: most prominently, unfairly, and painfully, the single volume of Pushkin’s poems that my grandfather, part of the 13th Air Army during World War II, sent to my mother, evacuated to a village in the Urals.
This is heartbreaking. I look around me at the mementoes from my grandparents I’ve brought from Britain to NZ.
Yes indeed.
“well-read” must be начитанная.
I heard it in the form “Moscow is the most reading city in the world” (читающий).
I have spotted a claim that “Russia is the most reading country in the world” a minute ago elsewhere, which is quite funny (I haven’t heard it for years…). The author of the comment about Russia is wrong, though.*
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*It was a discussion of a site where you can publish your novel and I can pay for it and discuss it with other readers and you. Not the same as selling e-books, because: you sell it cheap, but the money are yours rather than publisher’s, and the forum/social network functionality makes the site popular. When the war began, the site took the Ukrainian side, ceased to access payments from Russia, ceased to accept payments in roubles, donated money to Ukrainian army. The author who I was reading (from LPR and unwilling to support any army) was quite angered and began posting new chapters on his page in a social network, which I am occasionaly reading because I worry for the author. The site apparently went bankrupt (many authors are Ukrainian, most readers are from Russia) and a Russian businessmen bought it. All of this is discussed by readers because the author does not have a source of income now. The commenter is Russian and likely pro-Russian, and he is wrong: what matters here is that Russia reads in Russian.
“If you got onto a bus or a streetcar in the seventies, most passengers would be reading. ” – This is an accurate assessment. A bench in a metro train where 5 people out of 6 are reading something was a usual sight.
“Entertainment at home—where television meant two or three channels of largely boring programming—was also reading.” – For me yes. But imagine you are a factory worker. You came home from the factory, it is 6 p.m. You are in a room in an appartment in an appartment block.
“Yet, if you walked into a book store, the selection of books available to an average customer without special connections was pathetically limited.” – true.
“You could choose from Leonid Brezhnev’s speeches and, if you were lucky, Lenin’s collected works. ” – a home library of an educated person in a large city is several thousands titles.
Those shelves full of boring novels (mostly not Lenin, just fiction that you are not interested in) were depressive, but it is not true that I or the author were not able to buy interesting books very often.
Unrelated:
One of Soviet bibliographic rarities is called “Night 584”. It occured to me it the title is a riddle.
As you can guess from the title, it is erotic fiction. And it is, as you can guess, one of 1001 nights. Printed in 150 copies “for researchers”….
Ha, that’s great! I presume it’s this.
I’m at the point of getting rid of books “I thought I might want to read some time”. They basically represent alternative selves by now, because I won’t live long enough to get to them. And also books I have kept because I liked one paragraph or one line, and books I bought in error, and books I’m sorry I read. But no treasures,