#2
Moscow Times
March 18, 2002
The Pravda About the Fate of Kamkin Books
By Matt Bivens
Matt Bivens, a former editor of The Moscow Times, is a Washington-based fellow
of The Nation Institute [www.thenation.com].
"The country that is so proud of its democracy [has] decided to use the methods of Nazi Germany. On March 11, in Washington, it was decided to burn over 2 million books, Russian classics such as Pushkin and Dostoevsky. Yes, to burn [them]. The books belonged to Viktor Kamkin's shop, which was the largest store selling Russian literature for the last 50 years in Washington. However, because of the drop in demand, the company was declared bankrupt. ... In the 1930s, Hitler's thugs organized book burnings ... [and] who can guarantee to Americans that while annihilating today the bankrupt shop's books, one will not annihilate the works of writers and philosophers criticizing the social, political, or economic life of the U.S.? ... Americans do not read much, so their treatment of books is different from what Russians are accustomed to. Well, Lev Tolstoy is not Steven King [sic]; however, is it possible that in such a rich country there is no money to buy these books for libraries?"
-- Pravda.ru, March 11. [full text]
WASHINGTON -- Well, John Steinbeck is not Alexandra Marinina. So what?
And anyway, why are Americans being berated because fewer Russian emigres are patronizing my hometown's Victor Kamkin Books -- where the service was awful and the price mark-up outrageous? Russophiles can now order cheap books via the Internet or load up on them during trips to Moscow, so fewer and fewer can be bothered to pay a premium to interact with sullen Victor Kamkin staff -- no great surprise, then, that the bookstore had some business problems.
Here is the real story of fascist America and the burning of Pushkin and Dostoevsky: A Russian book store with an enormous warehouse hit the skids; the owner was facing eviction and the prospect of his stock being put out on the street. Local authorities pointed out that putting 2 million books into the street would not work and warned the books would instead be incinerated. Journalists wrote up the story, and it made its way to the front page of The Washington Post.
Thousands of Russian emigre and/or Russophile customers swamped the store on its final weekend -- hoping to buy a few very pricey books by way of expressing their support, or maybe hoping to get a better deal than the usual gouging. Connie Morella, the congresswoman from our district, took an interest, and so did the head of the Library of Congress. And a deal was brokered to send the books to libraries and Slavic collections across the United States at the expense of the taxpayer -- a deal that even freed Victor Kamkin Inc. from enough debt to allow it to open a new and smaller store. From Moscow came only dark suggestions that this deal would not hold and the classics would be burned in the end -- even as there were no constructive offers or interventions from Russian institutions.
Sure, there was luck involved here. If the books had been slated for recycling instead of burning, say, that less juicy story might have not made the Post; if the head of the Library of Congress was not James Billington, a leading Russia scholar, perhaps a happy ending would have been more elusive.
Nevertheless, many Russians I know have heard the story of how "in Washington it was decided to burn 2 million Russian classics." How many have heard that the real story is actually far more uplifting?
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