Man of culture

Lyudmila Ulitskaya about Ekaterina Genieva

It is very difficult to list in one paragraph the whole contribution of Ekaterina Yuryevna Genieva to Russian culture. She headed the All -Russian Library of Foreign Literature for 22 years, she was an excellent philologist, specialist in English literature, she founded the institute of tolerance, she was an expert of UNESCO, she was a professional of the highest level, which was known and appreciated both in Russia and around the world. On the second anniversary of death, Gorky asked the prose writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya (recognized as a “foreign agent”) to tell about Ekaterina Genieva.

Please tell us how you met Ekaterina Yuryevna?

I met Ekaterina Yuryevna Genieva in the late seventies. Both of us talked with priest Alexander Menem, and it was thanks to him that we met. But this acquaintance became close and, shortly after the death of Father Alexander, grew into friendship. He was a man outstanding, extremely talented, highly educated, a kind of magnet for the intelligentsia. In those years, it was precisely to him with their questions that Averintsev and Solzhenitsyn, Galich and Okudzhava, Vyacheslav Ivanov and Andrei Smirnov, Grigory Pomeranz came to him ... It was through the father of Alexander that I met Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam ... Our close friendship with Ekaterina Yuryevna fell on the last decade of her life.

In one interview, you mentioned that Ekaterina Yuryevna had few friends, but there was a lot of work. Was she a lonely man?

In no case can Ekaterina Yuryevna be called a lonely person. On the contrary, she was always in a whirlpool of people, was in demand every minute of her life. She had almost no time left for quiet and optional communication, in which not common things bind people, but simply a desire to be together, to spread, maybe several insignificant words, express their word -of -sided sympathy, love. And I was chosen by Katya in a friend, but not vice versa. I would be ashamed to take her time - in comparison with her, I am a idle, free person, nothing is proper to anyone ... And she had a huge circle of responsibilities: those who were connected with her colossal activity, and those that she took on voluntarily ...

What is your meeting with Ekaterina Yuryevna remembered most of all?

Ekaterina Yuryevna and I quite often went to different Russian cities, she invited me a couple of times to a library conference in Sudak, which she spent for many years in a row. We traveled together several times on library matters and abroad. But the most important ones remained in my memory, of course, our meetings of the last year of her life, when the diagnosis was already made, and it was clear to me that her life was nearing the end. I wrote about this more than once. By this time, I myself had undergone oncological surgery, I had my own experience of this approach to the last earth's journey, and perhaps this circumstance especially brought us closer. My friends have already gone, and the experience of farewell to loved ones and loved ones is very rich, unfortunately.

Katin was the departure of a Christian. She was by nature an excellent student: everything that she did was always at the limit of human capabilities. So she left impeccably: in full consciousness, in the complete awareness of what was happening, without fear, courageously and generously in relation to loved ones.

L. Ulitskaya and E. Genieva

Photo: http://rossaprimavera.ru

What were its basic principles and what was the most important to her?

Ekaterina Yuryevna was a state -owned person both in her warehouse and by huge talents, including organizational. Since I myself have no principles, but there is only a strong momentary reaction that I follow, then the principles as such are never interested in. And Katina as well. I think that she was a man of culture, and this was the main thing in her. She served her work, considering him extremely important. And she did it so gambling, talented and contagious that I was in a sense, under her influence. The most important thing for her was her activity.

You ask me questions that I am bored of answering ... It does not matter what quality it seems to me the most important and which is less important. If we talk about Ekaterina Yuryevna on the day of the anniversary - already the second! - Her death, then not about the details and intricacies of the life of the library, or about its projects, brilliant or unsuccessful, I would like to talk about something completely different. She was a first -class politician, the scale of Margaret Thatcher, Angels Merkel - one of her last performances, about a month before his death, was in the English parliament - and she knew how to talk like a genuine aristocrat, on an equal footing, with a cleaner in the library and higher authorities, which, neither in their cultural level, nor in their moral and business qualities were not suitable for her.

The tragedy of our time, our country, just consists that people of the scale of Ekaterina Yuryevna Genieva are not in demand. Moreover, undesirable. She left very early, in the whole forces, and I constantly think about what God's mercy was in this early care: the last year of her life was overshadowed by the shadow of persecution. If it were not for her death, she would have to be excommunicated from the work of her life, from the library, to be put into retirement, humiliated, destroyed. Clouds gathered above her head, and she was well aware of it. Our proximity in the last years of her life allows me to say this.

If you try to formulate her motto - culture and education, that was the matter of her life. And this is exactly what could be saving for the existence of our state. And this is exactly what the power that has existed today in Russia is fighting against rage.

Ekaterina Yuryevna Genieva was not the Minister of Culture in the formal sense. But, in essence, she was this minister, and spent a lot of effort on fighting officials from culture ... Nobody in our country did so much for education, for the development and preservation of culture, like it. No one spent a comparable in the significance of cultural work. Publisher, institute of tolerance, seminars, library support - a whole cultural world was created by it. Everyone who stood next to her knows this. This was felt by those who did not even know her name, but to whom the waves of her meaningful and purposeful work reached.

In the eternal secret war of politics and culture, Ekaterina Yuryevna was a banner. During her leadership, dozens of cultural centers were opened in Foreigne. At the end of her life, for political reasons, these centers began to close “from above”. The struggle to preserve the American cultural center was especially acute. Katya was a Joyce specialist, but that Joyce is for our officials. Who knows his name? She heroically defended cultural centers, and it was this confrontation that revealed the true balance of power. Before a dumb car, you can only lie on the rails - it does not understand another language ...

Today, the word "European" has lost its true meaning - cultural and moral content. She led those bridges between our country unripe to the European consciousness, which have been staggering for recent decades, and European civilization. It was she who, by all his strength and energy, sought to return to the defeated Germany the books that were rotted after the war, rotting in the damp basements where they were destroyed, unclaimed, unread. And this was the generosity of the genuine knight of culture.

Did her fate take place? Yes, took place. She did a tremendously a lot. But it did not take place either - at another time and in other circumstances it could have done more. She was the person who could be both the president of the country and his prime minister ... And in Europe she could bring much benefit.

About ten years before her death, Ekaterina Yuryevna received an offer to head UNESCO. It was a proposal that is quite appropriate for its possibilities. But she refused - out of love. Out of love for her beloved house, to whom she served selflessly, - a library of foreign literature, a foreigner.
A month ago, a two -volume man came out with the works of Ekaterina Yuryevna, with the memories of people who communicated with her. This is a good book, but still I had the feeling that we are underestimating her personality.
In the courtyard of a foreigner there is a sculptural park, it was invented and realized. Now there is a monument to Ekaterina Yuryevna. I don't like this monument. But the monument that she left about herself was not in bronze. He is in our memory of her.