Director of the Library of Foreign Literature Genieva. Crocodile tears of Ekaterina Genieva. - That is, these are not rumors

We agreed that she would write a preface to the new edition of “Conquer Cancer”: “I have something to say about this, I’ll definitely write it, I’ll be back from the trip now, when is the deadline?” she asked. I answered: “Ekaterina Yuryevna, there is still time.” “Katyunechka,” yes, that’s exactly what they said, “Katyunechka, there’s never time.”

...We met a year and a half ago. A couple of weeks after she was diagnosed. “Please read the Open Lecture,” I asked her in a letter. A few minutes later, in a reply letter, she sent her available dates. And for an hour and a half she told the crowded hall about Father Alexander Men and Academician Andrei Sakharov, about Father Georgy Chistyakov and Lyudmila Ulitskaya, about Pasternak and Lermontov, about the great library of Maria Fedorovna and the tiny one in the Central Russian outback, where the only employee asked Genieva to bring Chukovsky’s fairy tales , because the old book was worn out.

It was April 2014. The fear of war that had begun was not yet fully understood by anyone. And the people who asked Genieva questions after the lecture asked not about libraries, but about life: “You know, I can’t figure out what’s happening, how can I distinguish truth from untruth? “How not to be afraid,” asked a woman from the audience. Ekaterina Yuryevna, without twitching her eyebrow, answered: “You should never be afraid, you should believe in yourself.” And she answered three times longer than the allotted half hour. And her husband Yura and daughter Dasha were sitting in the hall. And I saw how worried they were. And how they held each other’s hand so as not to interrupt her, not to stop her, not to hint at her illness as an inability to live and act at the pace at which she was accustomed.

“Katyunechka, I have an idea,” this is how her calls began. From London, from Berlin, from Ulyanovsk and Novosibirsk. Sometimes from Israel, where she disappeared for chemotherapy and surgery. And no one, except those closest to her, ever knew what all this cost her.

… “Katyunechka, I just can’t understand the prospects. And it’s also very alarming that everyone around me is limiting me: this is impossible, it is not recommended. I really wouldn’t like to stop,” she told me a month later, when we met again. Moskovsky railway station in St. Petersburg. The next day - a lecture on the place of the library in modern world. But Genieva was not allowed into St. Petersburg libraries to give this lecture: in her Inostranka she had just hosted the Congress of the Intelligentsia, where those who were against the war and who did not accept “Crimea is ours” gathered. And it became dangerous for “systemic” people to be friends with Genieva.

Ekaterina Yurievna gave her lecture at the Anna Akhmatova Museum in the Fountain House. And she was flawless. In the evening we had dinner and discussed Napoleonic plans for library reform, education, distribution of books, “Open lectures” throughout Russia. She dreamed of participating in everything. And when “Open Lecture” had problems in one or another Russian city, she bravely rushed to help. However, we tried not to tell her about the problems.

Ekaterina Genieva at the Open Library. St. Petersburg, June 2015
Photo: Andrey Mishurov / “Open Library”

To be honest, I can’t imagine how much she accomplished in these one and a half years: I never kept up with her.

Two weeks ago she came to St. Petersburg again. Participate in “Dialogues” Open Library. Defending “Dynasty”, American Cultural Center in “Foreigner”, the right to education and enlightenment of the citizens of their country. And she did it, as always, fearlessly. And, unlike me, who muttered pessimistically: “For more than half of the country’s citizens, everything you talk about is unimportant and unnecessary,” she answered passionately: “Katyunechka, you’re wrong, education is like air, it cannot be neglected. It’s just very long and painstaking work.”

For the interview we met in the hotel lobby. There were two meetings before me, four more after. “You only scheduled seven meetings in one day?” – I tried to joke. “Yes, I started to get tired,” Genieva answered completely seriously. Towards the end of the interview, there was already a queue of people who had come to the meeting. And in the evening, for an hour and a half of Dialogues, Genieva, as if nothing had happened, maintained her royal bearing and spoke succinctly and accurately, passionately, with knowledge of the matter and pain about it.

In the evening we had dinner in a huge company. She is in a thin dress of impeccable style. The devil knows why all evening everyone kept asking her: “Ekaterina Yuryevna, aren’t you cold?” - "What do you! “It’s amazing to me,” she answered calmly. When I walked her to the car, I realized that she was rather hot: this is how “chemistry” works, this is how illness works. But she didn't say a word about it.

“Kiss, kiss, don’t see me off under any circumstances, I’ll get there just fine. Hello children. I’ll call, I have a couple of ideas that we should implement together, this is very important,” she told my husband and me. We didn't see each other again.

Due to the marathon, St. Petersburg was closed the next morning. She decided to walk to the station. From the train home, then to the airport, on the plane, to Israel and there - to the hospital she was already moving in a wheelchair. In Moscow, which she left behind, in the library, which she led for almost a quarter of a century, another check began...

Our interview with her had been waiting for editing all this time and was “hanging” in the unsent messages of my email. A week ago, for some reason, it naturally went to Meduza editor Katya Krongauz. Ekaterina Yuryevna read it after the fact and was pleased, even managed to write a letter. How? By what force? I can't imagine. And I was even able to call a couple of times and clarify: did we do this and that, did we call so-and-so, how are you, how are the children, how is Kolya?

And then her priceless husband and the most wonderful husband in the world, Yuri Belenky, sent reports about the strength that was leaving her. And he signed with the most tender of signatures: Yura Katin.

Ekaterina Yurievna Genieva left like great people leave. In the family circle, with a phone that won’t turn off, in business.

...Our youngest son has a Dutch lace baptismal shirt designed by her and made to her order (“my great-great-great-grandmother, Katyunechka, had one like this, can you imagine?”), I have an icon of saints on my window, invented and made to order Katerina and Nikolai, given by her to us for the wedding, which she did not have time to attend due to the endless library work (“this is perhaps the only thing I regret that I did not have time to do this year”).

...The night after she passed away, I dreamed that I asked: “Ekaterina Yuryevna, is it scary to die?” And she answers: “Dying is not scary. It’s scary to answer questions.” When I woke up, I thought: if she was scared, then what should it be like for all of us? How to be worthy of it? How to justify this happiness of one and a half years of friendship? How not to let us down and realize the million great ideas she has dropped in us?

... In the morning, when Ekaterina Yuryevna was no longer in the world, her friend Lyudmila Ulitskaya received from Tambov region letter addressed to Genieva: they asked for help with books for the children's libraries of the children's internat, several schools for children with mental retardation...

At the farewell to Ekaterina Yuryevna Genieva, there will be a box for donations for these books. Please try to put money there.

Ekaterina Genieva is an activist quite well known in liberal circles. Firstly, she is the director of the All-Russian State Library of Foreign Literature named after. M. I. Rudomino (VGBIL). Secondly, in 1995-2003. she headed the Institute " Open Society"(Soros Foundation). Thirdly, she is the director of the Institute of Tolerance. And finally, fourthly, she is a member of the political party “Civic Platform” founded by Prokhorov. In the election campaign, she was even a contender for the post of Minister of Culture in Prokhorov’s possible government.

Not long ago we witnessed disgusting hypocrisy on the part of this lady.

She was invited to the program of the Public Television of Russia (OTR), where the topic was discussed - why, supposedly, Russia has ceased to be the most reading country in the world.

During her speech, Ekaterina Genieva expressed her thoughts on this issue. And it all boiled down to the fact that, they say, in our country there is “no political will” that would put book publishing and book distribution at the proper level. The lady complained that we put commerce before culture and that instead of creating bookstores, they prefer to trade in something more profitable.

What a twist!

This means that Genieva decided to shed crocodile tears that our culture is rotten! This is after she herself helped spread rot on this very culture for so many years!

Wasn’t Genieva wholeheartedly on the side of the bourgeois counter-revolution, the so-called “perestroika”?

Didn’t Genieva denigrate and help destroy Soviet socialism and all the achievements of the Soviet system - including the Soviet government’s concern for culture, for culture to be accessible to the broad masses, so that ever wider sections of the working people become involved in culture?

Didn’t Genieva do everything possible to ensure that capitalism was restored in our country - that system in which everything is built on money, on the pursuit of profit at any cost, and in which commerce will always come first, because it forms the basis of the bourgeois building? And everything else, including Genius’s kind culture, comes later, it’s only to this extent.

Didn’t Genieva defend and glorify the system in which a handful of robbers live at the expense of the robbed majority and can afford any whim? And the majority, the working class, the working people, are disadvantaged, deprived of essential material and spiritual benefits, including the opportunity to become involved in culture?

Wasn’t Genieva wholeheartedly in favor of “market relations” - that is, for such relations when everything is a commodity, everything is bought and sold - including culture?

And if culture is sold, this means that it is available only to the rich, and the majority of society is deprived of the opportunity to join it. In this case, the cultural level of the majority of society falls.

We now see all this with our own eyes - the decline in the cultural level of the majority of society, separated from genuine culture, and the emergence of a disgusting, corrupt, snobbish and contemptuous “elite culture” for the majority of the people.

And the reason for all this is the restoration of capitalism. Bourgeois counter-revolution under the name of “perestroika”, in which Genieva took a prominent part. She helped the bourgeois class a lot, provided a valuable service to the perestroika leaders who sought to destroy Soviet power in order to freely rob the people.

Let us list her “merits” in this direction (for which we, the working class, are especially “grateful” to her, and hope to get even in the future, after we destroy the bourgeois dictatorship and establish our workers’ power).

Firstly, Genieva turned the Library of Foreign Literature, which she heads, into one of the best cultural institutions countries - into a means of disintegrating society, denigrating Soviet power and propaganda of liberalism. Thus, in the garden (“atrium”) of the library there are monuments to three dozen people, among them a significant number of those who participated in the destruction of the USSR and the socialist camp (monuments to Alexander Menu, Dmitry Likhachev, John Paul II, and, most recently, Yegor Gaidar).

Secondly, the library publishing house has published many books on the topic of “the horrors of the totalitarian Soviet past.” Genieva did and is doing everything possible to slander the Soviet system, to slander socialism.

Since 2003, a joint project of the VGBIL and the Soros Foundation has been operating - the Institute of Tolerance. We think there is no need to explain in what direction this institution operates. As we have already said, Genieva is again the director of this institute.

But this is not enough. Genieva not only ideologically contributed to the restoration of capitalism and helped grabbers and robbers come to power. She herself acted in the spirit of these robbers - for a number of years, while serving as director of the library, she cynically enriched herself by theft of library funds and fraud with state property.

Here is some information about its past “economic” activities, which in 2011-2012. Anti-corruption authorities became interested.

In 2012, during an audit, numerous frauds with printed materials totaling about 5 million rubles were revealed.

In addition, an audit was carried out of the use of budgetary allocations in the amount of 20 million rubles allocated by the Government Reserve Fund Russian Federation to financially support the costs of creating digital copies of the book collections of the Esterhazy princes (originals exported during the Great Patriotic War, currently returned to Austria).

As part of this “project,” payments to only five “ordinary” library employees amounted to about 8 million (!!!) rubles.

Genieva herself approved bonuses for herself and her subordinates for 2011, amounting to from 400 thousand to 1 million rubles, while the organization’s accountant, who has a “profile” diploma from a mining institute as a specialist “systems engineer” (!), received more than 3 million in a year rub.

It became known that the library does not maintain a procurement register, there are no waybills for the use of cars, there are no documents for performing contract work, contracts were concluded with individual library employees for the performance of work (services) that were part of their job responsibilities, work on building restoration...

However, all allocated funds were spent.

And this is not counting, to call a spade a spade, “kickbacks” from foreign cultural centers that do not pay taxes to our long-suffering state budget, located in the library already for many, many years, starting from the “cheerful democratic” nineties.

In 2011 alone, the amount of unpaid (or hidden by Genieva in her wide, as it turns out, pocket) taxes ranges from 10 to 12 million rubles.

These sums, dear friends, were disbursed by the director of the library in only a year and a half, and Genieva has been leading the state institution for almost 22 years.

Can you imagine how much she has “mastered” during all this time?

The most disgusting thing in the current situation is the following.

The constant inspections cursed by Genieva nevertheless revealed a simply indecent scale of violations, multimillion-dollar theft, waste of budgetary and extrabudgetary funds, as well as an almost complete lack of control and connivance on her part. What do they usually do in such a case with an inept, and even stealing, boss? Of course, they do, not to mention the criminal legal consequences of such activities. It’s not for nothing that there is a saying about a fish rotting from the head.

But look at this zealous liberal!

To put things in order, and in fact create the appearance of order and well-being, with one stroke of the pen she dismisses a third of the library staff, who are completely ordinary and far from economic activity libraries and workers on their own behalf, thereby killing two birds with one stone: to report on the punishment of the perpetrators and to raise the salaries of those around them.

Having entered into a kind of rage of dismissing undesirables, the director of the library is trying by all means to get rid of the last remaining honest people in the leadership of VGBIL, who do not want to put up with the arbitrariness of corruption and are capable of taking the library into their own hands.

At the same time, it hides individual employees from all inspections.

And why?

Precisely because they know too much about the numerous frauds in the accounting department and the scale of corruption in the library.

Genieva’s motivation in this case is clear: who would so easily part with a gold mine, a kind of Klondike of Russian culture?

Fame, constant business trips, recognition on the international stage, generously sprinkled with sawn millions... Is it bad?

And for some reason, the raised funds demonstratively displayed by Ekaterina Yuryevna are in British and American banks...

Where do you think the director of the library got the money for two apartments in an elite building on the most prestigious site of the Garden Ring with a total area of 300 square meters in the hungry nineties? m?

According to realtors, the current cost of the Genieva mansion at 28/35 Novinsky Boulevard is about 100 million rubles!

And on a site in the near Moscow region in the Yaroslavl direction, 2 (!) mansions were built at once.

And this does not take into account the funds invested in real estate in Western Europe.

There is no need to mention a personal driver and maids in this case.
In short, the liberal lady did a good job! Not only did she help robbers come to power in the nineties, but she herself shamelessly acted in the same predatory spirit, stealing just like that.

So let this bourgeois bastard not deceive us with his hypocritical regret about the reluctance of young people to read and about the rottenness of our culture.

She and others like her have done especially much to bring back the criminal capitalist system and subjugate the working people to the rule of capital, under which we are deprived of culture, education, science, art, robbed, without rights, doomed to poverty and vegetation.

To people like this creature, a hypocrite and a thief, we should be especially grateful for this. And God willing, the time will come - we will thank you.

Red Agitator

55.614343 37.473446

Ekaterina Yurievna Gnieva(April 1, 1946, Moscow - July 9, 2015) - Russian philologist, library, cultural and public figure, UNESCO expert, member of the federal civil committee of the Civic Platform party, director of the Institute of Tolerance. General Director of the All-Russian Library of Foreign Literature from 1993 to 2015; in total, she worked in this library for 43 years.

Biography

Born into the family of actor Yuri Aronovich Rosenblit (1911-2002) and surgeon Elena Nikolaevna Genieva (1917-1982). Her parents soon separated, her mother got a job in the medical unit of the correctional labor camp in Magadan, and Katya spent her early childhood with her grandmother. Grandmother, Elena Vasilyevna Genieva (née Kirsanova; 1891-1979), in 1921-1926, annually vacationed in Maximilian Voloshin’s “House of Poets” in Koktebel, corresponded with a number of figures in Russian literature; her correspondence from 1925-1933 with S.N. Durylin was published as a separate book (“I don’t write to anyone like I write to you.” M.: Rudomino, 2010. - 525 pp.). Grandfather, engineer-hydrologist Nikolai Nikolaevich Geniev (1882-1953), author of the monograph “Water Supply of Railway Stations” (M.: Ogiz, 1932. - 484 pp.) and the textbook “Water Supply” (M.: Gosstroyizdat, 1950 and 1958. - 578 p.).

Graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University (1968), Candidate of Philological Sciences (1972, topic “The Fiction of James Joyce”), in 2006 she defended her doctoral dissertation on the topic “The Library as a Center for Intercultural Communications” in specialty 052503 “Bibliography and Book Studies (Pedagogical Sciences) " Specialist in English prose of the 19th-20th centuries. Author of articles and commentaries on the works of Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Susan Hill and other authors.

Since 1972 she worked at the All-Union State Library of Foreign Literature. Since 1989, First Deputy Director, since 1993, General Director. Vice-President of the Russian Library Association, First Vice-President International Federation library associations and institutions - IFLA (since 1997).

During the years of Genieva’s leadership, 14 foreign cultural centers (from French and British to Bulgarian and Iranian), as well as an institute of tolerance, departments for children’s, religious literature and publications of Russian abroad, and a publishing house where publications of rare authors were opened, were opened at Inostranka.

Genieva was president of the Russian Soros Foundation (Open Society Institute), vice-president of the International Federation of Libraries (IFLA), member of the Russian Commission for UNESCO, president of the Russian Council for Culture and the Arts, president of the Moscow branch of the English-Speaking Union (ESU), member of the editorial boards magazines “Foreign Literature” and “Znamya”, over the years she was a member of the editorial boards and boards of the magazines and newspapers “Children’s Literature”, “Library”, “Russian Thought”, etc.

She died on July 9, 2015 in Israel, where she was being treated for cancer. She was buried at the Vvedenskoye Cemetery in Moscow.

Family

Husband - Yuri Samuilovich Belenky (born 1945), architect and civil engineer.
Daughter - Daria, wife of the director of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) A.K. Sorokin.

Awards and prizes

Order of Friendship (Russia) (1999)
Order of Gabriela Mistral (Chile, 2002)
Order of the British Empire, officer (2007)
Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2007)
Order of the Legion of Honor (2009)
Order of Merit pro Merito Melitensi (2010)
Cross of Recognition (Latvia)
Order of the Rising Sun, III class (Japan, 2015)
Medal “In Memory of the 850th Anniversary of Moscow” (1997)
Medal of K. D. Ushinsky (Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, 2003)
Order for Cultural Achievement (Brazil)
Insignia of the Hungarian Ministry of Culture “Pro Cultura Hungarica”
Winner of the “Person of the Year” award (Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, 2005).

Memory

In 2016, in Moscow, at the entrance to the Library of Foreign Literature, a monument to E. Yu. Genieva was unveiled (the author of the idea was producer and director Grigory Amnuel).

Essays

Genieva E. Yu. Difficult road to the temple: Fates Russian libraries at the turn of the century / E. Yu. Genieva. - M.: Text, 2004. - 192 p. - 1,500 copies. - ISBN 5-7516-0422-9. (in translation)
Genieva E. Yu. Library as a center of intercultural communication / E. Yu. Genieva. - M.: Russian Political Encyclopedia (ROSSPEN), 2008. - 208 p. - 1,000 copies. - ISBN 5-8243-0731-8. (in translation)
Genieva E. Yu. And again Joyce / E. Yu. Genieva. - M: VGBIL im. M.I. Rudomino, 2011. - 366 p. - 1000 copies. - ISBN 978-5-91922 - 001 - 5

Director of the All-Russian State Library for Foreign Literature named after. M.I.Rudomino Ekaterina Genieva died on July 9 at the age of 70. Director of the State Literary Museum Dmitry Bak told TASS about this. “She was ill for a long time. She died in Israel. The day before yesterday, colleagues and friends went to see her to say goodbye,” said Buck. According to Russian Presidential Advisor for Culture Vladimir Tolstoy, Genieva was one of the leading experts in foreign literature. “We collaborated and were friends for a very long time. She was on the jury of our Yasnaya Polyana award in the Foreign Literature category. Ekaterina Yuryevna had been ill for a long time. She was a courageous person, she worked until recently, we saw her quite recently, at the book fair on Krasnaya square," said Tolstoy.

ITAR-TASS/ Artem Geodakyan

Genieva was born on April 1, 1946 in Moscow, graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University (1968), and in 2006 defended her doctoral dissertation on the topic “The Library as a Center for Intercultural Communications.” Specialist in English prose of the 19th and 20th centuries. Author of articles and commentaries on the works of Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Susan Hill and other authors. Since 1972 she worked at the All-Union State Library of Foreign Literature. Since 1989, First Deputy Director, since 1993, General Director. Vice-President of the Russian Library Association, First Vice-President of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions - IFLA (since 1997).

Since 1995, Genieva has been one of the leaders of the cultural programs of the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation) in Russia (in the positions of Chairman of the Executive Committee, President, Chairman of the Strategic Board). Since October 1997, Genieva has been President of the Russian Soros Foundation (Open Society Institute), Vice-President of the International Federation of Libraries (IFLA), member of the Russian Federation Commission for UNESCO, President of the Russian Council for Culture and the Arts, President of the Moscow Branch of the English Speaking Union (ESU) ). Member of the editorial boards of the magazines “Foreign Literature” and “Znamya”, over the years she was a member of the editorial boards and boards of the magazines and newspapers “Children’s Literature”, “Library”, “Russian Thought”, etc.

She knew she was going to die soon, and it showed in her. But she continued to work until last day, overcoming pain, fatigue, stupidity of the authorities. Genieva's departure - huge loss for the entire cultural community of Russia and the world. Now such people, with high moral authority, are needed more than ever. It is noteworthy that in the obituary published on the TASS website there are flattering words addressed to her, but nothing is said about the fact that in the 90s it was she who was involved in the cultural programs of the Soros Foundation in Russia, which was recently included in the list of “undesirable organizations.” Genieva was threatened with dismissal for her obstinacy and unwillingness to carry out all the ridiculous orders and instructions on a call from the Ministry of Culture. In particular, she resisted the closure of the American Cultural Center at the Foreign Literature Library. Now it will be closed, but she will no longer know about it. She did what she could do and perhaps even more. Happy memory to an intelligent and sympathetic woman with a beautiful soul and an outstanding Russian educator. This year has taken another ally from us - and what one! Very sad

We agreed that she would write a preface to the new edition of “Conquer Cancer”: “I have something to say about this, I will definitely write it, I’ll be back from the trip now, when is the deadline?” she asked. I answered: “Ekaterina Yuryevna, there is still time.” “Katyunechka,” yes, that’s exactly what she said, “Katyunechka, there’s never time.”

It was April 2014. The fear of the outbreak of war was not yet fully realized by anyone. And the people who asked Genieva questions after the lecture asked not about libraries, but about life: “You know, I can’t figure out what’s happening, how can I distinguish truth from untruth? “How not to be afraid,” asked a woman from the audience. Ekaterina Yuryevna, without twitching her eyebrow, answered: “You should never be afraid, you should believe in yourself.” And she answered three times longer than the allotted half hour. And her husband Yura and daughter Dasha were sitting in the hall. And I saw how worried they were. And how they held each other’s hand so as not to interrupt her, not to stop her, not to hint at her illness as an inability to live and act at the pace at which she was accustomed.

… “Katyunechka, I just can’t understand the prospects. And it’s also very alarming that everyone around me is limiting me: this is impossible, it is not recommended. I really wouldn’t like to stop,” she told me a month later, when we met again. Moskovsky railway station in St. Petersburg. The next day there will be a lecture on the place of the library in the modern world. But Genieva was not allowed into St. Petersburg libraries to give this lecture: in her Inostranka she had just hosted the Congress of the Intelligentsia, where those who were against the war and who did not accept “Crimea is ours” gathered. And it became dangerous for “systemic” people to be friends with Genieva.

Ekaterina Genieva at the Open Library. St. Petersburg, June 2015
Photo: Andrey Mishurov / “Open Library”

To be honest, I can’t imagine how much she accomplished in these one and a half years: I never kept up with her.

Two weeks ago she came to St. Petersburg again. Participate in “Dialogues” of the Open Library. To defend “Dynasty”, the American Cultural Center in “Foreigner”, the right to education and enlightenment of the citizens of their country. And she did it, as always, fearlessly. And, unlike me, who muttered pessimistically: “For more than half of the country’s citizens, everything you talk about is unimportant and unnecessary,” she answered passionately: “Katyunechka, you’re wrong, education is like air, it cannot be neglected. It’s just very long and painstaking work.”

Ekaterina Yurievna Genieva left like great people leave. In the family circle, with a phone that won’t turn off, in business.

... In the morning, when Ekaterina Yuryevna was no longer in the world, her friend Lyudmila Ulitskaya received a letter from the Tambov region addressed to Genieva: they asked for help with books for the children's libraries of a children's boarding school, several schools for children with mental retardation...

At the farewell to Ekaterina Yuryevna Genieva, there will be a box for donations for these books. Please try to put money there.