BULLETIN: KAMKIN COLLECTION SAVED

[Donald Jacobsen]

>From Reuters via David Johnson of CDI's excellent Johnson's Russia
List...as many of us had thought, James Billington WAS the ideal person to
perform the necessary magic...

Unique Russian books saved from U.S. incinerator
By Christina Ling
WASHINGTON, March 11 (Reuters) - A member of the U.S. House of
Representatives and the head of the Library of Congress brokered an
11th-hour deal on Monday to save a unique collection of 2 million Russian
books from an incinerator.

"It is a win-win for everybody," Igor Kalageorgi, owner of the Victor
Kamkin bookstore in the Washington suburb of Rockville, Maryland, said of
the deal that won his shop a temporary reprieve from eviction and kept his
books from being discarded.

"There will be no book burning and the books will be found a home,"
Kalageorgi added.

The bookstore in was founded in 1953 by Victor Kamkin, Kalageorgi's
great-uncle. During the Cold War, it represented a treasure trove virtually
unparalleled in the United States as a source of Russian-language books
both classic and obscure.

Enjoying an exclusive contract with the Soviet government to import Soviet
books and periodicals into the United States, the Kamkin store during its
heyday was a magnet for the entire community of U.S. Slavic scholars, from
spooks to students.

But the shop had faced eviction on Monday after falling behind on its
$15,000-per-month rent due to slack sales over the past year, Kalageorgi
told Reuters.

Landlord Allen Kronstadt said the enormity of the task facing the
Montgomery County, Maryland, sheriff in hauling the estimated 2 million
books out onto the sidewalk and to the local dump and incinerator already
twice had delayed the eviction date.

"We warned the sheriff's department early on how massive the job was," said
Kronstadt, managing partner of Randolph Buildings, which rents space to
Kamkin.

He said a crew of 60 men and several trucks had been slated to remove the
books on Monday before a deal was reached.

"The thought of burning these books for me personally was distasteful and I
struggled with it," Kronstadt added.

LAWMAKER INTERVENES

After The Washington Post reported over the weekend on the fate awaiting
the books, Maryland Republican U.S. Rep. Connie Morella extracted a promise
from local officials not to destroy the precious load.

Morella and Librarian of Congress James Billington, a prominent historian
and Russia specialist, sat down with Kronstadt and Kalageorgi to work out
the three-week reprieve on the eviction.

Kalageorgi said he will work over the coming days with Billington and
Library of Congress Slavic experts to put together collections to donate to
the library and other institutions around the country.

"There's nothing like it (in the United States)," said one Library of
Congress official, noting such obscure items as a Tagalog-Russian
dictionary among Kamkin's collection deserved to be spared for future
generations of researchers.

"You just don't have people importing books from Russia on the leaves of
Kamchatka or 12th century law in Ukraine."

Kronstadt said that under the deal he would write off the roughly $200,000
he says the bookstore owes him in rent, legal and other fees, and would
donate to the Library of Congress any books left in his possession at the
end of the three weeks.

The deal also allows the continuation of the Victor Kamkin bookstore
itself, which Kalageorgi says he plans to reopen at a new location once he
has finished taking inventory and donating books.

"We don't have a definite location yet, but we're going to get that all
organized in short order," Kalageorgi said.

After 10,000 customers deluged the store over the weekend in fear of its
closure, he no longer doubted a market existed for it despite competition
from rivals in New York's Brighton Beach. "It tells me the power of
advertising," he said.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                  http://home.attbi.com/~lists/seelangs/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------