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Любовь Моисеевна Равич Главная | Биография | Труды | Воспоминания | Фотографии | Стихи |
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I first met Liubov' Moiseevna Ravich in another lifetime, on another planet, or so it seems to me now. It was August 1978, in Leningrad. The Soviet Union was alive and well, the Cold War chilly despite the pleasant summer sunshine. This was my first visit to the old capital and only my second visit to the country; my first trip had been to Moscow, in 1960, as a college student with one year of Russian language study under my belt, accompanying my anthropologist father to an international conference. By August 1978, I was a Slavic-specialist librarian, spending three days in Leningrad to visit library exchange partners after a short research stay in Helsinki. Also on our agenda — my husband was with me — were visits with the families of some Jewish emigres with whom I worked at the University of Illinois Library, and a visit with a Soviet colleague, L. M. Ravich, with whom I had corresponded about my research on the history of Russian bibliography. Ravich and I began exchanging letters in the early 1970s, after I had become interested in the work of a number of Russian bibliographers, well known in the Soviet Union but hardly household names in the West. Ravich's name came up repeatedly in my research, as she was a prolific author in the field of book studies. (In 2003, on the occasion of her 80th birthday, a booklet about her was published in St Petersburg; the list of her published works runs to about 100 items, beginning in 1954, and she continued to publish until shortly before her death in 2006.) Her work on the bibliographer Grigorii Gennadi, of particular interest to me at the time I first wrote to Ravich, was typical of her style: elegant, concise, based solidly on archival research. She personified the Russian/Soviet tradition of scholarly work in book studies. Her students from the Leningrad Institute of Culture, several of whom I met in the course of the next thirty years, revered her, and it is, I am sure, due at least in part to her influence that some of these students became leaders in the field. I wrote Ravich a fan letter, and received a lovely response, in Russian; she knew German well, but had no English, so someone had translated my letter. Thus began a lively correspondence and exchange of books and articles, leading up to that visit in 1978, the first of many meetings over the next three decades. We met twice during my three days in Leningrad, first in her apartment and then in one of Leningrad's beautiful imperial gardens. Among many other things, I am grateful to Ravich for introducing me to an important feature of Soviet life, the infamous communal apartment. (Indeed, hers was the first home of any kind I visited in the Soviet Union.) She, her daughter Marianna, and her granddaughter Katya shared a small room on the fifth floor (no elevator) of an old building in the picturesque 'Doestoevsky quarter', sharing kitchen and bathroom with several other families. The entry and stairwell were dirty, dark, and smelly, but the moment my husband and I entered the Ravich room we were enveloped in a wonderfully warm and welcoming family space, stuffed with heavy furniture and infused with good cooking smells: we were offered food that must have cost our hosts hours of scavenging among mostly empty store shelves and standing in queues for scarce food products. Hungry or not, we always ate at least a few bites, as to refuse would have been offensive, and I associate every subsequent visit to the Ravich household with abundant food purchased at a price I did not dare to dwell on. Liubov' Moiseevna was proud of her service during the 'Great Patriotic War' — on that first visit she showed me her medals with evident emotion — and proud of her daughter, also a librarian, and her young granddaughter. She was proud too of her Jewish heritage; she came from a successful and substantial family. And she was proud of her accomplishments as a scholar; it was scholarship, hers and mine, that formed the basis of our friendship and the focus of our conversations over the years. She was delighted to find a young American scholar interested in the history of Russian bibliography, her passion, and loved to talk with me about her discoveries in the archives. By 1978 I was already deeply into my own new passion, censorship in imperial Russia, and I wanted to talk with Ravich about it. I raised the topic, and I recall that she cut me off before I had said very much, and suggested another meeting, this time outdoors, ostensibly to show us the sights and take advantage of the lovely weather. Of course I realized immediately the mistake I had made: speaking of this sensitive topic inside a Soviet apartment had been unwise. The next day, as we strolled under the trees, I told her about my research on the treatment of foreign publications in imperial Russia. She listened closely, and then told me soberly and frankly that I had chosen a difficult path indeed. I would not be allowed to pursue this topic in Soviet archives, she said; even though I was not touching on Soviet censorship, the subject was too close for comfort, and people might draw unwelcome comparisons between the Russian past and the Soviet present. I assured her that I wanted to continue my research, even if I had to rely on printed sources and materials available in the West. I remember that she sighed and shook her head, but did not attempt to dissuade me; rather, she offered to help me, and told me which archive to approach, and what to say in my letter. I followed her advice, and some months later received a terse reply; the materials I had requested were in an area в ремонте (under repair) and I would not be able to see them. Through the years we continued to exchange careful letters, and to have careful conversations in the Ravich home. (After the collapse of the Soviet Union we had the pleasure of visiting the family in their own apartment, which seemed unimaginably luxurious!). Liubov' Moiseevna's health continued to decline — she had a bad heart when I met her, and had problems of increasing severity as the years passed. I always brought her my articles and books, or sent them via colleagues, even though they were in English; she assured me that friends would help her to read them, and she sent her publications to me by mail. She always congratulated me (carefully in the '80s and openly in post-Soviet times), and wrote me a highly laudatory letter after reading the Russian translation of my book on imperial Russian censorship (A Fence Around the Empire: Russian Censorship of Foreign Publications Under the Tsars**). I valued my friendship and my collegial relationship with Liubov' Moiseevna Ravich more than I can say, and I mourn her passing. She was a fine and meticulous scholar, and a generous mentor. From her I learned my earliest lessons about the life of a scholar in the Soviet Union, and I shall never forget those lessons, or my teacher.
* Marianna Tax Choldin. Memories of L.M. Ravich // Solanus. New Series, 2007. — Vol. 21. — P. 87-89.
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Marianna Tax Choldin. Memories of L.M. Ravich