Notes from Slavic Quick Cataloging, Pt. 16

There was just a PA announcement, which is odd, because you don’t think of a library as having a PA system. Anyone in the library just heard that a theft had been reported, and all persons should not leave their belongings unattended.

**

I really can’t help it; I always look through the art & photo books. Some that I’ve seen:

Photo book: Russian 1900-1917. The first photograph: looking from the street at a large building, a shop front, for the artistic photographer M.I. Rumiantsev.

Randomly from the middle: 1911 photo of school children outside their new school building in Archangelsk. Not a single one is smiling. Many are actively scowling. One girl has her arms folded, with a particularly severe look. Later, a photo from Malevich’s exhibit “Black Square,” showing his art on the wall, the various black, quadratic compositions as they were first viewed by the public.

The last photo: A group siitting at a board room table, a single bulb lamp hanging down above and between the heads of Lenin and Trotsky. Lenin leads towards Trotsky with a grin on his face, he is in on a joke which he hasn’t told yet; no one else is smiling.

Another photo book, the 1968 invasion of Czeckoslovakia. It is filled with photos where the only thing I can understand is the grafiti scrawled in cyrillic: “Go home.” “Moscow 1800 km –>” “We don’t need you. We don’t see you. We don’t hear you.” “Russians go home” “Why are you shooting friends we have no friends” “Ivan go home” “Soviet occupation” “Soviet fascists”

**

PA: “May I have your attention please. A theft has been reported in the library.”

Media Librarian 1: Yet again.
Media Librarian 2: Stop walking off and leaving your bags!

**