GROZNY, Russia, 28 July 2004 — When it looked as if war would again break out in Chechnya in the fall of 1999, Satsita Israilova began to take books out of the Grozny library where she worked into the cellar of her building.
She had seen the destruction wreaked by shells and bombs in Grozny during the first war between Chechen separatists and Russian troops in 1994-1996 and she wanted to try and save what she could of the 160,000-strong collection.
By the time she herself took refuge from the massive shelling that Russian troops unleashed onto Grozny in December, she had removed a tiny fraction of volumes from harm’s way.
“When the time came to find shelter in cellars, I managed to take 6,000 books with me,” said the 38-year old brunette.
She stayed in the cellar for 56 days, together with 25 neighbors and her books that included “How could I not save Verlaine?” a tome of European poetry, as well as works by modern Chechen poets like Raissa Akhmatova and Russian poets like Mikhail Lermontov.
“On Feb. 5, 2000, I came out of the cellar. I immediately ran to the library — everything had burned, the roof was gone, the building had collapsed,” Satsita recalls.
A month later, the literature graduate from the University of Krasnodar in southern Russia began to work on restoring the building with other volunteers who, like her, believed in the need to reopen the place that would “heal the souls” of those who survived the bombings that killed thousands of people and reduced the capital to rubble.
They worked with almost no funding and today the tiny Grozny library, which consists of two rooms on the central Pobeda Avenue in the city, boasts 30,000 works, most of them donated, and over 2,400 registered readers.
Today’s collection includes the classic “1984” by George Orwell in Russian and Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s “The Little Prince” in Chechen. Nearly five years after the start of the war a guerrilla campaign continues to simmer in Russia’s Caucasus republic, claiming lives on nearly a daily basis despite Kremlin statements that life has returned to normal.
During a recent conversation, Israilova did not flinch and not a single reader in the tiny room looked up when automatic gunfire rattled outside.
Moments before, a booby-trapped car exploded a stone’s throw away, killing two men from the feared presidential security service. Sealing the area, militiamen then fired at random, killing a woman passer-by. Onlookers barely registered a reaction.
“You have to understand that this is our daily life, marked by arbitrariness,” Israilova sighed.
“But literature helps us survive. Books are the only thing that still links us with the outside world, with peace,” she said.
“People here are sick. We have had this fear inside us for so many years,” she said. “It is a vague fear, the fear of these masked men who take away brothers and husbands, the fear of dying at any moment.”
“All my memories are linked to the old Grozny, the fountains of the Lermontov park, the Rodina cinema, the national theater,” Israilova said.
“I feel for our young people, who know nothing else from life than war, this city in ruins, without any cinema or theater,” she says. “The library is the only cultural place where they can meet.”
“They read a lot of fantasy literature and avoid books about war. And women read love stories... like everywhere in the world,” she said with pride from her “space for normality” in the midst of Chechya’s chaos.
