Bookstores of the world

The "Globe Bookshop", in support of Ukraine

It is one of two Russian bookstores in Paris. After the launch of the war in Ukraine, the Globe Bookstore did not hesitate to take a stand. His boss, the French-Russian journalist and publisher Natalia Turine does not mince her words against Vladimir Putin and his country.

French-Russian journalist and editor Natalia Turine at the Globe Bookseller, in Paris, June 28, 2023. © Bastien Brun / RFI

Text by: Bastien Brun

Advertising

Read more

As soon as you enter the Globe Bookstore, a wooden table with drawers serves as a display. On this antique piece of furniture, there are stories of Ukraine, books on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, as well as translations into Ukrainian by Pierre Bourdieu. A way to recall that this Russian bookstore, located in the Marais, in the center of Paris, has given its support to Ukraine. "I have the impression that everyone is talking about the drama of Russian culture. But Russian culture is absolutely not threatened. Those who are threatened are the people who ate from the hand of the Kremlin," said Natalia Turine, its owner.

With the war, a constraint for the Parisian store is to bring books from Russia. But the Globe is as much a bookshop about the Russian-speaking world as it is about books in Cyrillic. Muffled at first, with its large black shelves full of art books and its red bench, the store reveals in the basement a cabinet of curiosities. At the bottom of the stairs, perfume bottles welcome the barge. Then, in a room full of comics, a white cast represents the artist Pyotr Pavlensky (1), naked as a worm and testicles nailed to the floor, while on the walls, paintings, a mirror and a large poster of the film Lolita rub shoulders with images of Soviet propaganda.

The former voice of the USSR

The Globe, opened in 1953, is one of two Russian bookstores in Paris. It was first the voice of the USSR before being bought by private individuals. Heavily in debt, it was on the verge of closure seven years ago. It was then bought by the journalist Natalia Turine, already owner of Louison Éditions. This diplomat's daughter, born in East Germany, grew up in the beautiful neighborhoods of Paris where she frequented the old bookstore, then located rue La Boétie. "When I was a teenager in the 1970s, I used to come to buy books for school," recalls the Franco-Russian. At the embassy school, one learned French with Jules Verne and, in parallel, with the brochures translated into French on Brezhnev of the news agency Novosti, an agency under the supervision of the KGB.

At that time, the great classics of Russian literature were lacking in the country. The families of diplomats buy entire volumes by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky or Chekhov from the Globe Bookstore to bring back to the Soviet Union. It was only at the age of 16 that Natalia Turine discovered a Russia that she fantasized a lot: "All my friends were French, many were Trotskyists. I was excited to discover the land of Lenin and the revolution. I remember my father telling me, "You're going to remember that day for the rest of your life." He was very sad for me. When I arrived at the Belarus train station in Moscow, I already regretted leaving. We went from a world where everything is in color to arrive in a world in black and white. It was like in the worst Hollywood movies!

« 

All I could do was shut my mouth!

»

She then returned to settle in France and continued to build bridges with Russia. In the midst of Perestroika, she worked as a journalist for television in Moscow, before taking up residence in the news of Antenne 2 in France. Today, it is for the LCI channel that she explains the war in Ukraine. With this war, this woman with provocative humor claims to have become "almost Russophobic". "As a Russian, all I could do about the Ukrainians was shut my mouth! I didn't want to close, even though I wondered if it's moral to have a Russian bookstore in Paris right now. The books I sell here are classics, which are not Putin's Russia, nor that of the Bolsheviks," she said.

In the early days of the war, a strong sense of embarrassment prevailed in her. The question is not so much the image of his country and its culture, but that of Ukrainians who die under bombing or flee their country. "I was very afraid of being the one doing recovery. It would have been in bad taste, she says. We had refugees who came to buy us Harry Potter in Russian to forget the bombs. It was when I saw that Ukrainians were coming to the bookstore that I felt I could do something at their request. At the back of the store, Mortelle Adele's books are now in Ukrainian.

Also listenUkrainian refugees in France: welcoming a family in Paris [1/5]

With Covid-19 and the war, the Globe Bookstore has also stopped organizing literary meetings. "Knowing that there are Ukrainians in Paris, doing an evening presentation of a Russian book with glasses of champagne, it bothers me! I think it's inappropriate, "slips the journalist. Despite her positions, Natalia Turine says she has not received pressure from the Russian authorities. His shop, placed on the ritual route of the Parisian demonstrations, between the Place de la République and that of the Bastille, has not been degraded either. The only disapproval came from readers supporting the Kremlin's ideas and was limited to cries of "Long live Putin!" or cries of "betrayal", without much change in the daily life of Alexander, one of the three booksellers who work here.

(1) With her publishing house, Louison Éditions, Natalia Turine was the editor of the sulphurous Piotr Pavlenski, known for his radical performances and for having triggered the Griveaux affair. She did not hesitate to support him publicly.

Three books to discover Russian literature and Russia, according to Natalia Turine

Le coup de grace, by Marguerite Yourcenar
"I am very provocative. To get into the understanding of the Russian world, I would recommend this novel written by a French woman. This little book impressed me more than Mikhail Bulgakov's The White Guard.

News, by Vladimir Nabokov"My classic is Nabokov
. He didn't care about Russia, that's why he's a very great Russian. When he emigrated, he wrote in English. He did not make his nostalgia the subject of his literature. The problem of the Russian is that when he leaves his country, he spends his life regretting a lost world.

316. V Epitaph à l'Idiot, by Edouard Limonov
"This is the very last book we have released by Louison Éditions. This is an unpublished Limonov. Limonov is the master of autofiction who wrote, in 2005, a single dystopia. He died a year ago. With him, it is not a writer who died, it is a generation.

NewsletterReceive all the international news directly in your mailbox

I subscribe

Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application

Share:

Read on on the same topics:

• Culture
• France
• Russia
• Ukraine
• Bookstores of the world
• Our selection