Russian books live on in city bookstore

In a quiet corner of an otherwise crowded Connaught Place, flanked by swanky cafes and cheap bars, pictures of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Che Ernesto Guevara beckon visitors to drop into a bookstore. People’s Publishing Corner in Marina Arcade, Outer Circle, houses a signature collection of inexpensive books that were published in the erstwhile Soviet Union. These books share shelf space with titles by Dale Carnegie and Robin Sharma.

This bookstore is among the few surviving ones that have managed to stay afloat in an area overtaken by retail giants. Extending over two floors, the bookstore takes readers back to the Sixties and Seventies, when it was frequented regularly by bibilophiles.  

Rishav Kumar, who has been working at the bookstore since 1974 and is currently it’s sales in-charge, says, “There was a time when the city had a reading culture. Instead of gulping down drinks at bars, students would frequent bookstores. Presently, the area has four stores, and forty bars. The Internet and cafe culture has taken over. It is difficult to run a profitable book business nowadays”.

Funded by a trust run by the Communist Party of India, the store hardly witnesses a heavy footfall nowadays. “In a week, about four or five people visit to browse through our collection. Most students come here based on a recommendation by their professors, or someone who may have visited the store in the Eighties,” says Ashraf, the store assisstant.  

Students studying history, political science and Russian swear by the store’s collection. Foreigners who take a stroll through CP have also visited the shop. Though book prices start from as low as Rs 10, only a few buyers walk out of the store with a book in tow.

Only those willing to go through troves of old, dusty Communist and Russian books will find something precious here. The complete 45 hard-bound volumes of Frederick Engels and Karl Marx—printed by Moscow’s Progress Publishers—is available for Rs 200 each. Stacks of Maxim Gorky’s Mother, produced by Raduga Publishers, remains hidden in a corner. Apart from titles by the greats like Pushkin, Tolstoy and Turgenev, there are other rare books like ‘Ten Days That Shook The World’ —an account of the Bolshevik Revolution by American journalist John Reed.

“I came to the store three years ago, and stumbled across their collection then. I have been visiting the store frequently to get my hands on good Russian literature,” says Ankur Patney, who works at Liberty, a capitalist thinktank.

When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, the books from Moscow stopped arriving. Therefore, the shop only has Russian books from the last stock. The focus has now shifted to books in Hindi, which are not being stocked by renowned retail bookstores in the city.