Russia Live!™ Magazine: collected articles on Russian language, nature, culture, traditions, Russian sights, Russian museums, curious facts etc.

LiveRUS.COM

Since September 2004

	Russia
	Russian Sights
	Russian Cities
	Personalities
	Russian Women
	The Scribe
	Sochi 2014
	Music
	Fine Arts
	Proverbs

Library

LiveRus Library

Feel the Music of Splendid Russian Poetry and Prose

Our Contemporary. Veniamin Khudolei

by Heinz Decker, Frankfurt

Dr. Veniamin Khudolei

Twenty years ago I started collecting ex libris, ten years ago I participated in my first F.I.S.A.E.-Congress, and it was there, in St. Petersburg, that I first met Veniamin Khudoley. In my report about the Congress I wrote about the beauty of the city, but I also sketched a few episodes that impressed me during that stay: There was that four-year-old boy in the village near Pavlovsk south of St. Petersburg, who approached us on his tricycle with a loud “choo choo” and joyfully explained that he was the counter-train. As a saddle he used an inverted cooking pot. For me a symbol of making the best of one’s life. There was that teenager running onto the street to help a drunken amputated man with crutches who had fallen amidst the traffic on Nevsky Prospect, revealing the frailty of man, but also the good heart of young people. And then there was Dr. Veniamin Khudoley. I had seen little of him during the congress, after all he was busy as the organiser. But when the visit to the treasures of the splendid Hermitage was on the program, he took the lead. I still see in my mind’s eye the quiet man with his gold-rimmed glasses carrying a briefcase and taking the huge crowd of foreign visitors from the congress hall to the Hermitage. It certainly is not the normal job of a medical doctor to act as a tourist guide, but Dr. Khudoley faced his task in his quiet way and unpertubed by the fact that such a crowd moves slowly, he took us all the way around the museum to a side entrance where his “Open Sesame” gave us access to the treasures.

Ex Libris by Gouzenjuk

It was years later, at another F.I.S.A.E.-Congress, that I met Veniamin Khudoley a second time. This time we sat face to face at a table and exchanged bookplates. So for the first time I came to know the collector. My previous impression of him was confirmed: a gentle, pleasant person, different from the Russians I had met in Moscow or Petersburg on my former visits, less emotional in his attitude towards people perhaps, someone who will not offer a vodka first, but show you his books or his artworks when you visit him at home.

Ex Libris by V. Vereschagin

One plate I exchanged from him seems to reflect some of his personality. It is by the St. Petersburg artist Gouzenjuk and shows a portrait of the Christian reformer Martin Luther and his famous motto “Ich kann nicht anders” (I cannot act differently). Even though I always experienced Veniamin Khudoley as a gentle, obliging man, I can imagine that in matters of principle he followed Luther’s motto.

On my own behalf and that of the Deutsche Exlibris Gesellschaft I must say that Dr. Veniamin Khudoley will remain in our memories. It is sad that another ex libris in his name by his friend Vladimir Vereschagin, depicting death with playing cards, an hour-glass and a scythe in a way was prophetic. A man had to go who still had a lot to give to the world.

Back to the Magazine Start page

Understanding Russia