Vladimir Solovyov Library in Brussels

Brief information

This library is important not for the scale of its building, but for the changing role it played. It appeared in Brussels at the Eastern Christian Center, an organization founded by Irina Posnova in 1951 on the basis of the earlier Belgian Committee for Religious Documentation on the East. At first, the library served the parishioners of the house Church of the Annunciation; in other words, it was connected with a specific community rather than with an open urban reading room.

Later, the same book collection became part of the publishing house Life with God. This turn changes the way one sees the library: the books here were not only objects for reading, but also the working foundation of a religious and publishing project of the Russian emigration. In 2000, the collection was transferred from Brussels to the Christian Russia center in Seriate, so the history of the place is read through the movement of the collection rather than through a preserved room.

What to notice right away

The source information contains no descriptions of the library’s exterior, interior, materials, halls, or individual objects, so the details of the building or the arrangement of the books cannot honestly be reconstructed. What can be compared, however, are three confirmed points of connection: the house Church of the Annunciation, the publishing house Life with God, and the Christian Russia center in Seriate. They show how one collection changed its function along with its surroundings: first it served a parish, then became the book base for publishing work, and after its relocation became part of another center.

The most useful detail for reading this place is the word “collection.” It matters more than an imagined hall: the library is described as a collection that outlived its Brussels address and continued to exist in Italy.