Ekaterina Genieva

Ekaterina GenievaEkaterina Yurievna Genieva, OBE (Екатери́на Ю́рьевна Гéниева; April 1, 1946 – July 9, 2015) was a Russian librarian. She was director of the Margarita Rudomino All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature from 1993 to 2015.

Genieva was born in Moscow. Her mother was a physician and she was raised by her grandmother. She studied English literature at Moscow State University and defended her dissertation in 1972 on James Joyce. It was the first dissertation in the Soviet Union on the author, who was widely banned in the country. She went on to write criticism and bibliographies of many authors, including Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, and the Brontës. Genieva also spearheaded efforts to identify and return over 40,000 books looted from European libraries by Soviet troops during World War II.

She was president of the Russian Open Society Foundation from 1995 to 2004, which helped establish Internet access, provide textbooks, and fund libraries throughout the country.

Among the many awards she received was the Order of the British Empire in 2007. She was also the first woman proposed for membership in the Athenaeum Club.

Personal life Genieva married engineer Yury Belenky and they had a daughter, Darya.

Genieva was a Russian Orthodox Christian. She was a supporter of Father Alexander Men and on the board of the Russian Bible Society.