Zoritsa Radosavljevic poured a glass of vodka and closed the door to London's only Russian bookstore for the last time Saturday night.
Soaring business costs have forced the Russian Central and East European Bookshop, which Radosavljevic manages, to close.For some intellectuals and Russians here, the store and its precursor, Collets, were not just places to buy books but havens for left-wing thought and debate.
"It was everything," said Radosavljevic, who has worked at the store since 1968. "It was a book shop, a library. It was a social club. You'd have artists coming, painters coming, writers, journalists."
"I can't believe that tomorrow I won't come and open the door to the public," she said.
Socialist Eva Collet Reckitt opened the first book shop on 66 Charing Cross Road in 1934, calling it Collets - the Political Bookshop. In 1976, the owners opened Collets International Bookshop up the street with Russian language books.
At the shop, Russian novelist Mikhail Sholokhov held book signings, poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko read his work and prominent left-wing British politicians such as Labor Party legislator Tony Benn, lectured.
In 1993, Collets went bankrupt. Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd. purchased the stock and opened the Russian Central and East European Bookshop around the corner on Denmark Street.
But sales barely paid for the cost of renting the shop - nearly $48,600 a year, Philip Wilson said.
Saturday, bookstore regulars paid their respects to the shop and Radosavljevic. Bargain hunters packed the shop, sifting through the hundreds of books at half price or less.
Radosavljevic said about a third of the shop contained Russian and Eastern European language books and the rest were English translations.
Moscow native Galima Piatugorsky has been buying books at the shop since she started teaching Russian three years ago. She said there is no bookstore in London that stocks some of the books she uses to teach.
"I'm just going to have to ask my friends (in Russia) to send me what I need," Piatugorsky said.
Richard McKane, a translator of Russian poetry, has leafed through books at Collets and the current bookstore for 20 years.
"It's the end of an era," McKane said. "There were always rumors that they would close, but I never thought it would happen. I thought someone would bail them out."
Radosavljevic, who traveled from Yugoslavia to London to study English, plans to buy the store's stock and start a mail-order business for Russian, Central and Eastern European books and hopes one day to open her own shop.