The interview with the head of the Educational and Research Centre for Bible and Judaic Studies at the Russian State University for the Humanities begins with an account of the cultural and pedagogical exchange with the Israeli Bar-Ilan University (Ramat Gan) and Jabotinsky Institute (Tel Aviv). The interview goes into detail about the exhibition entitled ‘Nostalgia for world culture: O. E. Mandelstam’s library’, which took place in the Moscowbased Jewish Museum and Tolerance Centre from December 2018 until March 2019 and enjoyed a total turnout of 45,000 visitors. Thanks to N. Mandelstam’s personal archive display, the visitors could learn about the poet’s reading preferences and his outstanding contemporaries, as well as how N. Mandelstam shaped the poet’s image among the Russianspeaking intelligentsia in the second half of the 20th c. Also discussed in the interview are Leonid Katsis’ recently published books on V. Mayakovsky and V. Jabotinsky.