TO RUSSIA WITH LOVE
I am a Russophile, I caught the contagion when I was sixteen when I read Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and there is no cure. Slowly I worked through the canon of 19th century Russian literature, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Lermontov, Gogol, Chekhov, I was gorging on one of the richest seams of literature in world and I fell in love with the idea of Russia.
Almost twenty years later I landed in Moscow just four weeks after the coup attempt against Gorbarchov and just in time to watch the Soviet Union collapse. I travelled around Russia particularly spending time in St Petersburg, Moscow and Kiev, then in the process of cutting the umbilical cord with Moscow, Irkusk and Ekriantburg, newly renamed. To live through history is a privilege accorded to us all should we pay sufficient attention, to stand on the ground on which it is made is an extraordinary experience. Though for me I experienced both the experience of the present, watching statues being dismantled and the Russia of my love affair, walking down Nevsky Prospect breathing the air of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. In the short time I was in Russia I couldn’t possibly hope to penetrate the extraordinary complexity of the Russian character, of Russian history and the impact of the immensity of the landscape, I travelled for four days on the Trans Siberian railway, on the Russian psyche. On climbing aboard the British Airways flight back to London I was left with a feeling of even greater intoxication and infatuation,
Since that time I have continued that infatuation reading as much as I can and taking a continued interest in political developments in Russia, linked with a growing acquaintance with twentieth century Russian literature, with such masterpieces as Vassily Grossman’s Life and Fate and Rybakov’s Children of the Arbat. However infatuation is incompatible with objectivity and the tensions that arise represent a form of grief, I wanted Russia to represent the best of itself, the passions that informed the idealism of the nineteenth century, my view hopelessly romantic. Only to watch as the incipient Russian democracy was castrated; the reasons, wholly understandable as the country was systematically robbed of its wealth by defunct KGB thugs, the new oligarchs reborn into an American inspired laissez faire capitalism, little more than organised plunder, under the stewardship of Boris Yelstin. The Russian people picked up the tab for this act, a combination of theft and social vandalism and the hope of a healthy democracy and vibrant civic society died. Soon the traditional Russian hunger for a strong man re-asserted itself as a protection against this capitalist gangsterism.
There is another tradition in Russia, it is the history of Kroptkin, Tolstoy and of Russian Anarchism. It is arguable that one of the great disasters of the 20th Century, no mean claim, was the failure of the 1905 Russian Revolution, had it succeeded we could have possibly avoided the first world war and the subsequent victory of Bolshevism, the midwife of Stalinism and the mass murder and attempted genocide that followed, not to mention the triumph of Nazism and Fascism.
One of the most deeply distressing aspects of recent Russian culture is the concerted attempt to rehabilitate Stalin as documented in the January/February of World Affairs, http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/articles/2011-JanFeb/full-Sommer-JF-2011.html
This disgusting phenomenon is I would contend a direct result of the refusal to address the real legacy of Russian Communism,* a refusal best characterised by the ex KGB man Putin, a man who has openly lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union. This refusal has led to the creation of a breeding ground for historical fantasists, remoulding and reshaping Russian history to meet the needs of a greater Russian chauvinism.
All the time however there is the heartbeat of a different Russia, a Russia personified by courageous investigative journalists such as Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya А́нна Степа́новна Политко́вская murdered by faceless thugs to silence her, along with the countless other journalist in Russia who daily face the threat of extinction at the hands of the same thugs.
As I say there is no cure for a deep and abiding admiration and fascination with Russia and its culture, if there was one I would not want it. I continue to watch and hope and pay attention to developments in Russia, paying attention to all that is best, rich and vibrant in the lands stretching from the borders of the Ukraine to Vladivostok in the far east.
I know that I do have some readers in Russia and would particularly welcome comments from you.
*ThoughRussia Bulgaria
Almost twenty years later I landed in Moscow just four weeks after the coup attempt against Gorbarchov and just in time to watch the Soviet Union collapse. I travelled around Russia particularly spending time in St Petersburg, Moscow and Kiev, then in the process of cutting the umbilical cord with Moscow, Irkusk and Ekriantburg, newly renamed. To live through history is a privilege accorded to us all should we pay sufficient attention, to stand on the ground on which it is made is an extraordinary experience. Though for me I experienced both the experience of the present, watching statues being dismantled and the Russia of my love affair, walking down Nevsky Prospect breathing the air of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. In the short time I was in Russia I couldn’t possibly hope to penetrate the extraordinary complexity of the Russian character, of Russian history and the impact of the immensity of the landscape, I travelled for four days on the Trans Siberian railway, on the Russian psyche. On climbing aboard the British Airways flight back to London I was left with a feeling of even greater intoxication and infatuation,
Since that time I have continued that infatuation reading as much as I can and taking a continued interest in political developments in Russia, linked with a growing acquaintance with twentieth century Russian literature, with such masterpieces as Vassily Grossman’s Life and Fate and Rybakov’s Children of the Arbat. However infatuation is incompatible with objectivity and the tensions that arise represent a form of grief, I wanted Russia to represent the best of itself, the passions that informed the idealism of the nineteenth century, my view hopelessly romantic. Only to watch as the incipient Russian democracy was castrated; the reasons, wholly understandable as the country was systematically robbed of its wealth by defunct KGB thugs, the new oligarchs reborn into an American inspired laissez faire capitalism, little more than organised plunder, under the stewardship of Boris Yelstin. The Russian people picked up the tab for this act, a combination of theft and social vandalism and the hope of a healthy democracy and vibrant civic society died. Soon the traditional Russian hunger for a strong man re-asserted itself as a protection against this capitalist gangsterism.
There is another tradition in Russia, it is the history of Kroptkin, Tolstoy and of Russian Anarchism. It is arguable that one of the great disasters of the 20th Century, no mean claim, was the failure of the 1905 Russian Revolution, had it succeeded we could have possibly avoided the first world war and the subsequent victory of Bolshevism, the midwife of Stalinism and the mass murder and attempted genocide that followed, not to mention the triumph of Nazism and Fascism.
One of the most deeply distressing aspects of recent Russian culture is the concerted attempt to rehabilitate Stalin as documented in the January/February of World Affairs, http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/articles/2011-JanFeb/full-Sommer-JF-2011.html
This disgusting phenomenon is I would contend a direct result of the refusal to address the real legacy of Russian Communism,* a refusal best characterised by the ex KGB man Putin, a man who has openly lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union. This refusal has led to the creation of a breeding ground for historical fantasists, remoulding and reshaping Russian history to meet the needs of a greater Russian chauvinism.
All the time however there is the heartbeat of a different Russia, a Russia personified by courageous investigative journalists such as Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya А́нна Степа́новна Политко́вская murdered by faceless thugs to silence her, along with the countless other journalist in Russia who daily face the threat of extinction at the hands of the same thugs.
As I say there is no cure for a deep and abiding admiration and fascination with Russia and its culture, if there was one I would not want it. I continue to watch and hope and pay attention to developments in Russia, paying attention to all that is best, rich and vibrant in the lands stretching from the borders of the Ukraine to Vladivostok in the far east.
I know that I do have some readers in Russia and would particularly welcome comments from you.
*Though
