Packing Knowledge

Do you keep a travel list of what to pack and things to do before leaving home? My packing begins long before a trip with a reading list related to my destination. Travel in conjunction with reading provides a way to explore a region or related topic.  Usually I discover how little I knew.

I recently returned from my first trip to Russia and for all the reading that I did about Russian history, I realized that I didn’t learn enough about today’s Russia. My expectations were woefully out of date, more tied to the Soviet era than the present. Because this trip was sponsored by the Museum of Russian Art, we had the good fortune of having quite a bit of expertise on board. That included authors and historians, people conducting business in Russia and one traveler who grew up in Russia. Several wore more than one of those hats.

We had several evenings set aside where we explored the questions that arose as we confronted the Russia of today. Those who had the opportunity to observe the development of Russia throughout time noted that in the past it largely focused on Lenin, the Bolsheviks and revolution. There is a renewed interest in the Romanovs and the theme of imperial power, something perhaps that Putin hopes to benefit from.  The question is what do you do now with the unsavory aspects of Soviet history? One solution has been to re-define the Soviet experience as being about World War II when the USSR played a critical role in the war as well as suffered great losses. There have also been efforts to commemorate those who lost their lives under the despotic Soviet regime. The Last Address Project places a plaque commemorating that history at the former home of a victim of repression, much like the stumbling stones that commemorate where Holocaust victims once lived.

I’ve spent the past year reading extensively about Russian history beginning with the czars, moving into Soviet times and more recently into today’s Russia.  I am struck by a theme of totalitarianism that runs throughout. Initially it was an imperial society run by the Tzar with support from the class of nobility. A very significant portion of the population was comprised of serfs and peasants, creating an inherently unstable society. After the revolution the nobility was uprooted and often executed. The players changed, but oppression through fear remained a constant. 

So why this recurring theme? One theory that intrigued me was to look at it through the lens of slavery. The United States' Civil War was over 150 years ago and yet we are still dealing with the aftermath of slavery. Russia had its own form of slavery in the serfs who represented a third of the population, 20 million people when serfdom was abolished in 1861. By contrast, in the US at that time slaves represented 4 million people. Serfs were Russians by birth and of the same race and religion and yet were viewed through an entirely different lens than other classes of Russian society. They were Other. Studies of Russia have found that a history of involuntary servitude results in lower economic and educational achievement many generations later. In the US this underlying inequity resulted in a civil war and a painfully slow correction which is still ongoing. In Russia it created an environment which fostered totalitarianism. Despite attempts to move to a more open society it continues to rear its head. Censorship was lifted under Gorbachev and Yeltsen tried capitalism, but economic disarray followed and the 1990s were described as a jungle run by thugs. Putin was viewed by many Russians as a stabilizing force who reasserted Russian identity even as he consolidated control.

So, are Russians better off today than during the Soviet regime? Our guides shared their experiences from the past which varied widely depending upon where their parents were positioned. They seemed to feel comfortable speaking about their experience which at one time would have been highly unwise. Having said that, it was also evident that there remained issues that were deeply felt and not discussed. Now they can travel, something that would not have been possible before. Food is available in grocery stores without the queues of the past. With some of the benefits of capitalism also comes greater insecurity and fewer guarantees.

I started with reading so let me end with some recommendations. As I move my attention to the Russia of today, I have found two books helpful in finding greater understanding. Red Notice by Bill Browder filled me in on today’s economic environment, the corruption within Russia and the power of the oligarchs. It also explains the underlying story of the Magnitsky Act and why Russia is so eager to get that lifted. This non-fiction book reads like a gripping novel. The other book that I would recommend is The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia by Masha Gessen. This National Book Award winner follows the lives of several families through time giving us a perspective on the Soviet times and the progression to today. As someone who grew up in Russia and has since left, Gessen offers an inside perspective on the country of her birth. 

"Cake" News or Let Them Eat Styrofoam

Have you heard the story about the inaugural cake? The cake for Trump, which was a replica of a cake for Obama, was three inches of cake, the rest of the multi-tiered structure was styrofoam. Author, journalist and activist Masha Gessen shared this story at a recent CAJM conference to illustrate the sham so often present in a totalitarian regime. 

Gessen knows of what she speaks. She grew up in Moscow, leaving in 1981, only to return in 1991. She once again departed in 2013 when faced with the threat of children being taken away from gay parents.  As an openly gay journalist with an adopted son, she was under particular threat.

I had read, loved, and written about her book Ester and Ruzya: How My Grandmothers Survived Hitler's War and Stalin's Peace so was looking forward to hearing her speak. Today she is often discussing Trump through the lens of one who grew up in Russia and lived there during the Putin years.  

She began by quoting Soviet dissident Andrei Sinyavsky, who once said that his “differences with the Soviet regime were primarily aesthetic.” She then elaborated on his meaning by exploring the culture of mediocrity that sets off the cringe reflex in anyone who places a value on excellence. That quality is very much reflected in the culture that surrounds Trump from his misspelled tweets to his incoherent sentence structure to his disdain for facts to the sheer meanness reflected in both his language and his budget. It is an embarrassment to be represented in this fashion.

All is sham and styrofoam layers where appearance matters more than reality. She spoke of how similarly Putin surrounds himself with staff who all have PhDs, but each one of them is plagiarized. Putin himself has been accused of plagiarism, which is quite common in Russia.

On the one hand she noted that Trump is all about raw emotion and public profile while Putin doesn't express emotion and had no public profile. Despite these differences they are similar in the way that they use language and lies. They exert power over reality by bully lying. She noted that Trump doesn't care if you believe his lies, but will continue to assert them to render you powerless like the bully who takes your lunch box.  Similarly Putin claimed there were no Russian troops in Ukraine, then said, oh of course there are. Reality is what they say it is.

Both disdain the public sphere and are contemptuous of public politics, the media, and how the public conversation occurs within a democracy. Gessen referenced Tillerson's first trip as Secretary of State without the press corp.  He noted that he didn't feel he had a use for them and would use them if he did.  She contrasted this CEO view of the press with the public servant view. A CEO is accountable to a board, a public servant to the public. The press corps is one of the vehicles by which the public servant view is implemented.

Gessen spoke about Perm36, the only gulag museum in Russia that was based on what was once a gulag camp during Stalin. In its later incarnation it served as a political prisoner camp until 1988.  In 2013 the museum was taken over by the state and those who created it were forced out.  It was turned into a museum glorifying the gulag.  Gessen spoke of a visit where the guide spoke of Sergei Kovalev, a well-known geneticist held there, as if the camp had attracted distinguished guests rather than the fact that he was imprisoned in solitary confinement for much of his time.  The museum was designed to create what she called "squishy reality" where nothing in the museum was clear, pointed or original.  It is much how cacophony works to muddle and confuse the public into silence.  

Gessen referenced the cacophony of the Trump administration as echoing this approach.  Nothing means anything because everything is quickly overtaken by something else.  There is always the shiny new object to distract us from public politics which needs to be our focus.  She stressed that it is our job to save the public sphere and it must be reality based.  The question she closed with is what will we be left with post-Trump and the risk he presents to both our language and the role of our media.  Critical thinking must be upheld lest we discover that all that is frosted is not cake. 

If you'd like to read more of Masha Gessen's analysis you can find her work at the New York Times or pick up one of her books, one of which takes a closer look at Putin is The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin.

Jewish Life in the Soviet Union

Currently I am doing a series of oral histories in a Jewish elder facility focused on the topic of identity and legacy.  One of the facilities is home to many Russian immigrants and I have had several interesting interviews in recent weeks.  One in particular has stayed with me.  The person I interviewed, Boris, told me first of the death of his parents and sisters at the hands of the Nazis.  First they had to build a bunker for Hitler and then were executed upon its completion.  Boris held out a picture of a beautiful woman, his sister, the only picture he has of family.

He then related a story about his father-in-law who had a Russian passport prior to the revolution.  By Russian he meant that it said he was Christian.  His father-in-law’s parents had converted and married in a church in order to get the benefits of jobs and education which were frequently barred to Jews.  After the church wedding they went home and had a Jewish service.  After the revolution his father-in-law went to the authorities and asked for a Jewish passport.  He believed that he would now be able to exist as a Jew without discrimination.  Unfortunately that hope was not fulfilled.

Boris related how he and his wife had chosen to have their son take his mother’s name which was not a Jewish name as it was derived from a town.  They made this choice to protect him from discrimination. After they followed their son to the United States his son took back his father’s Jewish name and lives proudly today as a Jew.

These interviews have heightened my interest in learning about life in the Soviet Union as a Jew and that interest was furthered by a wonderful book titled Ester and Ruzya: How My Grandmothers Survived Hitler’s War and Stalin’s Peace by Masha Gessen.

The author of this book is a journalist who traces the story of her two grandmothers, close friends before their son and daughter married producing the author.  Both Jewish, one was born in Bialystok and went to Russia to study, the other was a Russian Jew by birth.  Ester, the Polish Jew, loses her father and fiance to the Nazis, but her mother is deported to Russia saving her and giving Ester a small nucleus of family.  The story relates the challenges of being Jewish both in pre-war Poland and in post-war Russia.  Many of the pre-war incidents she references echo the stories I’ve gathered from Dora, my friend who came from the Polish town of my grandfather’s birth.  I had not fully appreciated the deep Zionist stirrings in the Polish communities nor how much the doors of other countries were slammed in the faces of Jews who sought escape prior to the war.  Limited numbers were allowed into Palestine and in the five years prior to Hitler’s rise in 1933 the US issued just 33,000 visas to Europe’s Jews.  The post 1924 visa files that I now access in family history research exist only because the US was shutting the door. 

Many of the Jews who survived were those who were able to make their way to Russia or were deported to Russia.  Yet living in Russia brought compromises and challenges.  One grandmother is a censor of international correspondents and is in the unique position of reading the uncensored news even while she must literally toe "the party line".  Taking a stand against reporting on others can mean danger not only to oneself, but to one’s family and joining the party is necessary for survival, but not necessarily sufficient.  Throughout this the obstacles strewn in one’s path to securing education and employment as a Jew are daunting.  The Zionist stirrings are viewed as challenges to the Russian state and Jews were targeted with deadly anti-Semitism.  My interview with Boris comes into sharper focus as the outcome of this virulent history.  Many of the children immigrated to seek freedom from discrimination and the parents followed in their wake.