Category Archives: Russian culture

WHEN A JOURNALIST GETS TO TELL A FULL STORY: ANNE GARRELS’S PUTIN’S RUSSIA: A JOURNEY INTO THE REAL RUSSIA

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Those of us who entered the Slavic studies field in the Soviet era “grew up” with an understanding of two things: it would be hard, and we would have to question every little bit of information presented to us. The 1990s, with its period of “transition” and political change, raised a new generation that came to take for granted easy access to the Soviet Union – multi-entry visas? Really? – and a moderately diversifying atmosphere, with the growth of “normal” businesses and numerous missionaries in our first year Russian classrooms.

As we started to feel like our innate skepticism and cultural skills that emphasized the realistically paranoid – as in, yes, they were really watching you paranoid – were an instrument for the history books, Vladimir Putin took over. The skills of the dinosaurs in our field became necessary for proper study of Russia once again.

One of the respected reporters from the Soviet period has published a memoir/study of Russia, Putin Country: A Journey Into the Real Russia (New York: Picador 2016).The skills developed over decades of working with television and radio news –she was the voice that narrated Gorbachev’s coup for me when I was in Greenville, South Carolina, for instance – have combined with mastery of essential history and an in-depth understanding of Putin’s government and resulted in an amazingly accessible story of why Putin enjoys the support he has in Russia. This is a great, gripping narrative, that goes down as nicely as National Public Radio with your morning coffee, except that it goes on for 227 pages. This is one report that is not going to get cut short for the local traffic report.

ANNE GARRELS’S A JOURNEY INTO THE REAL RUSSIA

ANNE GARRELS’S PUTIN’S RUSSIA: A JOURNEY INTO THE REAL RUSSIA

She signed my copy. #FANGIRL

She signed my copy. #FANGIRL

Then she was charming to my Howard University students. Made the ten hour drive to Ohio State University and the Midwest Slavic Conference totally worth it. #BISONSLAVISTS #BIGGERFANGIRL!

Then she was charming to my Howard University students. Made the ten hour drive to Ohio State University and the Midwest Slavic Conference totally worth it. #BISONSLAVISTS #BIGGERFANGIRL!

Ms. Garrels follows the narrative strategy of using an individual example to humanize data that would easily overwhelm even the most ardent data fiend if presented as a spreadsheet. Each chapter represents one subsection of the Russian population: “A Gay Life,” “The Believers,” “Freedom of Speech,” and “Nuclear Nightmare,” among others. For each group, Ms. Garrels tells of her relationship with a member of each subpopulation, and how their lives have changed since the fall of the Soviet Union. Again and again Ms. Garrels point ways in which the 1990s proved a difficult, traumatizing period for Russian society at large.

The true charm – and value –of this narrative is the way in which she shows the drastic difference between the capital cities – Moscow and Saint Petersburg – and the provinces, and how critical the difference between these two types of cities was to the rise of Putin. Her story of how she settled on Chaliabinsk, a formerly closed city close to a still closed nuclear city, is engaging in and of itself. The years of research on site and outside allows her to weave what would be otherwise overwhelming amounts of historical data as a natural part of the experience of each of her subjects. She makes the rise of Putinism, with the increasing limitations it places on civil liberties across the board understandable, and at times almost logical. Most importantly, she clarifies the extent to which the cultural and economic trauma of the 1990s still haunts Russian politics.

This is the perfect book for the Russia head who wants to show that skeptical aunt why Russia is still a subject worthy of serious interest. Or the Puerto Rican family that at times wonders why one would vote for study abroad in Leningrad instead of Barcelona.

One Research Day…

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One of the problems of living next to one of the richest, most vibrant research communities in the country is actually carving out the time to take advantage of its resources. Spring break is such a time. The very things that help support my career here – my position as Master Instructor (Senior Lecturer at other institutions in the United States) and my family responsibilities make it very complicated to actually carve out a solid block for my own personal research. (Overwhelmed; Work, Love, Play When No One Has the Time by Brigid Schulte is a great primer on these challenges). However, I did take one day to work on independent research. And it reminded me why it is that research in D. C. pretty much tops research everywhere else – sorry Boston, Saint Petersburg and Moscow!

Morning was spent at my favorite reading spot: Library of Congress. The last few years, as my teaching responsibilities have multiplied, my ability to read for myself has shrunk. I do not get to read deep as often as I would like – shshsh! don’t tell my students! – but this morning got me to looking at primary and secondary documents related to a presentation on Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba that I will reading at Midwest Slavic in a few weeks.

Lesson re-learned this day: proper materials and proper technological support can turn what would otherwise be a two to three week project into a one morning project.

In front of the Library of Congress, my favorite place in Washington D. C. Never mind the Supreme Court is next door and the Capitol right across the street.

In front of the Library of Congress, my favorite place in Washington D. C. Never mind the Supreme Court is next door and the Capitol right across the street.

Lunch was spent with an old friend at a pub down by the White House, across the street from the Department of Treasury building. It was wonderful not to have to worry about a children’s menu, as I sped past families enjoying the DC-ness of DC during spring break.

However, the highlight of the day was going to the Woodrow Wilson Center for a presentation co-sponsored by the Kennan Institute: “The Maisky Diary: The Wartime Revelations of Stalin’s Man in London,” held on Tuesday, March 15.

Gabriel Gorodetsky is Quonam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. The presentation focused on the diaries of Ivan Mikhailovich Maiskii, Soviet ambassador to the United Kingdom for the majority of the Stalin period. Professor Gorodetsky has worked on the publication of Maiskii’s diaries for a lot of years. Maiskii’s story tends to deviate from the regular narrative old school Sovietologists have internalized. A former Menshevik, he rose up the diplomatic ranks and survived in part because of the contacts he cultivated through a lifestyle that normal Marxists might qualify as bourgeois decadent. What proves even more amazing was that the diaries survived as classified documents until the end of the Soviet era. They shed light in part on the way that the image of the Soviet Union evolved within the ranks of the British ruling class as the Nazi regime rose to power. And somehow Maiskii managed to survive.

Professor Gorodetsky at the Woodrow Wilson Center. Another book into my must read collection.

Professor Gorodetsky at the Woodrow Wilson Center. Another book into my must read collection.

I regret my father has already passed on – this sounds like the kind of narrative he would enjoy. Diaries of this kind, in particular, play an integral part in illuminating the complicated dynamics of the Stalinist regime. The level of repressions and censorship of the period really makes scholars of the humanities and social sciences much more like archaeologists. It is vital because, as the character of Eliza in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton asks, “…And when my time is up/Have I done enough?    COMPANY: Will they tell my story?…” This is the kind of book that can help us contemplate the danger of the mix of charisma, authoritarian – or in Stalin’s case, totalitarian – instincts, a well-defined nationalist ideology, and a willingness to make violence against civil society by purging it of “opportunist elements…”

The end of the day... Even barely missed WAMTAmageddon!

The end of the day… Even barely missed WAMTAmageddon!

What the Debate Over a History Textbook Can Tell Us About the Conflict in Ukraine.

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The last month or so has been taken over by various global conflicts that seem to repeat some of the most vexing foreign policy challenges of the 1980s: the conflict in the Middle East, particularly the Gaza region, and Russian relations with its East European neighbors. Those interested in international relations find their attentions divided between these two regions due to two sadly violent events taking place simultaneously: the military conflict between Israel and Gaza, and the shooting down of a Malaysian Airlines passenger plane over Ukraine, where about 300 people died. This brings forth the question of how do international relations and international security stakeholders react to long lasting conflicts that feature the messy combination of ethnic and national disputes over limited geographical boundaries.  This entry will focus on the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and try to look at how the debate over the development of a history textbook for Russian elementary schools can illuminate the reasons behind the violent evolution of Putinism in the border between Russia and Ukraine. The connection between the debate over a history book and the debate over the land in Eastern Ukraine may not seem evident at first. However, the way the debate over the textbook evolved points helped to illuminate Putin’s view regarding Russia’s historical condition has facilitated the escalation of tensions in the Ukrainian territory.

This story, as most stories about the current state of Russia, starts with the Soviet period and how it developed school curricula. The United States for the most part leaves textbook choice selection to the discretion of the individual school districts. Under the Soviet Union, Russia developed a nationally centralized curriculum. The 1988 literature readers for fourth and fifth grade mirror each other in their structure.  They progress in a roughly chronological order. The first section features traditional folk tales. The second section contains adaptations of folk tales written by Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin. The third section contains samples of nineteenth century literature. Works by Soviet writers focusing on the evolution of the new Soviet society round out the last section. Each section includes an essay focusing on a particular aspect of the section’s reading, be it plot, character development, or a comparison of prosaic and poetic language. The readers present a unified heroic narrative of the evolution of Russia. It also includes stories that feature young children as heroes, be it as Young Pioneers of as witnesses of heroic military struggle. It sends a message to the young ten to twelve year old audience that they are part of the heroic mission of Russia, particularly Russia as the leading republic within the Soviet Union.

Fourth Grade Russian Literature Reader for the Russian Federation, academic year 1988

Fifth Grade Russian Literature Reader for the Russian Federation, Year 1988. Notice the positioning of the young boy, presumably the fifth grader, and his encounter with the heroic Soviet soldier from what could be interpreted to be the heroic first half of the twentieth century.

 

Russia has maintained the policy of using centrally produced textbooks in the post-Soviet era. What has proved particularly curious is the high profile the central government has given to the development of national textbooks, particularly the development of a new Russian history school. January 16, 2014 featured a meeting of the committee charged with developing the new history textbook.  Some of the professionals who participated come from fields traditionally related to curriculum development: the minister for education and science, various members of the Russian Duma’s education committees,  history teachers from the K-12 realm, the head of the history department at Moscow State University, as well as faculty members from several other Russian institutions of higher learning. Some of the participants, however, prove a curious addition to what one would expect to be a pedagogical task force. The head editor for the Russian History television channel and the Archimandrite of the Sretensky Male Monastery formed part of the textbook development committee. While some argument could be made for the possible interest in the History channel’s view of how media can influence the development of  history curriculum, the presence of the archimandrite begs the question of how the Russian government views issues regarding the separation of church and state when it comes to curriculum development.

Outside of the issues of the curious composition of the curriculum committee, there is also the fact that Vladimir Putin actively charged them with the design of the new textbook. The transcript of the meeting on January 16 shows Putin defending what he sees as a need for unified treatment of Russian history within the national curriculum.

Концепция, которая доработана и уже принята, насколько я понимаю, должна лечь в основу и целой линейки учебников и методических пособий.

Сразу в этой связи хотел бы сказать, что единые подходы к преподаванию истории совсем не означают казённое, официозное, идеологизированное единомыслие. Речь совершенно о другом: о единой логике преподавания истории, о понимании неразрывности и взаимосвязи всех этапов развития нашего государства и нашей государственности, о том, что самые драматические, неоднозначные события – это неотъемлемая часть нашего прошлого. И при всей разности оценок, мнений мы должны относиться к ним с уважением, потому что это жизнь нашего народа, это жизнь наших предков, а отечественная история – основа нашей национальной идентичности, культурно-исторического кода.[1]

The Kremlin provided an official English translation of this statement that gives a general idea of what Putin stated, but which also makes some unfortunate word choices in trying to convey some interesting Russian concepts.

The concept, which has been finalised and adopted, as far as I know, should form the basis for an entire set of textbooks and study guides.

I would like to begin by saying that coordinating our approach to the study of national history does not mean formal, official, ideology-driven single-mindedness. We are talking about something different: a single logic in teaching history, an understanding of the inseparability and interconnectedness between all stages in the development of our state and statehood, the fact that the most dramatic and ambiguous periods are an inseparable part of our past. There is a wide range of assessments and views on these issues and we should respect them, because this concerns the life of our nation and of our predecessors, and our history is the basis of our national identity, our cultural and historic code.[2]

I would like to focus on the first sentence of the second paragraph of the quote. Here, Putin defends the need for a unified presentation of Russian history while trying to address the fear of Soviet styled censorship of uncomfortable historic periods, such as the Stalinist period from 1928 to 1952. «Сразу в этой связи хотел бы сказать, что единые подходы к преподаванию истории совсем не означают казённое, официозное, идеологизированное единомыслие.» The Kremlin provided the following translation: “I would like to begin by saying that coordinating our approach to the study of national history does not mean formal, official, ideology-driven single-mindedness.” While the Russian original really does sound as mind-numbingly bogged down in jargon as the English translation, there is a significant problem with how they translate one phrase: казённое, официозное, идеологизированное единомыслие.  Kазённое means bureaucratic, related to the state – governmental. Oфициозное means something not official but that conveys the government point of view. Идеологизированное means to idealize, in the sense of imagining something as better than what it is. Eдиномыслие refers to someone who thinks the same as some other person, but not in the sense that unanimity conveys that idea. Thus, the phrase should read closer to: “First off, I would like to say in relation to this that a common approach to the teaching of history does not mean governmentally driven idealized concurrence.”

Putin looks to standardize the presentation of history while uplifting those areas he finds most positive, and without over-emphasizing negative events. While he does not mention it explicitly, it seems like he is looking to figure out a way to minimize the negative side of the Soviet period, particularly the Stalinist purges. He also sees this history curriculum as a possible way to unify a country that saw itself in such disarray during the last decade of the twentieth century.

So what, pray tell, does this have to do with Putin’s reaction to events in the Ukraine? First, it shows a consistency to how Putin views the nature and role of the Russian state in a post-Soviet world. Ever since his inaugural address in December 31, 1999, Putin has emphasized again and again that he sees a strong, centralized state structure as an integral part of the Russian nation. He also has pushed for a vision of Russian history as one uninterrupted unbroken process, instead of several periods broken by radical change. [3]

If one starts with that understanding of Putin’s world view, one can understand why he would see it as necessary to assert Russia’s influence in regions that have historically been considered to fall under Russia’s sphere of influence. Ukraine occupies a particular spot in this equation due to the flowing nature of the Russian borders during the nineteenth and twentieth century. The issue of the Crimean peninsula highlights this complex set of issues. Nikita Khrushchev transferred Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 through a declaration by the Politburo of less than a page in length. This did not matter from a security standpoint during the Soviet period, since the Ukraine belonged within the confines of the Soviet Union. After the fall of the Soviet Union, however, it provided a point of tension due to its high percentage of ethnic Russians and the nature of its transfer to Ukraine. One of the main challenges Putin has faced since 2000 is managing the tricky calculus of ethnic and civic tensions that have emerged in the borders of post-Soviet Russia. The United States press has generally paid attention to the tensions in the Central Asian regions of Russia, where Muslim national groups have presented a challenge to the Russia’s centralized federal structure. Its position on the Eastern region of Russia – read: its geographical location in the non-European regions of Russia – have meant that European and North American governments have not reacted in a particularly strong way to Russian governmental and military activity. However, Putin’s expansion beyond Russia’s Western European rational-legal post-Soviet borders have agitated European and American governments that for the most part viewed the issues of post-Soviet borders settled in 1991-1992.

Putin’s view of Russia’s legitimate sphere of influence in the Western region of Russia and Eastern Europe complicates important aspects of relations with an increasingly interconnected European region. Most significant is the growing dependence of Europe on Russian gas, and the Soviet legacy of Eastern European reliance on gas from Russia. Simply stated: if Eastern Europe sees its pipeline to Russia cut off then they will find themselves facing a really cold winter. Phrases that have become clichés such as “energy independence” and “renewable energy sources” take on a much more real dimension.  Russia’s increasing level of trade with Europe also proves challenging. Trade, however, still has some Soviet legacies, so the percentage of Russian trade with Europe is still much larger than the percentage of European trade with Europe. Read: if trade levels go down, Russia gets more affected than Europe.

Finally, this highlights American foreign policy’s continuing difficulty in dealing with the other “N” word: “Nationalism.” Nationalism, in Putin’s view, is important in creating a strong Russian state. It, however, causes great problems when conflicting claims to one territory occur, particularly when the claims are framed in terms of “Slavic” or “Russian” essentialist terms. Put in really explicit terms: does Ukraine really have a claim to Ukrainian right to exist if it is nothing but a descendant of an original Russian ethnic territory? Ukraine’s attempts at closer ties to Western Europe – read: independent of great Mother and Father Russia – becomes a real threat to Russian national sovereignty within its ideally constructed territories.  Ethnicity, nationality, and statehood then become the volatile mess that we witnessed in Central Asia before and in Ukraine today.

 

[1] Встреча с авторами концепции нового учебника истории. 16 января 2014 года, 15:45, Москва, Кремль. http://www.kremlin.ru/news/20071

[2]“Meeting with designers of a new concept for a school textbook on Russian history.” http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/6536

[3] Vladimir Putin. “The Modern Russia: Economic and Social Problems.” Vital Speeches of the Day. February 1, 2000. pp. 231-236 and Meeting of Council for Interethnic Relations http://www.eng.kremlin.ru/transcripts/5017.

 

Oh, the Places You’ll Go! Before LinkedIn or Google Plus, There Were the Pins…

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“Leningrad – The Bronze Horseman” printed under a relief of the Bronze Horseman, the statue representing Peter the Great. I saw this across the river from my bus stop at the university.

Oh, the Places  You’ll Go! Before LinkedIn or Google Plus, There Were the Pins…

A lot of times we remember the rivalry of the Cold War. We remember the 1980 boycott, Reagan’s meetings with Gorbachev, and the way Sovietologists scoured every syllable of Pravda for hidden political meaning.

As a student during Perestroika, however, there was a lot of cool excitement about studying Russian and going to the Soviet Union. Nerdy, bookworm, we were the Big Bang Theory Crowd before the Big Bang Theory Crowd came around. Nirvana of Sovietology in that period was finally achieving acceptance to a study abroad program in Russia. There were basically two programs that dominated the environment back then: Council of International Educational Exchange, CIEE, based in Leningrad, and the American Council of Teachers of Russian program in Moscow. I ended up in Leningrad. I was much more interested in the cultural aspects of Russian studies – music, and especially literature. Or rather, Russian Literature. Especially Russian Poetry. I wanted to see the city of Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Akhmatova.

One fun aspect of study abroad in Russia was trading pins. Little lapel pins. If done properly, you would end up with your coat covered in pins demonstrating various things. First were pins that showed scenes from the city where you stayed. You also would buy pins you could trade. Also, you would get pins as presents from people you met. It was a way to show first degree relationship in the day when there was no LinkedIn or Google plus.

So, last summer, my mother hands me a box to bring with me. She had been cleaning out a part of the house and ran into one of my college “memory boxes.” I opened it and inside – still in an old Soviet frozen strawberry bag – was my old collection of Soviet pins.

Besides the plain nostalgia it brought for a younger, more optimistic self, finding the pins served as a visual reminder of how sophisticated mass produced Soviet culture actually was. It allowed for a standardized way to represent localized experiences. Pins represented well known local attractions, historical events, and political pride.

Pins could be classified under general categories. Most common were the pins that showed local pride. These pins showed monuments or iconic images of a given place. I spent my time in Leningrad in 1988, so the bulk of my collection ha mostly to do with the mythology of the city of Leningrad, particularly with Leningrad as the cradle of the Bolshevik Revolution

 

Captions: “Embankments of the Neva: Leningrad.” Vintage: @1988. The university is located on the embankment of the Neva River.

 

Leningrad

A pin that has “Leningrad” printed under an image of the Peter and Paul Fortress on the Neva River.

 

There also were pins designed to reflect pride in the Soviet Union’s revolutionary past, and their political uniqueness.

Caption reads “Always ready.” Image of Vladimir Ilich Lenin with s Soviet star as the background.

 

Pin with the caption “V. I. Lenin.” Image of Vladimir Ilich Lenin with a background of the Soviet flag.

 

Pin in honor of the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, or as we know it from its acronym, KPSS.

 

Lenin. Just Lenin.

 

There were pins to mark holidays, anniversaries, and other special occasions.

 

Pin celebrating the millennium of the Christianization of Rus’.

 

 

May 1, International Workers’ Day.

 

Another May 1 pin. This holiday was big.

Happy New Year!

 

Elochka gori! Happy New Year!

 

March 8. International Women’s Day. Everything was International.

 

May 9. Day of the Victory of the Great Patriotic War, also known as World War II. I think this is my favorite pin.

Caption reads: “Glory to the Soviet Army.” Celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolt.

Another pin celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.

 

Celebrating 70 years of the Soviet Revolution. I like the white enamel finish effect.

 

We did not go, but we still ended up with cute souvenirs from the 1980 Olympics. Even in 1988.

Moscow. 1980. Swimming.

 

Then there were the city pins you would get as you traveled, or that you would exchange when you met people from different cities.

 

Caption says: “Moscow, Capital of Our Motherland.” I went there.

 

Riga. I went there. It was beautiful.

 

Odessa. I turned 21 there. It was beautiful.

 

Izhevsk. I had a pen pal from there. We met at Brown when their delegation visited us. I saw her again in Moscow.

 

Clearly I met somebody from Vladimir. Just cannot remember who for the life of me.

 

A historical castle from Tver’. Never went there.

 

Tallin. My roommate went. Wish I had had a chance to go.

Minsk. The most changed city we visited.

 

What do you remember when you revisit these kinds of symbols? First, you remember how ubiquitous these pins were. You remember how you could not get away from Lenin, no matter where you were. Always, everywhere. Statues. Pictures. Posters. You remember how self-conscious the Soviets were of making sure everyone had one consistent vision of what constituted Soviet history. How they always, always emphasized the heroic, and everyone seemed blissfully ignorant of the ugly, like Stalin. How actually cool the visual representations of revolutionary Soviet culture actually were.

You also wonder. Even if these pins were made for mass consumption, the amount of attention placed to the aesthetic quality of the pins. Even almost thirty years and an extreme camera close-up cannot take away from the stunning visual quality of some of these pins.

And last, but not least, you always left thinking you brought too many with you. But now I wish I had saved more.

When They Beat Up on You, or How Much More Painful I Am Cuba’s Fate Was…

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So, the last few months I have been busy working on the research side of my portfolio. First, there has been the cascade of end of the year conferences. Actually, April has really been a Conference-palooza, starting with Howard University’s Women Ambassador Conference , where I got to do an extemporaneous presentation on Capitol Hill – that was cool. Then I attended Georgetown University’s The Soviet Gulag: New Research and New Interpretations, where I hung out with about two dozen scholars for three days of fellowship and discussion of the best way to scientifically exterminate you political opposition. That was cool, in a nerdy sort of way, if you get into the topic of highly efficient concentration camps.

Meantime, back at the ranch, I have been completing a research paper on Mikhail Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba,  this completely stunning Soviet film from 1964-1965, filmed on site in Cuba, co-authored by Evgenii Evtshenko, and filmed by Sergei Urusevskii. The thing is a thing of visual beauty. The opening sequence features this fly-over over coastal Cuba that is just spectacular. Then it moves from the shore to Habana, where you see the decadent capitalists hanging out by the side of a hotel pool. The camera literally goes from the side of the pool into the water and up and above.

English language critics have had a hard time figuring out what to say about this film. Rotten Tomatoes, one of the most widely read popular film review sites, gives it a 100 rating, describing it as “an unabashed exercise in cinema stylistics.” Cuban critics generally  ignored it.

Harshest of all, however, were the Soviet critics. The highly respected granddaddy of Soviet film journal, Ikusstvo Kino, [i]dedicated a long article in its March 1965 issue – 13 pages to be exact, which by Soviet standards for this journal was monumental. The critics were simply ruthless in their review of this movie. The article describes how the public had awaited the release of the film with “great interest” this film about the Cuban people, the Cuban revolution, the Cuban heroism. Yes, hyperbole about Cuba was the order of the day in this article. A. Golovnia, a professor in VGIK, the leading Soviet film school,  talks about how Kaltozov and his cinematographer, Uruevskii, used the film as a means to explore new forms and means to represent revolutionary pathos, revolutionary poetics. Now, for those not initiated into Soviet official speak of the 1960s, being accused of innovation was, well, bad. Golovnia describes how the film is harmed by an excess of virtuosity.

Iu. Kun, a producer, accuses the film of “poetic estrangement,” directly making a reference to Eikhenbaum’s and Shklovsky’s formalist theory – again, a bad thing for 1960s Soviet Russia. S. Poluianov, a camera operator, found the form overbearing. “I had the feeling that clarity, cleanliness, and simplicity had gotten lost somewhere… I learned nothing about the people of Cuba”[ii] One has to keep in mind the Soviet art had a really really strong explicit didactic streak in it – if one did not find an explicit historic – read Marxist – storyline, as defined by the standards of Soviet socialist realism, the work was seen as unfit and valueless. As if that was not enough, he gave the ultimate negative review: he found the film “boring.” Because sitting through a dozen sittings of Pudovkin’s a Mother’s water dripping scene was not enough to drive one to the nearest bottle of vodka.

G. Krapalov, a critic, accused the film of being a hybrid of naturalism and formalism – again, cloaked negative reviews in the highly ideological Marxist-Leninist canon. Saddest of all, however, was G. Chukhrai’s review. Grigorii Chukhrai directed the other great Soviet war film, Ballad of a Soldier. If anyone should have an understanding of the use of cinematography, it should be the director who gave us probably the most famous upside down tank scene in film history. Instead, he described how the film left him with a feeling of disappointment, offense, and exhaustion, a feeling of complete “protest against the film.”

As Slavists, we tend to avoid the extremely extreme pieces of party propaganda, except in small amounts. Soviet propaganda is well constructed, consistent, constant in its guiding principles, and extremely repetitive. Your eyes can just glaze over with the consistent repetition of the same slogans and clichés. This article, however, populated by the voices of some of the best respected members of the 1960s film community, really makes it clear how the members of the cultural elite were so finely attuned to the demands of the party to present an ideologically consistent image of the regime.  These highly negative reviews shows how homogenous and monotonous accepted visual interpretations of the revolution abroad had become by the Khrushchev period. The Marxist-Leninist approach to visual representation had become so ingrained by that point in that, in spite of the fact that a lot of these directors had survived the Stalinist period and understood how lucky they were to simply survive that period alive, let alone with an influential job in the cultural field, they would turn immediately against  a work that did not feature one easily identifiable socialist realist protagonist for the length of the film. Most importantly, it shows how what we could term the middle layer of party operatives worked almost independently to perpetuate totalitarian practices within the cultural sphere, and that is a sad sight to behold.

 

[i] “Ia, Kuba.” Iskusstvo kino. No. 3, March 1965, pgs. 24-37. All translations from this article are my own.

[ii] Iskusstvo kino, 27

On the Prevalence of Predatory Policing

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On February 28, 2013, the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies in Washington, D. C., sponsored a presentation called Crime, Violence, and Insecurity in Central America, based on the findings of the Latin American Public Opinion Project, based out of Vanderbilt University. The presentation dedicated considerable amount of time to the discussion of the effect of police corruption on a community’s level of trust. They also looked at some of the factors that seem to affect trust in the police, such as race, language, and economic status. The presentation summarized the results of their 2012 polls. The data reported echoes a lot of the findings from their 2011 report, “Trust in the National Police.”[i] The report states the seemingly universally accepted assumption that: “Trust in the police is important because security is one of the principal directives of a sovereign state.”  Both reports indicated that young males in urban centers were more likely to face police abuse.

This led med to think about another region that has historically shown low levels of trust in the national police: Russia. Russia presents an interesting case for comparison when it comes to the topic of police corruption. The evolution of what most specialists consider a traditional police force dates back to 1991, with the fall of the Soviet Union. Theodore P. Gerber and Sarah E. Mendelson, in the article “Public  Experiences of Police Violence and Corruption in Contemporary Russia: A Case of Predatory Policing?” [ii], describe the problems of police corruption in “…a global power with a vast arsenal of nuclear weapons and a relatively modernized economy…”[iii] The authors in this case emphasize how dysfunctional public institutions can impede democratic transition and exacerbate the general population’s low confidence in the police and courts.

This led me to think about one more case of “predatory policing,” the Cerro Maravilla case in Puerto Rico, back in 1978. I have to say, my family was two years away from moving to Massachusetts in 1978, I was barely ten years old and I remember the case. What I never found out was the way in which this case constituted part of disturbing police practices in the island. For those not familiar with the case, in July 1978, the police shot and killed two pro-independence activists who were on their way to sabotage satellite towers located on a mountain called Cerro Maravilla. This case led to the discovery that the police had kept secret files on citizens and organizations identified as being pro-independence.[iv] These files amounted to 1,204 dossiers about 74,412 individuals. If one keeps in mind how small the island is, geographically speaking, that represents an impressive level of surveillance on a domestic population. What I find even more surprising is that the best summary of the Cerro Maravilla case and its effect appeared in a journal dedicated to the discussion of how to preserve historical documents.

On the continental United States, citizens take positive relations with the police as a given, or at least as an achievable standard of behavior. Granted there are notable exceptions to this rule – one only needs to look at the evidence presented in the Whitey Bulger case in Boston, [v] but for the most part children in the United States grow up with a view of the police as Officer Michael, the policeman who helps the ducks make their way back to the Public Gardens in Make Way for Ducklings, or as the friendly officer who brings their police dog to meet children at public schools and cub scout pack meetings. It is almost ingrained into everyone that it is safer to dial 911 for help than not to dial. In Seattle, there is a strong tradition of civic awareness of non-corrupt public behavior, down to citizens themselves enforcing laws often ignored at other places, such as cars stopping to let pedestrians cross at crosswalks. Maybe a key to ensuring an absence of predatory policing is internalizing a cultural mythology of the importance of a trustworthy police force – as shown in the increased awareness of the importance of not just police, but First Responders, since the attacks that took place in New York, District of Columbia and Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001.

 

[i] Nabeela Ahmad, Victoria Hubickey, and Francis McNamara IV, “Trust in the National Police.”

[ii] Theodore P. Gerber and Sarah E. Mendelson, in the article “Public Experiences of Police Violence and Corruption in Contemporary Russia: A Case of Predatory Policing?”  Law and Society Review,  42(1)2008, 1-43

[iii] Ibid., 37

[iv] Joel A. Blanco-Rivera “The Forbidden Files: Creation and Use of Surveillance Files Against the Independence Movement in Puerto Rico.” The American Archivist, Vol. 68, No. 2 (Fall – Winter, 2005), pp. 297-311

[v] See Whitey Bulger: America’s Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice, by Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy, W. W. Norton & Company, 2013.

Putin and Cultural Statism

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Since taking power on December 31, 1999, the Putin administration has followed a well defined policy of state involvement in the area of cultural development.  Putin’s political calculation behind this policy is not accidental, and comprehensible. This has proved a point of continuity since the fall of the Soviet regime. The Soviet Union seemed to have a government ministry for almost every aspect of culture, from literature to movies to education. In a union of countries spreading from the Black Sea to the Pacific, an active policy of state shaping of culture was seen as critical for maintaining harmonious relations within the realm of civil society.

The Russian state has viewed civil society with suspicion from imperial times. Russian cultural history has developed full mythology of the suffering censored artist, from Pushkin to Dostoevsky to Akhmatova to Solzhenytsin. The acceptance of state imposed censorship at all levels of civil society — education, the arts, the media — to name areas with contemporary equivalents — as a given marks one of the main defining features that differentiates the frame of mind of American historians in the field of Slavic studies from those who specialize in American studies.

The surprisingly peaceful fall of the Soviet Union brought a new challenge to the Russian administration — maintaining corporate unity during a time predicated on the disassembly of a multinational state structure. It also pointed to the awkward state of Russia within the Soviet structure. Even though Moscow served as the administrative center of the Soviet structure, it served as the center of a government predicated on the erasure of nationalistic supremacies, while simultaneously preserving national cultures.

The 1990s and the Eltsin era became a period of state redefinition and reconstruction — rebuilding Russia as a solitary state instead of Russia, the great coordinator of continental policy. Following Eltsin’s reconstitution of the Russian state, Vladimir Putin emerged as the redefiner of cultural statism,[i] with a view of a singular, increasingly homogeneous Russian culture as a critical component of a robust post-Soviet Russian state. Putin stated clearly in the first speech he read when he took power on December 31, 1999, that not only unity, but state centralized unity, that would define the future of the post-Soviet state. “Be it under communist, national-patriotic or radical-liberal slogans, our country, our people will not withstand a new radical break-up.”[ii]

In this speech, Putin outlined a vision of a Russia defined by a strong state that maintains a central role in the growth of cultural life.

“Another foothold for the unity of Russian society is what can be called the traditional values of Russians… Patriotism. This term is sometimes used ironically and even derogatively. But for the majority of Russians it has its own and only original and positive meaning. It is a feeling of pride in one’s country… If we lose patriotism and national pride and dignity, which are connected with it, we will lose ourselves as a nation capable of great achievements… For Russians a strong state is not an anomaly which should be got rid of. Quite the contrary, they see it as a source and guarantor of order and the initiator and main driving force of any change.

Modern Russian does not identify a strong and effective state with a totalitarian state. We have come to value the benefits of democracy, a law-based state, and personal and political freedom… It is a fact that a striving for corporative forms of activity has always prevailed over individualism… This is why I, personally, am paying priority attention to building partner relations between the executive authority and civil society, to developing the institutes and structures of the latter, and to waging an active and tough onslaught on corruption…”[iii]

Fast forward thirteen years to February 19, 2013, to a session of the Presidential Council on Interethnic Relations, where Putin net with some leading government officials to discuss his National Ethnic Policy through 2025. At this meeting, Putin presented a six step strategy “to strengthen the harmony and agreement in a multinational Russian society so that people, regardless of their ethnic or religious identity, recognize themselves citizens of a single country…”[iv]

The six policy proposals were:

  1. Formalizing the recognition of Russian language as the state language, and the language of multinational communication.
  2. Standardizing school curriculum built on an understanding of Russian history as one uninterrupted unbroken process.
  3. Civil society non-governmental organizations will operate within the framework of state supported social non-commercial organizations.
  4. Support of the initiative “For the Strengthening of a United Russian Nation and the Ethnocultural Development of the Peoples of Russia.”

The next one, I have to admit, left me scratching my head at all levels. Unlike the rest of the proposals, which I have translated by myself, I present the Kremlin’s official translation. Anyone who has any idea of what this means, feel free to pipe in!

5. “Our civic chambers operating at different levels also have great potential. Together with state and municipal civic councils, they could promote a dialogue between the Government and civil society on the implementation of national policies.”[v]

6. Sports as a tool for cultural diplomacy. Like when they had the 1980 Olympics. Except that this time, the United States might show up to Sochi.

Looking at all these policy proposals put together, what emerges is a vision of civil society organizations, regardless of the services they provide, or the scope of their missions, increasing falling under the direct supervision of the federal government.

The Russian transcript also includes the statements by government dignitaries who attended the meeting, and some of their statements had a sense of everything new being old and everything new old being new, down to Viacheslav Aleksandrovich Mikhailov’s statement that one of the more serious problems facing this mission is the “problem of the training of cadres” properly trained to carry out this vision of Russian society. This represents a disturbing strategic ideological and structural homogenizing of civil society structures, particularly those engaged in cultural activities. Furthermore, the intense drive to manage the presentation and interpretation of Russian history proves equally disturbing. It is comprehensible that Putin and his administration are maybe trying to smooth out the vision of Russian history after decades of teaching the importance of the “great break” in history, where Stalin called for the collectivization of the Soviet economy.[vi] Can a call for post-modern self-criticism be far?

 

[i] Statism is one of the favorite terms within the field of Soviet studies.               For an example of the Sovietologists’ take on statism, see Robert V. Daniels, “The Soviet Union in Post‐Soviet Perspective” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 74, No. 2 (June 2002), pp. 381-391.

[ii] Vladimir Putin. “The Modern Russia: Economic and Social Problems.” Vital Speeches of the Day. February 1, 2000. pp. 231-236.

[iii] Putin, 233-234

[iv]  19 февраля 2013 года «Заседание Совета по межнациональным отношениям.»  http://www.kremlin.ru/news/17536

[v] Meeting of Council for Interethnic Relations http://www.eng.kremlin.ru/transcripts/5017

[vi] И. В. Сталин «Год великого перелома: к ХII годовщине Октября», Правда, 3 ноября 1929 г.

ROADTRIP

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Summer brings about the requisite road trip. This week I fulfilled a required field trip to any one of us in the field of Russian studies: Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, New York City. After more than thirty years in this trade, it seems almost heretical to admit that I had yet to experience that small part of  Russian culture. I have spent time in Russia. I went to graduate school in  Seattle, which has a substantial Russian population. I even took advantage of the Russian Jewish community one Christmas day, when I ran to a Russian delicatessen in the other Brighton when I had to improvise one Christmas morning breakfast. Fresh baked bagels have never tasted so good!

This June morning took me to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, New York City. I went on a Sunday, because street parking is free in New York City on Sundays. I, however, miscalculated New Yorkers desire to hit the beach on a day that a typical Puerto Rican would consider too cold for the waves. There was a substantial number of bikini clad New Yorkers on the beach side of Brighton Beach to make me wonder whose standard for beach faring temperature was incorrect.

There were many vendors selling their pirozhki on the street.

After a long search for parking, I finally got to the strip of mostly Russian shops in the Brighton Beach neighborhood. Two blocks that separated the beach from the strip seemed like a world away. Yes, Russian was the main language people spoke on the street. And, yes, there are a good number of decent Russian delicatessens.

Upcoming performances by Russian artists.

What surprised me most was the type of Russian culture encountered in this neighborhood. This was not classical Russian culture that we come to love in our classrooms and readings. The bookstores carried more detective thrillers than Dostoevsky — the sales clerk at the one bookstore where I searched told me they did not carry any literary criticism in their stacks.

My favorite storefront of the day. Very Soviet: “Home of the Shoe.”

This pointed out the fact that culture does evolve. Music, language, fashion all evolve through time. A scholar tries to capture a static moment, just long enough to evaluate a particular historical situation. However, by the type the scholar finishes typing out their essay, their observations have almost certainly become dated to outdated.

I love Russian acronyms. The name of this store is short for Moscow video film.

 

So, here are some things I would say about this trip. Be adventurous — there are lots of small and large stores and eating establishments. There is not one single major American fast food outlet within sight when you get into this little bubble of Russian culture, so try something new. Worst case scenario, chase the lunch or dinner with several of the bulk chocolates available in most of the delicatessens in the neighborhood.