Should Russia be classed as European, as Western? Based on our travels from Kaliningrad to Kamchatka we have come to three conclusions. Russia is “coherently incoherent”—in other words, suffering from a split personality disorder. It is driven by its history. It is, for the most part, homogeneous politically, despite its geographic and even ethnic diversity.
The double-headed eagle symbolizes Russia’s coherent incoherency. Putin, no fan of revolutions, has kept alive, at least in bronze effigy on squares across the country, Vladimir Lenin, the Father of Revolutions. (Nostalgia felt by the older generation, as well as a justifiable reluctance to destroy historical monuments, have also helped to keep these statues intact.) Devoid of political value today, the Lenin statues stand for continuity, for the century during which Russia, in its Soviet incarnation, was a strong country, a superpower that made the world tremble. Some Stalin images and statues—the bust in Yakutsk, for example—have been thrown in, to firm the memory and aspiration of that superpower status. Then there are the two monuments to Prince Vladimir we saw. The old one in Kiev, commemorating the Ukrainians’ own Prince Volodymyr. Another one in Moscow—the new statue, erected in 2016 on Putin’s orders and designed to stick it to the Slavic, formerly fraternal country to the south. Even Ivan the Terrible (who famously “gathered”—or retook—Russian lands occupied by the Mongols in the Middle Ages) has been memorialized, with a statue of him raised in Oryol, a town about three hundred miles south of Moscow.
These statues may well be understood as monuments to Putin himself—they represent strong leaders, leaders gathering age-old Russian territories and standing against enemies foreign and domestic. Stalin enjoyed a cult of personality that saw monuments to him built around the USSR during his lifetime. Putin’s cult of personality has taken a more creative approach, expressing itself through the publicly displayed likenesses of other “greats” such as Peter, Catherine, and even Ivan the Terrible.
Russians, we saw, generally accept all these manifestations of power and the contradictory messages they send, picking and choosing from the patriotic kasha in which they dwell. Perhaps this is a survival mechanism. Russians, as we have noted, resemble snowdrop flowers, durable and adaptive. Shaken by crises coming almost as regularly as the seasons, they manage to survive, steering their individual lives across the turbulent sea that is their country, Great Russia.
Russia lives in the past and offers its citizens a less than rosy future; the growing power of the outdated Cossacks is just one example. Russia’s frames of reference are old victories or involve settling old scores such as winning World War II or retaking the Crimean Peninsula. The authorities attempt to mold the past to fit the present, with the future also presented as reflecting the past. At the inauguration, the president promised his people a new future, not because it is time for change but because, he said, he felt “responsibility toward Russia, a country of magnificent victories and accomplishments, toward the history of the Russian state that goes back centuries, and toward our ancestors.3
“The country’s security and defense capabilities are reliably ensured,”4 Putin stated, his victory parades getting more and more elaborate and symbolically grand with every passing year. In 2017, to public cheers, a new Christmas decoration graced store shelves in GUM, Moscow’s Red Square department store—a collection of glass balls titled “Our Heritage,” with tanks and fighter jets painted as a theme.
Putin may not believe that war with the West is imminent, but the possibility that it might happen at all only helps him. He certainly gets help from the United States, the former Cold War foe that has now developed its own obsession with Russia. Indeed, Putin possesses a fascinating ability to bring extremely diverse yearnings together—yearnings for monarchy, for the Soviet past, for Russian military glory, for a revived Russian national spirit.
In 2017, by Moscow’s main thoroughfare, Sadovoe Koltso—the Garden Ring Road—the Russian Military History Society sponsored the building of a monument to Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor of the AK-47. From his pedestal overlooking the road Kalashnikov seems to be ready to shoot at anyone who comes near—yet another striking example of Russia’s militant national pride. Part of this composition is an image of the globe, displaying a bas-relief of the Kalashnikov rifle, on top of which stands Archangel Michael slaying a dragon, backset by an imposing Stalinist skyscraper—another sign of Russia’s split personality, of Soviet and saintly military greatness aligned.
Russia is largely a homogeneous country, despite its demographic and geographic diversity. Russia does not constitute a separate civilization—it has borrowed too much from the West for that—but in its own way, it seems a world of its own. The multitudinous peoples and cultures composing the country dissolve in a sort of imperial homogeneity. Non-Russians—from the Chechens in the Northern Caucasus to Buryats of Ulan-Ude to the Yakuts of Sakha—make it a diverse land, but they do not influence politics or drive social changes. We saw this from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok.
On the whole, what one experiences does seem imperial, be it in monuments to the many coexisting Vladimirs of the Russian conflicting history. You can sense it in a church, in the Ural Mountains dividing Europe and Asia, where the Bolsheviks brutally murdered the Romanovs, Russia’s last royals; or in Magadan, on the Sea of Okhotsk, where a newly built cathedral stands on the site once occupied by the local Supreme Soviet. You can discern it in Russia’s coat of arms with its double-headed eagle, whether depicted in amber in Kaliningrad or carved from rare red marble in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. You can even perceive it in a Buddhist temple in Buryatia, when a monk declares with all seriousness that Russia has two thrones, one for the chief lama here and another for Putin in the Kremlin.
This is the Russia of the twenty-first century, so very different from what it was during the communist decades, yet in some way ever the same, unchanging. From the White, the Baltic, and the Black Seas all the way to the Pacific Ocean, the president presides over a neo-Eastern Christian empire—a new Byzantium, if you will—and the majority of Russians continue to applaud his sweeping imperial ambitions.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My utmost gratitude goes to my late mother, Julia Khrushcheva, to whom this book is dedicated. She first made me think about Kremlin politics, its relations to literature, and pretty much everything else. One reason I completed the journeys related herein was to show her that traveling in Russia was not, as so many liberals like her in Moscow believe, such a frightening affair. Initially a staunch opponent of the venture, she soon became a great champion of it. She eagerly awaited my phone calls, during which I would describe every city we visited and tell her the funny stories we accumulated. She was delighted that I would visit some Stalin-era Gulag labor camps. “Grandfather would have been so proud of you,” she said, referring to Nikita Khrushchev and his legacy of de-Stalinization.
In June 2017, when we were almost halfway across the country, my mother was killed by a train in Moscow. The rest of the trip was, for me, an exercise in survival, perseverance, professional obligation, and constant inner dialogue with her about life, Russia, power, people, the Gulag, and literature—particularly the work of Mikhail Bulgakov, the author whose satirical writing helped Russians like me understand Stalin’s Soviet Union of the 1930s. When we set out to our first cities, Kaliningrad and Kiev, she encouraged me to see people the way Bulgakov would have seen them—as individuals trying to survive state oppression.
I would also like to remember my sister, Ksenia, whose death from cancer in winter 2016 became one of the reasons for my travels. This book is dedicated to her as well. I wish to acknowledge the immense encouragement of her stalwart husband, Igor Makurin, a former journalist who knows Russia well, and to express my gratitude and compassion to Ksenia’s children, Maria and Nikita. I now consider them my children.
Special thanks go to Barbara Paca, my wonderful friend, and now a sister really, for her patient listening, thoughtful suggestions, and unwavering support. After the dea
th of my mother, Barbara became a critical and compassionate sounding board. I also would like to thank Nadezhda Azhgikhina, a Muscovite friend of mine and a journalist colleague, who has made invaluable suggestions to me about our Russia story. She has traveled extensively around the country and generously put us in touch with many of the people we met and interviewed along the way.
I am enormously indebted to Steven Lee Myers of The New York Times, the author of the best book on Putin, The New Tsar, and the newspaper’s former Moscow bureau chief, for his kind words of inspiration—in fact, the idea for this book arose from my conversations with him—and for his crucial and careful comments on the manuscript.
I would like to thank my New School mentor Michael Cohen for being one of the early readers of many chapters and for providing some important observations, and Philip Logan for his constant encouragement and support.
My sincere appreciation goes to our agent, Sonia Land, for her backing and assistance, and to Daniela Rapp, our fastidious editor at St. Martin’s Press.
I would also like to thank the following people (in alphabetical order) who were kind enough to share their views on Soviet history, Russian politics, and American perceptions of it: Peter Hoffman, Mark Johnson, Kenneth Murphy, Minerva Muzquiz, Alla Shevelkina, and Jeff Wasserstrom.
My profoundest gratitude goes to Vladimir Putin, Russia’s longest-serving president, for providing us all with endless material. He has been a constant source of fascination. I do thank and admire the Russian people, my people, for the remarkable patience and endurance they have shown throughout the centuries, though I hope in the future they will learn to surrender less to their “czars.”
And lastly but most importantly, I thank Jeffrey Tayler, my tireless companion and coauthor. It was a pleasure to make the journey together.
—Nina Khrushcheva
I would like to thank Nina Khrushcheva, my coauthor, for conceiving the idea for this book, researching the places we visited, and arranging our meetings with people there. Nina’s curiosity about Russia was the prime mover for this entire project. Her intellect sparkles on every page. It was an honor to work with her. My gratitude also goes, as usual, to my longtime agent and friend, Sonia Land, for her faith in me and her encouragement. And I would like to thank Daniela Rapp, our editor, for her diligent efforts and useful suggestions about the text. And of course I would like to thank my wife, Tatyana, for putting up with my absences during our journeys. She remains, always, my reason for returning home.
—Jeffrey Tayler
Amber-adorned souvenirs on sale in Kaliningrad’s airport. (Courtesy of Nina Khrushcheva)
Above the banks of Ukraine’s Dnepr River arises Saint Vladimir, the baptizer of Kievan Rus. (Courtesy of Nina Khrushcheva)
On Bolshoy Solovetsky Island, an oniondomed chapel stands in front of the tiny local airport building, a wooden structure painted azure. (Courtesy of Nina Khrushcheva)
Dusted with fresh snow, the fifteenthcentury Solovetsky Monastery served as a prison during the early Soviet years. (Courtesy of Nina Khrushcheva)
Only in Russia: a bactrian camel hailing from the Central Asian realms of the czarist and Soviet empires offers tourists rides through snowy Arkhangelsk, in Russia’s far north. (Courtesy of Nina Khrushcheva)
In Ulyanovsk, homeland of Vladimir Lenin, the drab architecture of the Lenin Memorial calls to mind the Soviet era. (Courtesy of Nina Khrushcheva)
In Perm, the Gribushin House, where novelist Boris Pasternak set scenes from his masterpiece, Doctor Zhivago. (Courtesy of Nina Khrushcheva)
The timeless rural landscape around Perm bespeaks peace and a slow pace of life. (Courtesy of Nina Khrushcheva)
On Lake Baikal’s Olkhon Island, shaman Gennady Tugulov wears the traditional garb of his spiritual vocation. (Courtesy of Jeffrey Tayler)
A lone protestor takes a stand beneath Novosibirsk’s monument to Lenin. (Courtesy of Nina Khrushcheva)
Outside the Buryat capital of Ulan-Ude rises the ornately adorned main temple of Ivolginsky Datsan, Russia’s main Buddhist sanctuary. (Courtesy of Nina Khrushcheva)
Dusk descends on the embankment of the Amur River dividing Blagoveshchensk and the Chinese town of Heihe. (Courtesy of Nina Khrushcheva)
A flower market graces Yakutsk’s Ordzhonikidze Square, to the delight of locals. (Courtesy of Nina Khrushcheva)
In the outskirts of Magadan, Russia’s “Gulag capital,” the stark Mask of Sorrow monument calls to mind the victims of Stalin’s Great Terror. (Courtesy of Nina Khrushcheva)
On land once occupied by Magadan’s House of Soviets now stands the Holy Trinity Cathedral. (Courtesy of Jeffrey Tayler)
Veering northeast into Gulag land, the Kolyma Route (once a dirt track trod by Stalin’s condemned) has been paved and is now officially known as the R504 Kolyma Highway. (Courtesy of Nina Khrushcheva)
In the rubble of Kolyma’s Butugychag labor camp, where prisoners mined uranium unprotected, abandoned shoes recall the perished. (Courtesy of Nina Khrushcheva)
On the way into Vladivostok, the Just Russia party has emblazoned a cement wall with the patriotic catchwords “Crimea is Russian!” (Courtesy of Nina Khrushcheva)
In Vladivostok, the soaring twin suspension towers of the Golden Bridge, along with much else, evoke San Francisco. (Courtesy of Jeffrey Tayler)
The fog-shrouded stony redoubts of the Kamchatka Peninsula loom over the Pacific Ocean. (Courtesy of Nina Khrushcheva)
NOTE ON NAMING AND RENAMING
In Russia, names are often political. Naming your child Maria or Marlen signals a political stance. Maria, of course, is the name of the Christian Mother of God; Marlen, a popular name in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, is a combination of “Marx” and “Lenin,” and naturally brings to mind something less than holy. City streets at times bear the names of political upheavals or memorialize landmark events or, most of all, important leaders. Both 1917 and 1991 were moments of upheaval and great potential for Russia, so one often sees names reflecting those turbulent years—and especially 1917, with its revolution of worldwide import.
Saint Petersburg has undergone renaming more than any other city in Russia we can think of. Built on the orders of Peter the Great, it was first called Sankt-Peterburg—Saint Petersburg—with “burg” harking back to the Dutch origins of the name. In the 1910s, during the upheavals of wars and revolutions, “Saint” was eliminated and the city found itself renamed, in Slavic fashion, Petrograd. After Vladimir Lenin died in 1924, Petrograd became Leningrad. After 1991, the city became Saint Petersburg once again. Some residents now joke that it will soon become Saint Putinburg, since Vladimir Putin hails from the city.
Russia’s tradition of naming and renaming may seem exaggerated to outsiders, but it stems from the country’s binary spirit, with the currents of history sweeping first in one direction and then in the other. In the twentieth century alone, Russia witnessed two tumultuous political transformations, lurching from monarchy to socialist dictatorship to the chaos of Boris Yeltsin’s democracy to the “centralized” democracy that almost inevitably led to the rise of Vladimir Putin, with his initial calls for “a dictatorship of the law.” Those were welcome words to Russians wearied by out-of-control oligarchs, organized crime, strikes, and the collapse of infrastructure. Many lessons should have been drawn from such events, but Russian leaders, once victorious, generally seek to annihilate the past from which they could have learned. They have regarded the past not as the foundation for future growth, but as a source of error to be destroyed before it infects their own regime. Total destruction must precede creation, and this obliteration of history manifests itself in statues and names.
Russians have traditionally glorified their leaders, even turned them into demigods, when they were not actually God’s anointed vicars on earth, as were the czars. They have also been quick to vilify them when the system of government changes or a new leader arrives. The functionaries of the Soviet system suffered especial peril when their boss in
the Kremlin moved on—often, but not always, to the next world. Statues of Joseph Stalin and Lenin used to grace every public square in the USSR, and the bodies of both lay within the mausoleum beneath the Kremlin walls. After Stalin’s death and denunciation by Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin’s corpse was removed to a more modest location nearby. The authorities then set about expunging his name from street signs and pretty much every public space. Expunge the name and voilà! The crimes the dictator committed against millions vanish.
After World War II and the Soviet annexation, the German name Königsberg became Kaliningrad. It remains Kaliningrad to this day, even though more than half the city’s population has no idea that their city was named after Mikhail Kalinin, a Bolshevik revolutionary, Soviet functionary, and Stalin ally. The fall of the Soviet Union prompted many cities to revert to their prerevolutionary names, but this was not an option for Kaliningrad, which had belonged to Germany. Reviving its German name would have hampered its new Russian present. Things were different for Kuibyshev, however, which reassumed its czarist-era name, Samara, even if its main square is still Kuibyshev Square, with its monument to the city’s former namesake, Valerian Kuibyshev, another Soviet functionary of the Stalin era, still intact. Similarly, Yekaterinburg, or Sverdlovsk during the Soviet decades, brought back its old name after 1991. Nevertheless, a statue of the Bolshevik Yakov Sverdlov, a Lenin contemporary, remains afoot on Lenin Street, near the Sverdlov State Academic Theater of Musical Comedy. Moreover, Sverdlovsk Oblast has kept its Soviet name even though its capital now is Russian Yekaterinburg.
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