“Modern Russia and Eastern Europe” turned out to be my favorite course this semester. I wish there were more (or any) courses about Russia at Furman. Unfortunately the University of South Carolina is the only college in my state that offers a major in Russian and, while I would enjoy such a program, the big state school is really not a good fit for me. I considered quite a few colleges besides Furman when I made the decision to come back, even online programs. But my heart apparently still bleeds purple. Also, it’s tough to get scholarships as a transfer student and you often have to take more courses to meet the general education requirements, whereas at Furman I could basically pick up where I left off with similar financial aid and curriculum. Nevertheless, it’s a hard choice academically, because I want to put myself in the best position for graduate school and Furman doesn’t offer all the courses I would like. However, Furman is the best environment for me mentally and emotionally and that is an essential factor in my performance. So I’m seizing whatever opportunities come my way to study European history.
The “Modern Russia” course brought me back to an earlier phase of my life, when I consumed a lot of Russian literature. I even tried to teach myself Russian at one point in high school using The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Learning Russian, which I still have. Interestingly, though I’ve studied the German language and history the longest and done a lot of German-English translation work, I actually can’t think of any Germans among my favorite authors. Instead I think of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Turgenev, and Solzhenitsyn, in addition to some English authors like Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. These Russian writers were my heroes growing up. For example, I inherited a two-volume set of Tolstoy’s War and Peace from my grandparents, which I read at a young age. I never watched the American film adaptation from 1956, but discovered Sergey Bondarchuk’s seven-hour epic from 1966 and relished it. I have yet to read Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, but I have watched David Lean’s 1965 film starring Omar Sharif several times. I remember a certain point in my life when the titular character in Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov resonated with me personally, even though I was ignorant of the novel’s historical context. I watched a few Soviet films too, such as The Cranes Are Flying (1957) and Ballad of a Soldier (1959).
I’m not sure why I prefer Russian literature and film, but part of it must be the descriptions of nature (Russia is so vast and beautiful) and the brooding emotions of the characters. For some reason I feel comfortable in the Russian world in spite of the fact that I have no personal connections to the country or people and Russian culture is very different from American culture.
When I first studied at Furman, I was at the peak of my German interest. I had just finished translating a book from German to English and collected lots of German books at sales. I also took a freshman seminar called “Everyday Life in Nazi Germany.” Shortly after I left Furman, I wrote a novel about the Holocaust, but I think over the next few years my interest in Germany waned a bit. It wasn’t all-consuming anymore. I still love the language, the culture, and the history, but it’s definitely a more subdued love. I’m not sure that I want to specialize in German history anymore.
During my hiatus from college I read a few books related to Russian history, such as Benson Bobrick’s history of Siberia, East of the Sun; Sholem Aleichem’s stories from the shtetls in the Russian Empire; Valerian Albanov’s captivating tale of survival in the Arctic, In the Land of White Death; and Karen Dawisha’s daring work, Putin’s Kleptocracy.
For the “Modern Russia” course, we read, among other works, Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground, Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Maxim Gorky’s The Lower Depths, and Eugenia Ginzburg’s Into the Whirlwind. We also watched Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, which I had seen before. It was a good sampling from different periods. Later my professor showed us the trailer for the film The Death of Stalin and I knew I had to watch it. I rented it on Christmas Day to watch with my dad. It was darkly funny as only a Soviet power struggle can be. I also found a Russian series called Trotsky on Netflix which I’m currently watching. It apparently caused quite a stir in Russia and around the world for its alleged praise of Leon Trotsky. However, I don’t get the sense that the writers are holding him up as a hero. On the contrary, I think his portrayal is very nuanced. They are also making an important statement about the discrepancy between ideals and reality in revolutions; the relationship between power and sex (maybe a little too Freudian, but interesting); totalitarianism; and the human condition. After learning about these people and events in class, I’m enjoying watching this creative interpretation.
Recently I read Albert Rhys Williams’ sympathetic account of post-revolutionary Russia, The Russian Land (1929). Like John Reed, Williams was an American journalist who became a Soviet sympathizer. He lived in Russia from 1922 to 1928. Each chapter stands alone as a vignette of Russian life and, though you have to take his words with a grain of salt, I think the book still provides a solid eyewitness account of Russia under Lenin. There is no reason to doubt the veracity of many of the episodes, as it would not have benefited Williams’ cause to fabricate them. However, there is a bit of propaganda in the foreword, where a peasant named “Peter Glevovich Yarkov, of Seltzo Village, Moscow Gooberniya” affirms that the author, “Albert Davidovich,” writes here a true account of Russian life, almost like a native Russian. I was instantly suspicious of this peasant, who at fifty years old was not only literate, but fond of writing verses. I can only imagine that he learned to read and write as part of the literacy program of the Bolsheviks, perhaps in the Red Army, but there is no way to know for sure if he was even a peasant. At any rate, The Russian Land is an interesting read. It’s disappointing, however, that Williams remained sympathetic to the Soviet system until his death, blind to the incredible suffering of its millions of victims.