At the Crossroads

Under all the turmoil of a thousand years, Russians are yet a colorful and creative people. Sometimes you have to look hard to see it. But the artists, writers, composers, and the brilliant scientists and inventors through the ages have left an indelible mark on the word.

I’ve worked mainly with the younger Russians, those under forty-five today. There is a large mental gap between the young who graduated in the last days of the Soviet Union and the older generations who lived the greater part of their lives under the Communist regime. For the most part, the young are dedicated to a better life as they might imagine it or have personally witnessed it in their frequent travels in the rest of the world. It is an attitude nurtured by their sense of possibility and a growing sense of responsibility. They are often well educated, traveled, cultured, and speak English and other foreign tongues. I don’t think there was a woman (or many men) in our offices in Russia, while being from the top technical institutes,  who could not discuss Rus­sian and Western literature, the stage, music (classical as well as rock and jazz), and dance.

But, Russia is also losing many of best and brightest who cannot wait for the men in power to create a domestic environment for their creativity and energy. So they leave, these young and impatient Russians, although reluctant to leave Mother Russia and families. On the other hand, some come back with their MBAs and become leaders at home.  Russia doesn’t seem to know what to do with these bright young men and women. A recent poll stated that eighty percent of Russians do not want to emigrate. Amazing—so what does that say of the remaining twenty percent? Are these the creative minds that hold the future promise? I know this is a philosophical view, but I am reminded of the famous painting of  A Knight at the Crossroads by Viktor Vasnetsov: (The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg,seen above) They are all, these young, ambitious and committed like the knight at the crossroad. For the sake of their homeland, I hope they stay.

Excerpted from “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”

“Suddenly”

The monarchist Vasily Rozanov said that in Russia change happens quickly—in one-and-a-half or two days. Examples given were the Czar and the Army disappearing in two or three days, the elimination of the Patriarchy under Peter, and more lately, the demise of the Soviet Union. One day there was the Hammer and Sickle flying over The Kremlin, and the next day it was gone. The eminent Oxford professor Andre Zorin quoted Rozanov at a Summer Literary Seminar in St. Petersburg in 2004.

 “Suddenly” is a word much used by Russians. I remember in a past writing workshop we were told never to use the word “suddenly” —that only Dostoevsky could use that word. That nothing in fiction happens without a stated or hinted reason. In Dostoevsky’s “White Nights” he uses the word seven times in the first five pages. I used the word in my poem, “Russian Rivers,” “Suddenly, a foreign ray permeates the ice.” In Russian history it is often the foreign ray, or light, or idea, or perspective that drives Russia and Russians–sometimes crazy. Zorin used two words repeatedly in his lecture—“suddenly” and “incredible.” Those two words are apt when discussing Russian history and culture.

I mentioned to Zorin that it seemed to me that, like an earthquake, human events do not usually happen quickly. We feel them in a moment, but underneath the causal elements were long before inexorably moving toward a future explosion. We, on the surface of things, measuring only what our senses tell us or what we want to believe, feel only the culminating shock. I held up my hand and offered that The Russian Revolution started long before 1917—maybe in the 1860s when the artists in St. Petersburg, “The Wanderers,” rejected the European influence and moved near Moscow and began the great paintings of the Russian common man. Other hands went up and the protest was “No, it was the writers like Belinsky, Bakunin, etc. early in 1830s and the influence of the Enlightenment. The Czars were blind to this. Likewise, the Soviet Union was crumbling years before the flag came down, but we didn’t know it or want to know it. (Military-industrial complex pressures?) The Twin Towers collapsed in 102 minutes. Surely the inertia for that disaster began years before, unnoticed or ignored by political leaders.

Then on the other hand, there is the unpredictability of everyday Russian life. Do things happen suddenly, or are the shocks of life always the lack of a preconscious ignorance of predicting clues? If we were so smart to notice and measure all the tremors of coming explosions, we might be prepared for the resulting shocks. But then life, especially ironic Russian life, would not be judged so eloquently by the masters like Dostoevsky.

 Excerpted from “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”