Writing instructors often say that nothing in fiction happens without a stated or hinted reason. Dostoyevsky uses the word “suddenly” seven times in the first five pages of his short story the “White Nights.” In Russian history it is often the foreign ray, or light, or idea, or perspective that drives Russia, sometimes driving it crazy.

But, we generally know that human events do not usually happen suddenly. Like earthquakes, we feel them in a moment, but underneath the causal elements were long before inexorably moving toward the 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.

Some say the Russian Revolution started with the Peredvizhniki, the Wanderers, those artists who revolted against the art establishment in St. Petersburg in the 1860s expressed in their art the tragic realism of the common man. But before that, the change started in the 1830s, with the enlightened writers like Belinsky, Bakunin, etc. More recently, the Soviet Union was crumbling years before the flag came down, but we didn’t know it or didn’t want to know it. The Twin Towers collapsed in 102 minutes. But surely the inertia for that disaster began years before, unnoticed or ignored by our political leaders.

Do things happen suddenly, or are the shocks of life always just an ignorance of predicting clues? If we were smart enough 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.

Like a Russian River

Russian history,
it seems to me,
is much like a Russian river.

It lays unhappily frozen,
obedient within its constraining banks
for a period longer than it can stand.

Then suddenly,
A warm foreign ray of change
permeates the ice
and the river erupts,
climbing upon itself
moving recklessly down stream
releasing its discontent,
taking everything with it,
the good and the bad—
until it finds its kind of peace
and flows quietly again
with all appearances of normality.

But winter will come again
and how soon
no one knows
for sure.

 Frederick R. Andresen (1996)

For more read “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman is Russia.”

 Things “happen.” As an “unintended consequence” of the murder of Gregori Rasputin by Prince Felix Yusupov in December 1916 in St. Petersburg, Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovich, first cousin of Czar Nicolas II, one of the handful of conspirators, was sent far out of town and Dimitri ended up in Paris. And who do you think took notice of the aristocrat’s arrival? Coco Chanel! She was eleven years his senior but that didn’t stop either one.

The French perfume business was booming because the scents didn’t last past eleven at night—so they bathed in the stuff.  As I heard the story, Dimitri advised Coco that she should not sell big bottles of perfume for cheap prices, but small bottles for high prices.  Dimitri introduced Coco to Ernest Beaux, a successful Russian-born perfumier from St. Petersburg who had learned his craft from his grandfather who entered Russia in 1812 with Napoleon and stayed there, learning the secrets of Russian perfume. From his grandfather, Beaux insisted that the addition of deer musk would make the perfume last the night. Coco hired Beaux, added deer musk to the eighty-some other ingredients and voila: we have Chanel No. 5. That was 1920. As an unintended consequence of the murder of Rasputin, our lovely ladies today have Chanel No. 5. Ce qui arrive, arrive.

As an intended consequence read “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman is Russia.”

It is amazing to an American to read the Russian news and hear all the varied opinions about Putin’s decision to run for the Presidency—as if there has already been a campaign and an election. But that’s the way it is in Russia—for now. And it will take another generation, at least, to make a change to something like a real democracy.

When I asked a Russian friend, wife of a Russian politician, what her husband thought of the Putin decision, therefore automatic ultimate election, she said, “He’s accepted it.” A perfect Russian answer. If you can’t do anything about it, just accept it and get on with life. Some cast the Putin decision as something approaching Stalinism. In their near-sighted perspective, it is in their best interest to do so, creating a friction and engendering patriotism.  It is unfortunate they can’t stand back and recognize the changes in Russia as they inch along and at least not interfere.

In Russia’s one-party system it’s hard to tell from abroad, that the central control is weakening. But, with a thousand year history of autocracy, I suggest patience will have its ultimate reward. It seems to always be three steps forward and two backward. But we should be grateful for progress even if only one step at a time.

Putin, shirt or no shirt, has taken the necessary steps for bring some form of order to things. I am reminded of Dr. Zhivago’s words in Pasternak’s novel: “Just now, I was looking out of the window in the train—I thought, what is there in the whole world worth more than a peaceful family life and work? The rest isn’t in our hands.” That still typifies a large but diminishing population in Russia and Putin has satisfied that generation for now. Change is happening—faster than Putin’s generation may realize. Let’s accept it and move on.

And don’t forget: read “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman is Russia.”

The first phone call I received was from Russia. After witnessing on TV the catastrophes of September 11, 2001, my friends and business partners were calling to share their shock and advising me to “stay inside.”  New York, and certainly Moscow, seemed far away—but not anymore. It was all one world.

Now, ten years later, we still mourn the tragic losses in the terrorist attacks in New York, but also we have moved on and must recognize the resulting opportunity and its effects.  It was, in a way, a loud and tragic reminder of ongoing global social change.  “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” wrote Einstein. How have we responded to that opportunity?

The fall of the Twin Towers was a fire that shaped a generation of American youth and shook us all with the fact we are globally one people and that dividing borders are melting away. The American youth learned they were not alone in the world, that other cultures were there to discover and understand. Study about or in the Middle East has grown rapidly since then and Arabic is being learned by many. But, the most important realization is how valuable we are to each other. The meaning of “united we stand” has taken on greater meaning—witness the great citizen help in natural disasters as well as planned ones.

And this reaches across borders, ethnic and religious walls, and tends to unite us all as part of the greater human family. Americans knew at once of the tragic crash in Russia that killed the Yaroslavl ice hockey team and they openly expressed their sorrow. It is a growing sense of brotherhood and trust that is knitting us all together.

  Underlying all this is a growing sense of the value of forgiveness. If we, as victims or friends of victims can lift our thoughts above the mists of hate and revenge, of fear and insecurity, we all benefit. Leo Tolstoy said it, “Let us forgive each other – only then will we live in peace.” With a sense of gratitude for the opportunity to grow out of disaster we become stronger and better people.

 But it signals much more than that. The fact is that good Russian music is being played more and more in concert halls and on the classical music radio stations all over the country. I love it. Even if I was raised on the desert near El Paso, Texas,  I loved Russian music from an early age. Rimsky-Korsakov of course (our kids were raised on “Peter and the Wolf.”) As I write this, Prokofiev’s “Love for Three Oranges,” is being played on our great classical music station here, KUSC. There is so much to enjoy: Rachmaninoff, Borodin, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Mussorgsky – the list goes on and on. So many greats. Such romance, such stories in song and melody. I lived in Russia for six years and what a treat in the evenings.

 So fireworks may end the summer outdoor concerts, the stirring and romantic music from the great Russian composers is heard all over all the time. A KUSC announcer once said, “Russian music, like Russian literature, is always excited about something.” Maybe that is why we like it so much. Nothing boring there.

You can find me at www.en.rian.ru. Go to “Features and Opinions” then “Columnists.” Read the others, too.

And don’t forget “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman is Russia.”

Boris Pasternak who only wrote one novel, Doctor Zhivago, which was translated into 18 languages and for which he won the Noble Prize for Literature.  I remember the bookcase behind his desk, which still contained some of the books that he loved to read. There was T.S. Eliot, Yeats, Emily Dickinson, W.H Auden, and I was happy to find my favorites, Rainer Maria Rilke and Robert Frost.

My paperback copy of Doctor Zhivago is torn, its dog-eared pages yellowing, and the cover floating free from the pages. Of course to Americans and to me then it was Julie Christy and Omar Sharif, Alex Guinness and Rod Steiger and the unforgettable music of Maurice Jarre. I only read the novel after a lunchtime conversation with girls in my Moscow office. Anya was a beautiful and talented stage actress and who was playing Lara, the lead, in a Moscow staging of “Zhivago, the Musical.” She said Lara was not real, but a ghost, a specter of what every man wanted in a woman and couldn’t have. I re-read Zhivago even today, often to remind me what good writing is all about. He was a genius.

His description of a Siberian winter is matchless, even in translation: “Torn, seemingly disconnected sounds and shapes rose out of the icy mist, stood still, moved, and vanished. The sun was not the sun to which the earth was used, it was a changeling. Its crimson ball hung in the forest and from it, stiffly and slowly as in a dream or in a fairy tale, amber-yellow rays of light as thick as honey spread and, catching in the trees, froze to them in midair.”

But his greatest contribution is his insightful and courageous characterization of the Russian mind during the times of the Revolution and the following Russian Civil War. Returning from the front, hearing many were fleeing to the Caucasus, watching the Russian countryside click by through his train window Zhivago said, “…what is there in the whole world worth more than a peaceful family life and work? The rest is not in our hands.” Again, that sense of Russian fatalism.

Important to me, and to many of my same thought, would be this lengthy speculation of  Dr. Zhivago on a common cause of death at that time, sclerosis of the heart. He says, “I think its causes are of a moral order. The great majority of us are required to live a life of constant, systematic duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune. I found it painful to listen to you, Innokentii, when you told us how you were re-educated and became mature in jail. It was like listening to a circus horse describing how it broke itself in.”

Pasternak is a hero.

Read it here “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”. Your comments are welcome.

What makes a man murder innocent people and claim a victory for himself? For instance, the recent Oslo bombing and mass murder of young men and women at a camp in Norway by the right-wing political extremist Anders Behring Breivik who called himself a fundamentalist Christian. He said he is a supporter of a “monocultural Christian Europe”–all this in face of the change in Europe toward a secular society. In no way can his murderous insane actions be prompted by any understanding of the teachings of Jesus.

In Breivik’s case it is personal importance at any price. So pertinent is the tale from the foreword of Lajos Egri’s “The Art of Dramatic Writing” where, in classical Greece, a young man is caught for defacing major statues. He is asked if he knows the penalty is death. He answers, “I am a nobody. All my life I’ve been a nobody. I’ve never done anything to distinguish myself and I knew I never would. I wanted to do something to make people notice me . , . and remember me.” After a moment’s silence he added, “Only those people die who are forgotten. I feel death is a small price to pay for immortality!” Breivik will not be forgotten.

Does it take the deaths of scores of innocent people to shake the moral conscience of a people? It has happened before in Russia and the event is often so quickly forgotten. The recent tragedy on the Volga is but the latest. But today, with such transparent media, hopefully something will change in that land where the absence of personal responsibility so often culminates in failure, or human disaster. “It is not my responsibility” is the rationale for inaction, especially to help others.

The owners and operators of the ancient “Bulgaria” cruise ship indeed should be held responsible, but the moral defect goes much deeper. It is part of the culture and certainly a deep fault that must change. The story continues to become clear about this accident, one that we would more likely hear happening in a third-world land without responsible leadership. But, the incredible and horrible part of this tale on the Volga was the fact that two other ships passed by and didn’t stop to save lives. “It is not my responsibility” they must have said. That is horrible, immoral, and unthinkable. To learn those good people and loving children drown — it makes me mad, and sad, very sad.

Russia and Russians have a great future if they take seriously the changes needed. Much of that is indeed happening, I know. A country that has the best rockets into space, but who cannot build decent cars and manage a safe river cruise industry is one that should indeed take a look at itself collectively and individually and develop the personal responsibility so needed by every civilized society. This will not be dictated from the top. It must grow from the people themselves. I hope this event will indeed spark the societal and moral change so badly needed.

 ”Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”—Matthew 19:19

There is much I admire about Russia and Russians (yes I do!)  Read it here “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”. Your comments are welcome.

Russians can come out with the most amazing opinions.

There was a large gathering in Moscow’s Red Square for the 50^th anniversary of the end of the Great Patriotic War (aka WWII) and I was listening to the National Symphony Orchestra from Washington,  DC, conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich.

After the Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, the bells of the Kremlin (really!) and cannon (really!) there was a “parade of the ages” that I had seen in Japan and elsewhere. Costumed heroes from the past ride in their carriages or on horseback. On this occasion they rode out of the Kremlin gates, including Alexander Nevsky who defeated the Teutonic Knights during the Battle of the Ice in 1242, and then General Kutuzov who chased Napoleon back to Paris in 1812. And then that was all. I looked for more.

Then I asked a policeman, “Is that all?” His answer had more meaning than he intended. He looked at me for a moment and then said, “Nothing of importance has happened since then.”   

As usual in Russia, the answer can have two, maybe three, meanings.

Learn more about Russians. Buy here “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”. Your comments are welcome.

I live four blocks from the beach and there, almost each night at Inspiration Point in Corona del Mar, a handful of nature lovers gather to watch the sunset. They are from a variety of  national backgrounds: Polish, Iranian, Irish, and the usual mixtures, like me. But all Americans. Then on weekends like July 4, the mixture deepens. Languages are Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Farsi, and even a little English. But all are Americans.

My friend from Poland and I couldn’t find a place to sit today. We watched the kids play. We expressed our gratitude that all these people, who come on special days for the setting sun and cool evening breeze, are free to do so. It is a great place—America.

See more photos on the Photo Gallery on this site.