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.”

 

No one said it better than Dostoyevsky. In his masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov, the master clearly defines the underlying rationale for the mental despotism that has for centuries burdened the Russian people.

In the famous chapter, The Grand Inquisitor, the middle brother, Ivan, relates to his younger brother, Alyosha, an allegory he has written, set during the Spanish Inquisition, in which Jesus has returned to earth and is immediately imprisoned for bringing a dead girl back to life. The wizened  Grand Inquisitor lectures the silent Jesus on the folly of freedom and individual choice and says to him, “There are three forces, the only forces that are able to conquer and hold captive forever the conscience of these weak rebels (the people) for their own happiness—these forces are: miracle, mystery, and  authority.”

These three things are generic to the traditional Russian character: the idea that good, if any, will come from some unexpected outside source (miracle); that man is not ordained to be responsible for his own welfare and progress (mystery); and that guidance and protection come only from constant dependence on and obedience to someone else (authority). Today that situation is changing with the young, but it still pops up at times. It could fall into that category of unpredictibility which I call, “The third side of the Russian coin.”

Do you agree? For more on this, see my book.

Buy here  “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”

From the review for “Walking on Ice. An American Businessman in Russia” from Russia Profile magazine, by its editor, Andrei Zolotov, Jr.  

Of the legion of Western entrepreneurs who came to Russia in the early 1990s in search of opportunities, many came here guided not just by greed, but by a quest for adventure. But there were few who had become infatuated with Russian culture built their businesses as a cultural matchmaking of sorts. They had the inquisitive minds and open hearts of cultural interpreters, which helped push their projects in the land, where, as one such person, Frederick R. Andresen put it, “everything is difficult—and everything is possible.”

Andresen put his insightful observations into a tenderly written, concise book, which is neither an academic study, nor a memoir; neither a business manual, nor a cultural history. Yet it somehow manages to serve all these purposes and can be recommended as an easy and highly educational read for aspiring Russia scholars and people preparing for a tour of duty in Russia.

One part of the book is structured in chapters on Russian geography, demography, culture, business and politics, while the other is simply called “An Essay Collection.” These pages bear an openly Chekhovian description of a weekend spent at the dacha with an extended Russian family next to a carefully worded account of the role of crime and corruption in business practices and how they can be worked around; a tribute to Boris Pasternak next to a report about the October 1993 revolt and the shelling of parliament from an unusual perspective of a businessman whose operation was headquartered in the Comecon building at the very center of those dramatic events.

The author analyzes the role of the Orthodox Church in shaping the Russian psyche and identity, and categorizes Russian women in types which would make some of them blush. What brings these essays together is a transpiring love for both the strengths and weaknesses of this country and its people.

Andresen was clearly intrigued by the “Russian soul” and made an unpretentious and humorous contribution to unwrapping the “mystery inside the enigma.” It rings true even to a skeptical Russian reader instinctively ready to catch factual or contextual flaws in a “naïve foreigner’s” reflection on his country.

One of the book’s high points is the account of how the author applied Dostoyevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor” chapter to business management. Three things are generic to the traditional Russian character, Andresen wrote, referring to Dostoyevsky: “the idea that good, if any, will come from some unexpected outside source (miracle); that man is not ordained to be responsible for his own welfare and progress (mystery); and that guidance and protection come only from constant dependence on and obedience to someone else (authority). There is a reversion to this in today’s Russian government. That situation is pressing to be changed by the young, but it seems always there under the surface.”

For business people without a background in Russian studies embarking on a Russia-related project, Andresen gives a short reading list: “The Icon and the Ax” by James Billington, “The Brothers Karamazov” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and “The Castle” by Franz Kafka. “Walking on Ice” would certainly complement the list—it can be consumed in one trans-Atlantic flight.

 Buy here  “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”

 Moscow is a masculine city. It is an exploding powerhouse of opportunity held together by threads of personal energy and ambition. It is a cocoon of lives stacked seven stories high, living all the happiness and sins of people anywhere – only at the extremes Russians are so capable of.  Moscow hardly sleeps. It has a muscular aggressiveness unique in Europe and traffic jams that make Los Angeles look easy. The one word that describes Moscow is power.

 St. Petersburg is a feminine city. Her historic personality is as an elegant and noble woman sitting draped with the jewels of her youth waiting for her prince to return. This “Venice of the North” with its symmetry, architecture, statuary, art museums, performing art, palaces, gardens and languid summers with endless days make it a city never to be forgotten.  St. Petersburg is not Russia; it is the historical myth of Imperial Russia.

 Moscow is a city of dogs. There are two classes. One can be seen in vagabond packs or stalking alone, scheming to survive, begging, much like the city’s underclass inhabitants. The other is the canine elite, who walk their masters, regardless of rank, in the parks each morning and evening. The disenfranchised class lurks around the apartment blocks sniffing the garbage for anything to swallow.

 St. Petersburg is a city of cats. From the streets at night, you can see their shining eyes, peering through the arches from the inner decay of “Dostoevsky‘s St. Petersburg,” the faceless blocks of communal flats. The cats hang comfortably in the dead trees, dine elegantly in the overflowing garbage, sit regally on the broken steps. For some reason, the cats always look healthy and fat.

 But Moscow is not just a city of power, politics, and one of the world’s best Metro lines. It also is a city of great art. In addition to the Bolshoi, there are new orchestras, ballet troupes, playhouses, and opera houses giving the cultured Muscovites an endless choice. There are concerts by the big orchestras and the excitement of smaller ones, like the Chamber Orchestra Kremlin, on whose board I have the honor and fun to serve.

 Petersburg is a proud city which keeps itself as different from Moscow as possible. On one hand it disdains the crass commercialism, the naked power of Moscow and on the other is jealous for some of it. The palaces are more flamboyant than Versailles and more numerous than anywhere in the world. The heart of the city is the theater. The Mariinsky Theater with its ballet, opera, and orchestra is the standard by which all others are judged. Once you see such perfection, nothing else will do. The St. Petersburg Symphony in the famed Shostakovich Grand Hall on Art Square, guarded by its statue of Pushkin, cannot be matched, especially in it powerful performances of Russian classics. I have the honor of serving on the Los Angeles/St. Petersburg Sister City Committee.

For more on these cities and Russia read “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”

In Ivan’s story (he being an atheist) to his brother Alyosha (he being a wannabe Orthodox priest) the Grand Inquisitor in Spain sees a returned Jesus walking out of a city having healed a girl. The Inquisitor orders Jesus arrested and then visits him in prison and lectures the silent Jesus on the folly of freedom and of individual choice and says to him, “There are three forces, the only forces that are able to conquer and hold captive forever the conscience of these weak rebels (the people) for their own happiness—these forces are: miracle, mystery, and authority.” As the monologue continues, the whole rationale for an autocracy, be it religious or political, is explained. Also obvious is the fact that Jesus, in his silence, wins the argument. The Inquisitor’s lengthy exposition does not hold up to reality of man’s potential for self government if set free.  In the end, Jesus is released.

Dostoevsky, living in the last days of Czarist Russia, so cleverly made it clear. He wrote into the mouth of the Grand Inquisitor that three things are generic to the traditional Russian character: the idea that good, if any, will come from some unexpected outside source (miracle); that man is not ordained to be responsible for his own welfare and progress (mystery); and that guidance and protection come only from constant dependence on and obedience to another (authority). Today that situation is slowly changing as the young emerge from the shadow of Soviet imperialism, but it is a latent obstacle that still gets in the way at times. You can run into it every day.

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