Russophilia and Mortality

Two days ago I came to the sudden and startling realization that I would be reading about Russia for the rest of my life.  I have of course already been reading Russian history and literature almost exclusively for the past seven or eight years.  But somehow the thought that I would never, ever break the spell of Russia came to me as a shocking revelation.  What could it mean to be certain that nothing would ever—indeed could ever--take the place of Russia in my imaginative or quasi-scholarly interior life?  In a sense, this epiphany is an adumbration of mortality: when one is young, one often assumes that all learning will one day be meaningful, important, and (supreme conceit) above all, useful.  If I take a course in Japanese, I do so because I will some day encounter a Japanese theme in my life, be in a Japanese girlfriend, a Japanese business opportunity, or a inescapable current of Japanese academic, cultural, or educational ideas.  For a young person, or a person who at least sees himself or herself as young, life is open-ended and pregnant with possibility.  As one grows older, life becomes increasingly scripted.  If I take a Japanese course now, I don’t expect that I will actually find a way to build on this knowledge; my potential life as a fluent Japanese-speaker is limited, almost non-existent.  If I’ve worked hard at Spanish for about a decade and never mastered that relatively easy project, how likely is it that I will find myself in command of an unfamiliar alphabet and grammar? 

To be sure, one’s attitude toward the future isn’t determined by biology.  Age is at least partly a matter of attitude.  The genius of some chronologically advanced men and women is that they retain a youthful capacity to engage with multiple futures and to remain hopeful that every encounter with new learning will sooner or later prove to be significant.  On the other hand, getting old has its advantages.  Believing that the future will resemble the past isn’t an entirely misguided or deleterious enterprise.  Embracing the idea that “this is all there is,” is the first step to a kind of emotional or even spiritual maturity.  If life does have a trajectory, one might do well to study it if only in order to “know thyself.” More concretely, if my future life will continue to resemble my current one, what illusions can divert me from making wise decisions related to living my life as it should be lived?  Russophilia has forced me to take Russian poetry seriously; one simply cannot understand Russia without at least accepting the idea that Pushkin, Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Mayakovsky, and Tsetaeva somehow articulate Russia’s essence.  We often think of poets’ as expressing the ideals or values of youth.  But true poetry seems to hail from a place of pessimistic maturity rather than optimistic youth.  Poetry emerges only after a man or woman has fully embraced the idea that life is fleeting, time is finite, and adventure is, at least one some level, fictional.  That is to say, a poet knows what priest knows:  we’re born, we grow up, we grow old, we die. 

Fatalism is a very Russian idea.  It’s off-putting to many, but it shouldn’t be entirely repellent.  The Russian poet (and I’ll include writers such as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in the broad Russian poetic project) merely asks us to live our lives as if we were going to die someday.  For some reason, this is remarkably difficult for most of us to do.  For my part, I recall reading Tolstoy’s short book, The Death of Ivan Ilyich.  As I recall, the book does nothing more than (spoiler alert) describe a man who discovers that he is going to die.  It took a Russian, and a Russian genius at that, to tell us the simple truth that people die.  Moreover, the book’s streamlined plot ensures that few or no readers can miss the point. 

The American equivalent to this revelation can be found in Woody Allen movies, which are of course directly inspired by Russian writers such as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov.  But I remember the conclusion to the series, Six Feet Under.  Of course, this series took up the theme of death by setting up its protagonists as a family of funeral parlor owners.  But (second spoiler alert) the series finale, which allowed viewers to witness the chronologically disparate death of every single character on the show, drove home Tolstoy’s point about the ubiquity of death.  What does it matter?  Why should we focus on the fact that we will someday perish? Although pessimism has its downside, it also allows us to study our lives and weigh our options carefully.  At age 43, I’ve begun to study my life, and I’ve determined that nothing would be more profitable than to ensure that my intellectual and spiritual life continues to revolve around Russia, as it has done now for many years.  As the Russian writer Viktor Shklovsky says:  “God grant that tomorrow be exactly the same as today.”  

Sorpranograd

The most compelling aspect of the show, the Sopranos—aside from Edie Falco's perfect acting—is Tony Soprano’s relationship to power. Tony Soprano is a walking explanation of how power works in any context. Power has mysterious origins. In Tony’s case, it’s partly inherited--a product of the unique history of Italian immigration in New Jersey, an underground milieu, and the violent personal successes of his father and uncle. And it’s partly contextual: Tony’s strength wouldn’t be operational in many different contexts but is perfectly suited to the work of cosa nostra. Tony’s power is also the result of a variety of personal traits, including physical strength, cunning intelligence, charisma, sensitivity, machismo, savage humor, and brutality.

As the show proceeds, it’s often hard to know which facet of Tony’s personality is most important to his success. He’s a good negotiator. He knows the rules of the game, both in terms of receiving respect from others in the criminal underworld, and in knowing how city councils and labor unions and gambling consortiums work. He also knows other people. For a sociopath, he maintains the ability to empathize with other people, at least to the extent of knowing what motivates them. Tony sometimes makes mistakes. He’s out of his element when dealing with elite society, and can’t quite control his own wife, Carmella, or his children.

By and large, however, Tony’s recipe for controlling others works well. He’s tender enough with his crew—his cousin for example—to give them each hope that he may well have their best interests at heart. He’s cruel enough to keep them fearful of his ire. He also possesses a wicked sense of humor, mostly geared toward ridiculing, mocking, and degrading those around him. (The scene where Tony realizes that those around him are laughing hysterically at his jokes only because they realize the need to flatter the boss is priceless).

The fact that Tony seeks therapy in the attempt to overcome panic attacks hints at a fatal weakness in Tony’s armor. However, Tony’s developing capacity for introspection is in many ways a testament to his leadership potential. As the therapist’s mentor tells her, research shows that psychopaths don’t gain anything from therapy. Rather, they use therapy to gratify their own egos or, more frighteningly, to overcome barriers to an even more efficient savagery. And this of course is how Tony’s therapy works. He doesn’t really become more humane. He’s unkind to his son, and analyzes his own dreams (at least this is my interpretation of the episode) to uncover—and murder--a government mole in his organization.

One thinks of Woody Allen, who remained in therapy his whole life, but somehow managed to justify the fact that he seduced a young woman who was, effectively, his own step-daughter. As the ultimate television personification of the successful pursuit of power, the Russophile naturally thinks of Joseph Stalin. Although all of Russia was his stage, Stalin had the Soprano touch. He was intelligent, cunning, and brave. Like Tony, Stalin understood people. He knew how to flatter them, persuade them, humor them, belittle them, and scare them. He made friends easily. He spoke persuasively. He was patient in the application of his power, and could wait months or even years to exact revenge.

In the end, Stalin was an effective political leader because he, like Tony Soprano, possessed self-discipline and good, old-fashioned people skills, while maintaining a sociopath’s ability to use force and terror without compunction whenever necessary. Of course, Stalin also used terror when it wasn’t necessary, killing people who posed no threat to his regime. He was paranoid, but probably also executed people for a variety of other reasons, believing that his will was synonymous with raison d’etat as well as communist philosophical principles. Tony Soprano would probably have needed a philosophy to have risen to the level of Stalin as a mass murderer