Russia's Greatest Love Machine..

Grigori Rasputin seems to belong to another age, and a medieval age at that. And yet Rasputin was one of the figures who did the most--albeit unintentionally--to usher in the Russian Revolution. In the documentary series Land of the Tsars an entire episode is devoted Rasputin's fascinating rise to power and ignominious demise.

Rasputin was a Siberian peasant with captivating eyes and boundless sexual energy whose charisma charmed local women and eventually led to his angry expulsion at the hands of unsympathetic townsmen. Although Rasputin married, and remained devoted to his wife throughout the rest of his life, he never stopped courting other women, and his wife seemed to accept her husband's infidelities as inevitable. After his expulsion from his native village, Rasputin took a trip to a famous monastery where he experienced a profound religious epiphany. After that, the film relates, Rasputin wandered the length and breadth of Russia for many years, gaining an ability to deal with people from every walk of Russian life in the process.

At the end of his travels, Rasputin arrived in St. Petersburg, where his charisma immediately won him an audience with the Tsar and Tsarina. At their first meeting, the holy monk used startlingly familiar language to address the country's ruler, calling him "papa." Rasputin was a strange sort of holy man, one who developed a theory that one had to sin brazenly in order to earn true forgiveness from God. Rasputin sometimes asked women to strip with him in order to practice their powers of sin-resistance: sometimes they successfully resisted sin, other times they failed. Rasputin's unusual behavior did not stop him from winning the hearts of the tsar and his wife. He did so, in part, by conforming to a long Russian tolerance for the role of a "holy fool" who, notwithstanding his personal eccentricities, or perhaps because of them, had special access to God's will.

Most importantly, Rasputin soon demonstrated an ability to heal the tsarevich, whose hemophilia saddened his parents and threatened to undermine the line of succession. In effect, Rasputin's healing powers seemed to protect the heir to the thrown for the better part of a decade, and even seemed to work at a distance, when the monk was far from the capital. Rasputin was a regular presence at the royal court, but he wasn't unduly influential until the advent of World War, which Rasputin warned the tsar against.

During the war, the royal family's fortunes declined precipitously. When the tsar left to lead the troops at the front, the tsarina assumed a great deal of authority in domestic affairs, and listened attentively to all of her holy favorite's advice. To her, Rasputin spoke for God. On the other hand, Rasputin's disastrous advice carefully mirrored the empress' own political philosophy, so it's impossible to say whether or not Rasputin directly undermined the authority of his peers. Yet Rasputin's deleterious effect on popular opinion is impossible to gainsay. He was seen as sexual profligate, a mad monk, a German spy, and an ally of the devil himself.

When one of his lovers nearly assassinated him, Rasputin made matters worse. In pain, he turned to alcohol and his behavior became still more erratic. Bragging about his influence at court, drinking heavily, chasing women, and even at one point exposing himself in public, Rasputin became the symbol of autocratic immorality and incompetence. Deeply unpopular even within the aristocracy, one leading member of society and a group of supporters eventually conspired to kill Rasputin to save Russia. Famously, Rasputin survived a poisoning, and then two volleys of shots, and then apparently remained alive as he was sent into a frozen river. The tsarina fell into deep mourning, but recovered in a month; the tsar was at least partly relieved to be free of the negative publicity that surrounded Rasputin's nefarious activities. The film ends with Rasputin's strange prophesy, delivered shortly before his death: that if he were to be killed by friends of the tsar, the country would disintegrate the tsar's own family would be dead within the space of two years, which was in fact what happened.

Long Duree

Sometimes it's best to look at an event from the perspective of the long-duree. Marshall Poe's book, The Russian Moment in World History, does just that. His short treatise makes a number of interesting arguments about Russian history in general and the revolutionary period in particular.

First, Poe argues that Russia is quite simply not European. Quite simply, Russia missed out on many of the key experiences of Europe, when Europe is seen as an economic or cultural entity rather than merely a geographical expression. Russia did not participate in the Renaissance, for example, and well into the 17th century, Russian rules essentially banned or severely restricted contact with their more culturally advanced neighbors to the West. Thus the country had no analogous traditions of technology, agriculture, science and education, trade, or even military technology.

For this reason, Russia's autocratic traditions deserve some consideration. For it was Russia alone that managed to hold back the tidal wave of European imperialism in the modern era. Where countless states and empires collapsed in the face of Western capitalism and European industrial power, Russia erected a highly effective deterrent, namely autocracy, that, coupled with an inaccessible heartland and a lack of a warm water coast, allowed the state to survive. The Russian model could be brutal, but it essentially delivered the goods for many Russian citizens. Russia survived a series of invasions by much more advanced countries, including early modern Poland, Napoleonic France, and of course Germany during the Second World War.

Poe makes other tantalizing assertions about Russian history. For instance, he argues that the Mongols did not have a dramatic effect on the course of Russian history. To be sure, the Mongols helped to make its chief tribute collector, Muscovy, the center of Russian Slavic civilization. Yet the Mongols weren't interested in colonizing Russia and therefore did not significantly alter the culture of the place.

In terms of the Revolution, Poe's broad perspective--he begins the account in the early seventh century when the Slavs first appeared in the Europe's written records--seems to emphasize that the Russian Revolution, for all its horrors, actually delivered modernity to most of Russian citizens. His argument is that the madness of Lenin and Stalin don't mean that the majority of Russian citizens didn't feel that their militaristic, autocratic state wasn't once again responsible for defeating an invasion force by a richer and more technologically advanced power. Moreover, the Communist system eventually succeeding in delivering education and a relatively high standard of living to an area of the world that had traditionally been mired in a poverty that was in part the natural outgrowth of geography and climate. Moreover, the Bolshevik Revolution delivered a model for achieving modernity that was to be emulated with success (whatever the cost to human rights) again and again around the world, including China, Vietnam, and Cuba, to name just a few countries that experimented with unrestricted despotism on the road to modernity.

Russian Music for Chameleons

Fran Leibowitz, famed writer for the Village Voice, called her historic but hilarious column, "I Cover the Waterfront." She took the title from Tennessee Williams, who once responded only slightly cryptically to an interviewer's question about his sexuality by using those same wonderful words. Well, as my better readers know (and there are better and worse readers, Charlotte), Soviet Roulette and I similarly attempt to "cover the waterfront." Even so, we don't know music. So it was a wonderful coincidence when I observed one of my college's great lecturers, Adam Gustafson, on the subject of Russian music in the 19th century.

Gustafson is a wonderful teacher. He's confident, entertaining, and frenetic. His theme today dwelt on the differences between the Russian Conservative and Nationalist Schools, which apparently mirrored the Westernizer versus Slavophile debates that overtook most of Russian literary society at about the same time.

According to Gustafson, the Conservative School were reacting to European stereotypes about Russia. At the time, Western Europeans saw Russia as a vast, dirty, ignorant, drunk, dark, cold, and utterly disorganized nation. (If only they had known how far Russia had come from the days of the Mongol Yoke!). In response, the Conservative School thought that Russia's music ought to become truly European, indistinguishable from the civilized music of Germany, Italy, and France.

The St. Petersburg Conservatory--naturally the Conservatory was set up in the country's most Western city--was the cradle of the Conservative attempt to emulate or even someday surpass Western models for musical excellence. And one of its first students--Tchaikovsky--quickly established himself as one of its greatest exponents. The middle class Tchaikovsky, born in 1840, nearly conquered the world with his universal aesthetic. His Swan Lake, Sleepy Beauty, and Nutcracker continue to delight (or haunt, depending on one's perspective--and see the Will and Grace episode where the two are ultimately unable to sit through the mawkish performance despite their longing for a holiday tradition) the world with their popular melodies.

As Gustafson reminded his class, Tchaikovsky was a virtuoso and wrote lots of first-class music, but he is especially well known for creating music for ballets. But to understand what this meant to Russians in the 19th century, Gustafson tell his students that "one has to think in terms of the NFL." At the time, everybody (and of course he means the middle and upper classes) loved ballet. The ballet was "special, popular, sophisticated, complex, and above all, athletic."

The Russians, of course, quickly became masters at the art of ballet. Then, and today, Russian dancers dominate the art. The most famous ballet of all of course is Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. In Gustafson's summary, this is a supremely moving--if also "emotional, romantic, and crazy"--piece of Romantic theater. There's a princess, Odette, who is captured by the evil Rothbart. Rothbart captured Odette and changes her into a Swan, at least by day. Odette lives in a world of swans, other captured women, on a lake that has been created from the tears of Odette's grief-stricken mother.

One day, a hero named Siegfried is out hunting and notices Odette changing from a Swan into a beautiful princess as the evening falls. The two frolic all evening and fall in love. Siegfriend decides to pledge his eternal love to Odette in front of everybody at a grand ball. This pledge would signify the end of Odette's curse. Unfortunately, the evil Rothbart substitutes his daughter, an imposter, for Odette. Thus Rothbart's pledge of eternal love is made to the wrong person, and Odette, peering inside the windows of the ball, is devastated. Her curse can no longer be lifted--ever. Naturally, this being a Romantic work of art, the lovers kill themselves, freeing the other swans from their curses in the process.

Tchaikovsky's ballet, and his tonal music in general, was "easy on the ears," and his melodies, the basis of so much Disney music, were nothing short of infectious. But there was a backlash. Eventually critics of the composer came to see his Romantic approach to music as melodramatic, kitschy. More immediately, work like this was criticized by the "mighty handful", the five chief composers of the largely self-taught Nationalist School. These composers saw Tchaikovsky as a "sell-out," someone not capable of recognizing the special genius of the Russian people or its music. The "mighty five", and Mussorgsky in particular, believed that Russia's music had to be distinctly Russian. Their music was site-specific, predicated on Russian locales, Russian folk tales, and Russian folk tunes.

Gustafson used Mussorgsky's "Night on Bare Mountain" as an example of this other type of music. "Bare Mountain", whose orchestration was created with the help of Nikolas Rimsky-Korskokov, took place at a specific site of memory for Russians, or at least Ukrainians--a mountain that was alleged to be the home of evil demons or the devil himself. In "Bare Mountain" a master demon by the name of Chernobog runs everything. He summons demons demons and only disappears when a church bell rings and the sun rises slowly over the Ukrainian landscape.

Next time, Gustafson promises to tackle Stravinsky. With enough of these wonderful lectures under my belt, Soviet Roulette will truly "cover the waterfront."

The Diaspora

With loving and understandable bias, the documentary film series, Russian Choice, tells the story of the Russian diaspora, with loving bias. What does this story consist of? 80 years of exile in destinations as diverse as France, America, Tunisia, Turkey, Brazil, and Bulgaria.

It's the story of bitterness, nostalgia, and the unendurable and perhaps irrational hope of a return to the homeland. Russian Choice explores a number of different aspects of the diaspora, including the murder of the tsar's family, the defense of Siberia, the creation of the volunteer army, the cult of white generals such as Wrangel and Kolchak, the tragic retreat from the Crimea, and the Russian fleets betrayal at hands of the French.

The Russian community abroad was a splendid if also darkly pathetic thing. It consisted of writers such as Bunin and Nabokov, Russian-language newspapers, poets like Touroverev, students, engineers, scientists, officers, French patriots, Russian-language schools, Cossack cultural institutions, impoverished aristocrats, suicides, and cabbies. More than anything, Russian Choice reveals the depth of the community's nostalgia and raw anger at the memory of the Red Terror.

The series reveals the continuing horror of one ancient survivor of Wrangel's retreat from the Crimea with 150,000 Russians. But the film's makers and narrator are, even now, similarly perplexed by what happened to White Russia. Why, asks the narrator, aren't the heroes of the diaspora honored in Russia even now?

History Channel

This blog has only just begun. In future months, we'll be exploring the vast Russian-related archives of Netflix. I've begun with Land of the Tsars, Part I, a documentary that does a pretty good job of covering the whole of Russian history, right up until the Revolution of 1917.

It's got everything: ninth century viking trading networks; the emergence of "Rus;: the influence of Constantinople; five centuries of Mongol rule; the overthrow of Mongol rule in the 1480s; orthodoxy; the Time of Troubles; the rise of the Romanovs; Peter the Great as reformer, Westernizer, and tyrant; Peter's daughter Elizabeth (who assumed power at age 32 and ruled confidently for 16 years); Peter III (stupid, crude, and Russophobic, he forced his brilliant wife to play toy soldiers in bed and hanged a rat in front of her for treason--worse, he made peace with Frederick the Great when Russian forces were poised to obliterate Prussia, forced priests to dress like Lutherans, and threatened his wife with the nunnery); Catherine the Great (conspirator, lover, Enlightened Despot, and reformer, she created some organs of local government and challenged elite traditions, but nevertheless engaged in ceaseless wars to expand the kingdom in all directions, and put down peasant insurrections--Pugachev's primarily--without compunction); etc.

The Land of Tsars spends a great deal of time on Catherine. After all, her reign so Russia occupy the Black Sea Coast and the Crimea as well as Alaska. There were 30 million Russians living within the Empire at the time, and Russia seemed unlikely to stop expanding in several different directions. Catherine's successor, Paul, was horrendous. He was exceedingly cruel and, like his father, pro-Prussian. He was also in a hurry to revenge his father, even burying Catherine with the man she had overthrown and effectively killed. Paul's brief reign saw hurried and ill-considered reforms that led to his own death. The indirect cause of his murder in 1796 was none other than his own son, and Catherine's favorite, Alexander I. The historians in the film claims Alexander was wracked with guilt over his accession to the thrown and compulsively indecisive, toying with reform but always rejecting it in the end. According to one historian, he was "born confused." Alexander's one great decision was to renew a war with Napoleon, a decision which nearly cost him all of Russia. In the end, Alexander's Russia emerged victorious of course, and Russian armies effectively became the guardians of the conservative, Christian, dynastic order throughout Europe.

What was next for Russia? Some thought liberalism, reform, or at least a constitution were in order. However, the Decembrist Revolt of 1825, inspired by the liberal currents of Western European politics, was put down ruthlessly. Nicholas I had leaders of the movement either executed or exiled to Siberia. Politics remained illegal. Even educated Russians were legally unable to discuss political change of any sort. Where there was no public sphere to debate liberal ideas, and economic and social elites felt humiliated by the autocratic atmosphere of Russia, politics turned inward. Secret societies sprang up. Even so, while the rest of Europe eventually exploded in liberal and democratic revolt in the fateful year of 1848, Russia remained quiescent, the autocracy triumphant. Nicholas I even sent troops to restore the Hapsburg monarchy.

In light of Russia's recent history, the Crimean War came as a shock. Russians were out-gunned by the French and British. The myth of Russian invincibility, born at Borodino, was overturned at a stroke. The Russian elites felt humiliated. Clearly, Russia had become a backward state. Its technology, economy, and perhaps even its whole social and political framework, were pre-industrial, pre-modern. When Nicholas II died, Alexander II conceded defeat to the Western powers and began an ambitious program of national reform and modernization. He encouraged private enterprise, liberal ideas, and the rule of law. Most importantly, he "liberated" the serfs in 1861. At first, the film tells us the Russian educated classes were elated. The tsar was known as the Tar-Liberator. Later, after it became clear that Russian peasants remained impoverished and deeply indebted to landlords under the terms of their emancipation, and that Russian agricultural production was plummeting, the tsar's popularity sharply declined.

Of course, the Tsar Liberator was soon hounded by assassination attempts (the streets emptied whenever he moved about St. Petersburg) and he was eventually murdered by a child of elite parents, illustrating what one historian calls one of the central paradoxes of modern Russian history: the fact that members of the Russian social elite--Lenin included--often became the regime's opponents.

Alexander II was replaced by his son, Alexander III, was cracked down hard against the regime's opponents and reversed Alexander's modest movements toward political devolution. The assassins were executed. Over the next 15 years, Alexander essentially assured that the regime's critics would remain violent, radical, and underground. After all, even as the country hurdled toward industrialization and modernization, the country had a single source of political authority: the person of the tsar.

When Alexander II died in 1897, he was replaced by his son, Nicholas II, who was completed unprepared for the responsibility and admitted as much to himself. The film's historians believe he was completely unsuited to power and, as importantly, unable to compromise his belief in his divine right to rule. His wife, compulsively shy, was a further hindrance to him, and her complete faith in the mystic Rasputin did nothing to enhance her reputation, insofar as her son's hemophilia (which Rasputin seemed to be able to contain) was a state secret.

Nicholas II was indecisive but he gambled by threatening Japanese geopolitical ambitions in the Far East. The Japanese victory in the 1904-1905 war came as a devastating shock to the country. An entire armada was destroyed. The country was racked with labor and peasant unrest. When father's Gapon's enormous rally--ostensibly loyal to the tsar at least personally--was met by gunfire and Cossack sallies, the country erupted in revolt. Revolutionary Councils made bids for power in about 50 cities. Peasants burned estates. Reluctantly, the tsar made peace with Japan and granted a modest but very real constitution in October. A duma was eventually elected, and power was, for the first time and despite the tsar's continuing authority, officially divided.

The tsar's tenuous grasp on power did not withstand the first World War. 16 million soldiers were lost at the front. In the bloody civil war that followed, the tsar and his family eventually lost their lives as well.

ee cummings in 1931

One of the best depictions of Soviet Russian in the 1930s comes from ee cummings. The poet went to Russia to see how humanity's greatest social experiment was fairing. The result is a Beat novel, Emie, avante la lettre and a ruthless but comical attack on everything related to the new communist society. The Soviet Union, as a whole, was depicted as hell on earth, a place where humanism and individuality were on the verge of excinction. In the hands of ee cummings' diurnal writings, homo sovieticus was depicted as the ultimate "nonman," living in fear of the state's security apparatus and the whole culture of conformity that official ideology celebrated. The books is a frantic and riotous assault against the Soviet state, even without any direct discussion of that state's already bloody crimes. It's also a great read. Sadly, I've left my copy of the book behind at a children's birthday party. It's probably covered with birthday cake frosting at the bottom of a gigantic garbage dump. I'll have to find another copy.

Conventional Fantasies

This blog wouldn't survive five minutes in the bright light of academic scrutiny. It's a blog after all. It's meant to be filled with slandor, urban mythology, unsubstantiated rumor, and misinformation. However, there is a fan dimension to this blog so I have to eventually improve coverage of the biggest names in Russian Studies and related fields, right? For this reason I've joined the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, whose annual convention takes place in late November in Los Angeles. Aside from recurring fantasies of bumping into University of Chicago's doyen of Russian History, Sheila Fitpatrick (as if I could recognize her), while taking a stroll in Hyde Park, learning Russian overnight, actually visiting Russia someday, attending the ASEESS Convention is my number one daydream. A glance at the itinery will explain why.

There are panels on the following subjects: science in Petrine Russia; World War II resistance; social and economic change in the era of so-called "stagnation;" the Silver Age; identity-formation in the Far East; recent Trotsky scholarship (with Lindy Laub's new Trostky documentary, Planet without a Visa;" Jewish Commerce in Pre-Revolutionary Russia; masculanity in the Napeolonic Wars and Steel Age; first-person narratives and their meaning; war poetry; war prose; art from 1850 to 1900; Soviet and Eastern European political recruitment of elites; post-communist justice; Medvedev's economics and defense policies; historical time and Stalinism; literature and the sublime; the state of translation studies; St. Peterburg between at peace; and various other Eastern European topics.

It would be fun to go, but I'll have to make do with my copy of Slavic Review, the association's official journal. Articles in the Summer addition covered Liddia Ginzburg, the Seige of Leningrad, Bulgakov and Eizenshstein, Ivan the Terrible and the debate on historical periodization, the end of Muscovy, etc.