Rostropovich, Chechnya and Pushkin

Rostropovich

Elizabeth Wilson

Ivan R. Dee ($35)

The great cellist, conductor, teacher and humanist Mstislav Rostropovich died in 2007, just after he turned 80. Many of us knew only his second life – his artistic achievements in the West after his voluntary departure from the Soviet Union in 1974, his heroic defense of Solzhenitsyn that precipitated that departure, his impromptu performance before the crumbling Berlin Wall, his brave charge to Moscow in 1991, to stand with those who were defending the White House.

But to comprehend the second 40 years of Rostropovich’s amazing life, one really needs to learn of the first 40 years, of his rise as a musical prodigy after the Second World War, of his victory in the Tchaikovsky Cello Competition, of his teaching at the Moscow Conservatory, of his friendships and students in the music world, of his tireless travels around the Soviet Union, sharing his cello music. That tale is lovingly told in this new biography by Rostropovich’s student and friend, biographer Elizabeth Wilson.

Wilson weaves into her biographical tale her own experiences as well as first-person interludes from students and colleagues. The result is a rich portrait of the artistic hothouse that encased Russia’s postwar music world.

One Soldier’s War
in Chechnya

Arkady Babchenko

Portobello & Grove/Atlantic ($25)

portobellobooks.com

You can understand the general causes and course of the war in Chechnya in a few paragraphs lined with cold facts and padded with the names of guilty parties: Dudayev, Basayev, Grachyov and Yeltsin. But if you want to understand the impact the war has had on the lives of a generation of young Russians, on the society that is in denial about its actions in the Caucasus, if you want to understand the true personal and physical costs of modern warfare, read this book.

Babchenko is an unflinching storyteller, whose autobiographical account of his time in the first and second Chechen wars is as chilling as it is engrossing. Written as journalism (Babchenko now works for Novaya Gazeta, one of the last bastions of independent Russian journalism), this account reads like fine literature – Chekhovian in its concise poignancy, Tolstoyan (Sevastopol Stories comes to mind) in its richness of characterization and truth-telling. Ably translated by Nick Allen (who has written for Russian Life), One Soldier’s War is riveting and powerful – it should be required reading in high school social study classes the world over:

We don’t know what we are fighting for. We have no goal, no morals or internal justification for what we do. We are sent off to kill and to meet our deaths but why we don’t know. We just drew the short straw, happened to be born eighteen years ago and grow up just in time for this war. And there our blame ends.

The Captain’s Daughter

Alexander Pushkin

Hesperus (£6.99)

For the past five years, Hesperus Press has been doggedly pursuing a mission to “bring near what is far,” to publish lost gems of world literature in new and fresh translations. Several Russian stones have been uncovered and repolished, including an acclaimed translation of Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time, as well as shorter, lesser-known works by Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Mayakovsky and Leskov.

This marvelous new translation of Pushkin’s near-to-last literary work before his death in 1837 is a historical novel of Pugachyov’s rebellion, thickly laced with themes of loyalty, premonition, love and betrayal. Translator Robert Chandler’s rendering has just enough lilt in the diction to remind us that this is 19th century literature, and, for the American reader, sufficient Britishisms (e.g. “going out on the razzle” or “kick over the traces”) to remind that this was originally written in another language entirely.

Getting Russia Right

Dmitry V. Trenin

Carnegie Endowment ($19.95)

“Democracy, historically, is a fairly late child of capitalism.” This concise statement, buried halfway through this slim volume, goes a long way to summarizing Trenin’s well-argued point. The West gets it wrong, he says, when it sees Russia as a failed democracy. Instead, it needs to look at Russia as an emerging capitalist society, where private ownership is creating stakeholders in the system, which will inevitably lead to a rule of law (one’s property, after all, needs to be protected), which will only then may lead to a more democratic society.

The point is well taken. As is this: “Russia is probably not going to join the West, but it is on a long march to become Western, ‘European,’ and capitalist, even if not for a long while democratic.” We do best, therefore, not to emphasize our differences or the distance yet to be traveled, but to embrace the progress made and help ensure that it is permanent (for Trenin, that means encouraging consumerism, trade and business investments). As Trenin, no apologist for Putin, well knows, Russia’s democratic future is not assured, and the Kremlin’s parliamentary puppeteering could well turn sour. It brings to mind a summary made some years ago by a respected economist: It takes Detroit a decade to design a single new car. Yet we somehow expected Russia to redesign and remake a whole country in little more time than that.