There seem to be two main, competing views of Vladimir Putin and the Russian Kremlin in Western circulation.
The first sees Putin and his coterie as merely exemplars of the strong, authoritarian rulers that Russian history tells us Russians crave (being a multi-national polity ever surrounded and besieged by enemies), and that their actions and activities should be interpreted through that lens: they are neo-nationalist leaders reacting to the hostile environment into which history and geography has placed them.
The second view is far less benign. It sees the current denizens of the Kremlin as thugs who have usurped Russia’s hard won democratic freedoms, pillaging the country of its wealth, and ruthlessly eliminating any and all challengers and “enemies,” be they real or imagined.
Amy Knight, one of the West’s most respected and widely published writers on the KGB, spies, and the Cold War (old and new), is decidedly in the latter camp. With the determination of a battle weary lawyer laying out a complex prosecution, she recounts what is known and unknown about several high profile cases of suspected “political murder,” from Galina Starovoitova to Alexander Litvinenko, from Anna Politkovskaya to Boris Nemtsov, with side trips into the 1999 apartment block bombings, the Boston Marathon attack, and others.
Some of the most fascinating documentation she offers is to be read between the lines: notes about the backgrounds and associations of the lead Kremlin actors, how their tightly woven web of personal and professional connections reinforce and spread their influence and power, and how much of it traces back to St. Petersburg.
In all, this book is a disturbing catalog of circumstantial evidence (Knight readily admits that “proof of Putin and his allies in these crimes... would be impossible, given that they control the investigations and that there would be no written orders.”) that Knight asserts coalesce into a familiar pattern reflective of a quote she cites by Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, “Eleven centuries of a history notable for its murders make Russia unlike any other country.”
Indeed, there is something disturbingly fascinating about, say, Catherine II’s and Peter I’s strange combination of reform and absolutism – striving for modernization while clinging to medievalism.
In essence, Knight is saying this dualism is still with us, and offers little prospect that Russia will soon see any sort of political pluralism or real democracy. Further, she concludes that there “should be no expectation of a breakthrough with Russia on the urgent problems that plague the international order.”
And, in answer to those who say that, yes, this is all interesting and disturbing, but really none of it can be proven, Knight offers a valuable reminder, quoting Harvard historian Franklin Ford: “There may be a temptation to say that because we don’t know everything, we really don’t know anything – we shall have to wait. That, however, seems irresponsible.”
This delightful, mesmerizing book ought to have been published in a more unconventional format. Perhaps on a long Mobius strip constructed out of boiled Japanese noodles. Or maybe on a wind chime made of hummingbird bones. Either of those would have been a better tip off to what this work holds than the spine, pages and cover of a book. But then a book is far easier to tote around.
Found Life is just that, a melange of works short and long – from Twitter bursts and poetry, to comics and short stories – that offer a portrait of life through the colorful kaleidoscope of Goralik’s “verbal photography.”*
By turns entertaining, quixotic and unnerving, this sampling of the prolific writer’s many voices and styles is something you will want to leave lying around to dip into when you have a spare moment, or just before nodding off to bed, to seed your dreamscape. Certainly it would be too dangerous to imbibe in long stretches. The pieces of this whole demand a bit of time for thought, for fermentation.
Whether it is the haunting story of a Valerii in search of a lost cat, or the hilarious riff on searching for an Israeli sublet, or...
A little boy asks his mother on the subway “Is it true that Piter used to be called something else?” and hearing the answer, “Yes, Leningrad.” “But why?” “It was easier that way.”
...Goralik entertains and provokes thought. And really, one could not ask for more than that.
Sometimes the best prescription for the onslaught of modernity is to take refuge in a classic. This new translation of the Strugatsky brother’s science fiction adventure novel offers a satisfying refuge.
A young computer programmer (Sasha, of course) on his way to a vacation picks up a couple of hitchhikers and they convince him to take a job in their odd, dysfunctional institute. Part Gogol, part Kafka, part Douglas Adams, this 1964 work remains one of Russians’ most favorite science fiction works, and it is laced with the veiled critiques of the Soviet system that the genre was famous for, most specifically spoofing the idea that one could scientifically pursue or perfect human happiness.
For a taste, here is a fairly typical, randomly selected paragraph:
Alfred came running up, cracking a whip, and the vampires withdrew into a dark corner, where they immediately started swearing obscenely and slapping down homemade cards on the floor in a frenzied game.
A rollicking good read that uses the apocryphal “missing head” story (when Gogol was disinterred from Danilov Monastery’s graveyard in 1931, the academic Vladimir Ludin alleged 15 years later that the body was discovered to be on its side and with no head) as the take-off point for a Gogolian satire. Flipping back and forth in time, sprinkling in Russian phrases, and rife with pointed references to Russian literature, culture, history and life, this is a novel that draws a very porous line between fact and fiction. Which makes it all the more fun, as long as you are comfortable with a bit of uncertainty.
* Stephanie Sandler’s apt phrase from the collection’s introduction.
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