Letters to the Editor

To the Editors:

Your latest [Jan/Feb 2005] Russian Life was charming and always makes me proud of my Russian heritage....

However, I request most fervently that articles like that authored by Eric Helque never be printed again in Russian Life.  His use of the word “durak” (fool) some 16 times is amateurish at best, and infers with tongue-in-cheek that this term is used by Russians when referring to Ukrainians. With vague mockery he rails that the Russian masses never held rallies to protest government-sponsored events.  Of course, he forgot, or never knew, that masses of Russian Orthodox believers, together with His Beatitude Patriarch Alexis II, met in Moscow Square to proudly proclaim “Christ Is Risen” on Pascha many years go (when it was frowned upon) and still do it now when it isn’t.  THIS is important to them.

While Ukrainians feel proud of their protests during the recent elections (and good for them),  I’m sure some Russians, old enough to remember, “protest” to themselves, in their own ways, the traitorous actions of Ukrainians who welcomed Nazi invaders with flowers during WWII.

Sonia A.Boyar

Dearborn, MI

To the Editors:

Two footnotes to the fine article by Dasha Demourova on Russian church bells (“For Whom the Bells...,” Nov/Dec, 2004):

Demourova mentions a Soviet recording of the Rostov bells, but in a PBS documentary, Inside Gorbachev’s USSR (1990), you can see (and hear) a Rostov bell-ringing sequence. For the introduction to Part II of the documentary, Comfortable Lies, Bitter Truths, Producer Sherry Jones took her film crew (this writer included) up one of the Rostov Kremlin bell towers to film the remarkable bells and their virtuoso ringers. It’s a glorious sequence. The video can be obtained from PBS.

Secondly, no article on Russian church bells should fail to mention the extraordinary final section of Andrei Tarkovsky’s masterpiece, Andrei Rublev. In it, Tarkovsky captures the art, mystery, and craft of medieval Russian bell making as supervised intuitively by the boy Boriska. When the enormous bell is successfully cast and rung is one of the great moments in Russian cinema.

Cheers,

Louis Menashe

Professor of History (Ret.)

Polytechnic University

Brooklyn, NY

Letters may be edited for style, grammar and to fit the space allowed.
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ERROR CORRECTION

In our Jan/Feb 2005 issue, through a proofing error, we misprinted the Russian title for our literary insert, Wicked Cold. It should have been Собачий холод, not Собачьи холод, as it was printed. Apologies.