March 01, 2006

Ivan the Terrible, Disabled Orphans, Chernobyl

Ivan the Terrible

By Isabel de Madariaga

Yale University Press (2005) $35

When reading history, it is easy to forget that we know how it comes out. Maybe not always in detail, but at least generally speaking.

On top of this, historical narrative recounts events from the perspective of the omniscient narrator, not from the singular perspective of one of the characters in the story – a practice left in the hands of historical novelists.

This knowledge of the narrative arc’s endpoint, combined with narratorial omniscience, can lead us readers to forget that those living in history did not know at the time how things were going to turn out. (It is a problem we rarely suffer from in reading fiction, precisely because we too don’t know how things are going to come out; in fact, if we know the ending, it often spoils the tale.)

Thus, it is easy to forget, when reading, say, histories of World War II, that those alive in 1941 did not sense the inevitability of Hitler’s failure. We, however, cannot suspend this knowledge.

Similarly, we know that Ivan the Terrible’s reign ended in disaster, in a Time of Troubles leading to the 300-year reign of the Romanovs. We know that Ivan’s 37-year reign was punctuated with societal cataclysms and civil war, with a bizarre combination of mass murder, territorial ex-pan-sion and not insignificant governmental reforms. But the boyars who elevated Ivan and his brother to the throne had no reason to suspect the horrors to come.

We cannot help but put Ivan, the oprichnina and all else that happened four hundred years ago, into a longer historical timeline. Yet those of Ivan’s day saw themselves moving forward at the end of their own timeline, not somewhere in the middle of one constructed in the 21st century.

It is refreshing to read a history of Ivan’s reign that recognizes this problem of perspective, that does not treat historical events as inevitabilities, reverse-engineering cause-and-effect to smooth a narrative arc. De Madariaga is also adamant about trying to see the events of this period from a perspective “standing in Mos-cow and looking out over the walls of the Kremlin.” Even so, as she herself notes, it is not an easy task:

First of all the uneven nature of the surviving evidence, so much of which has been destroyed by fire. There is no written trace of Ivan’s personal relationship with any of his seven wives or his children. There is no original written record of any letter, or order, given by the Tsar; there are a few records of private discussions in which he took part, but they are mostly with foreigners... There are no records of meetings of the Boyar Council, or of any other administrative body... Formal documents are thus usually very impersonal, when compared with the lively exchange of letters between kings and their counselors in other countries.

And yet, for all that, de Madariaga has assembled a masterfully rich portrait of Ivan and his age. It is one that profits immensely from her disdain for most theories about Ivan, whe-ther as bit player in a vast historical drama summed up by Marxist theories, or as a “state-builder” or a “progressive.” Ivan, de Madariaga shows, was a creation of his own personal history – of his times, and he acted in the constraints and on the opportunities presented him by a very patriarchal, theocratic, traditional, brutal, war-torn society.

Perhaps most fascinating is the detailed portrait de Madariaga presents of court and boyar life, of the constricting binds of surety (where one noble would pledge his life or fortune on the loyalty of another) and tsar-bestowed land ownership (pomestie). It is a textured picture of the time – of a society where collective security, denunciations and terror compounded one another, then were set alight by the paranoia of a tortured mind.

White on Black

By Ruben Gallego

Harcourt (2006) $22

This book’s dust jacket asserts that this autobiography is written without self-pity. That is incorrect.

No, there is no self-pity of the woeful, self-indulgent sort, no obvious pleas for sympathy and understanding of a crippled child’s plight. Yet, in Gallego’s sardonic, sarcastic, matter-of-fact voice, we do catch a whiff of self-pity. But it is a ruse. He is leading us along, having us think we are about to hear a plaintive cry, setting us up to nod and tsk-tsk in understanding. But then, with a quick turn of phrase, our eloquent guide catches us off guard. He throws out an illogical twist, poetically parrying reality and unveiling an uncomfortable truth.

The self-pity, it turns out, should be our own: we should feel sorry for ourselves if we don’t have a fraction of Gallego’s hunger for life.

Born in Moscow with cerebral palsy, Ruben Gallego is the grandson of a secretary general of the Spanish Communist party. His life has been a succession of internments in abhorrent institutions peopled by compassionate, criminally-underpaid nurses and attendants (as well as by evil or neglectful ones).

In the Soviet system, and in many places in Russia to this day, the physically handicapped are also assumed to be mentally handicapped. They are shuttered away behind high walls, kept out of the world. They are cared for, not educated or encouraged in their dreams.

Gallego is determined to fight against this with every ounce of his being. No matter he does not have control of his limbs. He will force them to teach him math. He will read voraciously. He will travel. And he will write, typing profound observations with his left index finger.

Living without hands isn’t that hard if you have all the rest. All the rest – my body – developed even worse than my hands. My hands are the main thing. You might say the main thing about a person is his head. Or you might not. Obviously a head can’t survive without hands. It doesn’t matter whether the hands are yours or someone else’s.

What makes this powerful little volume a real treasure is that it is not simply the story of Gallego’s life. Instead, it is a complex portrait of a world far removed from most people’s imagining. It is a series of fine prose photos of characters he met, of incidents in his and other “non-ambulants’” lives, told in a sparse, Chekhovian style. Indeed, Gallego writes less than 10 pages on his trip to America. We don’t know how he got there or why he went. That is all incidental. But his triple-distilled observations are poignant, pointed, and very instructive.

The book ends with a wonderfully terse statement of faith and purpose, one that half explains the book’s title:

Black is the color of struggle and hope. The color of the night sky, the confident and precise backdrop of dreams, the temporary lulls between the white, the endless daytime periods of my bodily infirmities. The color of dreams and fairy tales, the color of the inner world behind my closed eyes. The color of freedom, the color I chose for my electric wheelchair.

And when my turn comes to go down the line of impersonal, well-meaning mannequins in white lab coats and I reach my end, my very own eternal night, I’ll leave only letters behind. My letters. My black letters on a white background. I hope.

Wormwood Forest

By Mary Mycio

Joseph Henry Press (2005) $27.95

The dangers of nuclear power are well-documented and form the basis (as indicated in the article on Russian nuclear power after Chernobyl, on page 41 in this issue) for many ecologists’ vehement opposition to this form of energy production.

Mycio admits to starting her long investigation of the Chernobyl disaster with a very similar opinion. But, after repeated trips to the “Zone of Alienation” surrounding the mortally-wounded Chernobyl power plant (which continued to function almost 15 years after the disaster, as the Soviet, post-Soviet and East European states depended mightily on its output), she has become an ambivalent supporter of nuclear energy, noting that all energy production has its costs – if we must feed our growing need for energy, she writes, we must recognize we are making choices between lesser evils.

But this is not an autobiography of Mycio’s conversion. It is a portrait of nature’s aggressive reclamation of a geography twice the size of Rhode Island – an area once inhabited by over 350,000 persons. It is an often clinically dense picture, full of confusing and overlapping modes for measuring radiation, but one interspersed with quite understandable data (e.g. that Chernobyl spewed some 50 million curies of radioactivity, vs. 3 million at Hiroshima) and very vivid descriptions of this radioactive wilderness:

The encroaching forests have consumed much of the wood and plaster cottages, even more so than the concrete and cinder blocks of Pripyat. Massive tangles of wild grapes crush thatched roofs with their weight. Trees shatter walls with the force of their growing branches and smash through buildings completely when they fall. Microbes and fungi feast on the organic materials in the wood, resins, paint, and paper used in building interiors... It seems odd, but it is impossible to smell fresher air in an inhabited urban setting... It is one of the disaster’s paradoxes, but the zone’s evacuation put an end to industrialization, deforestation, cultivation, and other human intrusions, making it one of Ukraine’s environmentally cleanest regions – except for the radioactivity.

Wormwood Forest is a sobering, engrossing read. One that graphically reminds us that simple summaries of events are usually just that, that even a radioactive cloud can have a silver lining. Still, perhaps the truest statement about Chernobyl and its aftermath that Mycio captures in this book is a statement by Belarus’ director of the radioactive nature reserve, Petr Paytayev: “They thought it was a peaceful atom. But it was savage.”

BRIEFLY NOTED

The Master and Margarita, Directed by Vladimir Bortko ($60). The blockbuster TV series (see Note Book, page 8) has been brought to DVD in record time. Includes all 10 episodes (approximately 8 hours) in a handsome multi-DVD pack. The series is getting accolades for being very faithful to the novel, is filled with great character actors, passable special effects, sepia film tones, wonderful period costumes and sets, and of course all of the biting satire of the original. For now, however, available only in Russian, without subtitles.

A Russian Prince in the Soviet State, by Vladimir Trubetskoi (Northwestern • $42.95). Subtitled “Hunting Stories, Letters from Exile, and Military Memoirs,” this is a fascinating look at what life was like for Russian nobles, both before and after the Revolution. Trubetskoi and the priceless characters he encounters in his Hunting Stories creates the distinct feeling of a Turgenev novel, while the letters and military memoirs give a vivid taste of the age.

The Scared Generation (Glas • $15.95) The Stalin era has become a permanent genre in Russian literature, exploring the themes of betrayal, honor, loyalty, fear and hope in the context of 20th century totalitarianism. This reissue of an earlier Glas edition brings back two powerful novellas by powerful writers Vasily Bykov and Boris Yampolsky, in a volume essential for any Russophile.

March 01, 2006

Ivan the Terrible, Disabled Orphans, Chernobyl

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Master and Margarita

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