Robin Hessman follows the lives of five students of a single Moscow school through the tumult of perestroika. And these five subjects’ stories offer a surprisingly rich representation of Russia’s millions.
With brilliant editing and wonderful directorial restraint (no voice over or commentary by knowledgeable historians), Hessman lets the subjects speak for themselves. They allow us into their lives, and we join them around the dinner table for tea, vodka, a meal. Through their stories we begin to understand what it meant to live through those difficult times, why it is, despite all the awful aspects of the Soviet system, they still long for the more settled, predictable times of their childhood. myperestroika.com
Anthropologist Melissa Caldwell admits to having had a hard time convincing professional colleagues that it was “field work” to follow Russians to their dachas, relax with them in the banya, drink tea on the porch and hunt for mushrooms and berries. But, the reality, she says, is that there is no rest at the dacha. It is all work, but an exhilarating, rejuvenating work, and one that is central to Russians’ sense of self, community, leisure and nature:
“Dacha life, and the natural settings and qualities with which it is linked, are both microcosms of and conduits for fundamental issues in today’s Russia: the politics of national identity and nationalism, the transition to capitalism, projects of social transformation, and the legacies of socialism, among others.”
Most of Caldwell’s fieldwork focuses on a dacha community outside Tver. And she explores everything from historical perspectives to defining true dachniki, from the wave of dacha gentrification, to the masochism of banyas, from the peculiary Russian approach to regulations and freedom, to the hilarious irrationality of food beliefs:
“Russians describe local soil as being packed with unique nutrients that give Russian food a taste that is not only distinctive but also preferred by Russians. A university student argued that Russian taste buds preferred foods grown in Russian soil.”
This is a very personal, up-close portrait of dacha life that should not be missed by any lover of Russian culture.
A library once owned by Vyacheslav Molotov, apparently an ardent bibliophile, provides the pretext for a string of fascinating forays into Russian history, literature, science and life. Polonsky writes beautifully, in the dense manner of Helprin or Hempel, forcing the reader to slow down and carefully savor the masses of information she has layered into each paragraph, each story, each curious little tidbit (like the shopping list Molotov wrote on the back of Vyshinsky’s 1952 speech to the General Assembly: “door handles, shelf with mirror, pegs for the bathroom”).
There are riches here. Stories that will send you digging into history books (could that really have happened?), biographical notes that seem utterly unimaginable, and thus completely true. Get this book, steep a large pot of tea, and dig in.
This amazing collection of fiction and non-fiction by one of the twentieth century’s most talented and most overlooked writers re-demonstrates that Grossman was a meticulous documentarian of the Russian soul.
There is pathos and sorrow here, but there is hope and lightness as well, albeit at times tinged with the inescapable Soviet Orthodoxy. Grossman’s letters to his deceased mother are heart-wrenching, and his short stories profoundly memorable. Robert Chandler’s superb editing, introduction and notes make this a collector’s edition.
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