Letters to the Editor

Russia’s Women

To the Editors:

I was really disappointed, not to say more, after reading your article, “Awesome Force” {Russian Life, March 1998}.

I never expected such a shallow, one-sided story in your otherwise respectable publication.

On seven pages, with very few exceptions, you are raving about superficial values – the skindeep beauty and sex appeal of a younger Russian woman, virtues not very difficult to find in any part of the world today.

I would understand if this article was written for some magazine for men – but it was not.

The “Awesome Force” of the Russian woman is the one you left in the shade. She is the one who stood in mud and cold, in misery and hunger half of her life doing man’s work and her own, bringing up children, preserving family and moral values, contributing to her society as a poet, artist, musician or scholar, and when possible bringing the children to church.

This is  the “Awesome Force” – the Russian Woman and real hope for the future of healthy Russia.

Sincerely,

Vladimir A. Krivsky

Utica, NY

To the Editors:

Your article on Russian women hit on many of their outstanding traits – including their beauty – but it fell somewhat sort, I felt, in emphasizing the really admirable character. During my trips to Russia I have been deeply impressed by their physical and inner fortitude. I came to the conclusion that it was they who were holding the country together, who were doing the real work of holding on in spite of formidable obstacles and circumstances I’m not sure many women in the West could endure. When Russia overcomes its present difficulties it will be because its women, not so much its men, have saved the country.

Sincerely,

Prof. Albert R. Baca

Studio City, CA

Albert & Vladimir:

We could not agree more with your assessments. We covered the inner beauty and strength  of Russian woman in great depth in our March 1996 issue. Not wanting to repeat ourselves, we decided with this more recent article to take a look at issues of outer beauty and strength.

- The Editors

Russian Museum

To the Editors:

The Mikhailovsky Palace, today’s Russian Museum, was the personal residence of Grand Duchess Ekaterina Mikhailovna, daughter of G.D. Mikhail Pavlovich, not Ekaterina Pavlovna [as noted in the March 1998 Russian Life Calendar]. The Palace had originally been built by Emperor Nicholas I for his older brother G.D. Konstantin who refused both the throne and later the palace.

The last residents of the building were Ekaterina’s three children and not the Grand Duchess who died in April 1894. The building was not sold out of need, as its inheritors were among the richest members of the Imperial family.  According to the terms of Ekaterina’s will, signed by Emperor Alexander III, the palace was bequeathed to her children in equal shares, but she also “warns the children that the middle part of the Mikhailovsky Palace has been granted back with the authorization of the Emperor as a location for a National Museum” (1891). After the death of Alexander III, also in 1894 (October), Nicholas II “redeemed” the Palace for four million rubles in 1895 from the heirs. Even though the building was Imperial family property, Alexander III had unknowingly signed Ekaterina’s will which listed it as her personal property. He deemed it impossible to change a point of the will which he had in fact approved. Hence the sale. ...

Stephen R. de Angelis

Bronxville, NY

Finding Ekonomia

To the Editors:

I believe you erred in equating Ekonomia to Novodvinsk (Readers’ Letters, March 1998). [Two sources point to an] ... Ekonomia about 10 miles NW of Archangel, which is not near either Severodvinsk or Novodvinsk.

A detailed British map (1:1 mn) dated 1956 does not show any name similar to Ekonomia; however it shows several small places roughly 10 miles NW of Akhangelsk, including Konetsdvor’e, Lastola, Andrianova, Korabelnoye and Skrylevskaya. Probably Ekonomia was renamed sometime between 1944 and 1956.

Cordially,

Dr. Allen F. Chew

Colorado Springs, CO

Kolyma Horrors

To the Editors:

I have subscribed to your excellent publication for three years. I am sure that Elena Glinka intended for people to feel deeply about Stalin and his era in her story, “The Big Kolyma Streetcar.” She achieved her purpose, at least in my case. I have pondered her story often since reading it. I could never forget nor forgive the tragedy and misery that Stalin brought to Elena and millions of other men, women and children in the former USSR. ....

Fascism is a dead ideology in the world today largely because the infamous crimes of the Holocaust are forever associated by every decent person with the name “Hitler.” We can honor great and brave writers such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Elena Glinka by irrevocably and perpetually linking the name “Stalin” with the terrible crimes of the Gulag. We can thus ensure that communism and totalitarianism, ideologies also associated with Stalin, die forever as well.

Sincerely,

Ed Brown

St. Louis, MO

To the Editors:

Reading “The Big Kolyma Streetcar” was a horrifying experience. In some respects it was worse than the Holocaust because it involved Russian people committing horrors on their own kind.

I don’t believe it was communism that ruined the Soviet Union. There wasn’t anything inherently wrong with the theory. It was the implementation of the idea by men who were as evil as the regime they deposed. Utopias have a hard time working out in the best of conditions.

I have always had a great respect for the tenacity of the Russian people as a whole. In particular, Russia has produced some of the greatest intellects in the Arts and Sciences. I know you will prosper eventually, but it will be a hard row to hoe.

Sincerely,

Harry Schulte

St. Louis, MO