November 25, 2017

Photography, Kachka & Spies


Photography, Kachka & Spies
Vitas Luckas, in Vilnius

Here are this week's best English language long-reads we've come across in the Russoverse. They take us from Lithuania to Brooklyn and then Washington. Check the link at the bottom of the post for how you can submit long reads for our consideration.

A Distant, Overlooked Life

Author Lars Mensel takes a look back at Vitas Luckus, someone who should have been a leading light of Lithuanian photography, but for the fact that he lived in Soviet Lithuania, where orthodoxy and conformity trumped artistic exploration. 

The photographer's tragic end could well be the opening to a LeCarre novel:

Vitas Luckus died after jumping out of the window of his 5th floor apartment in the winter of 1987... his wife found him in the snow.

 

Seconds earlier, Luckus had committed murder: There was a visitor at his place, and they had argument about his photography. Luckus stabbed the guy with a kitchen knife, only to realize that the visitor was a KGB agent. He chose death over punishment.

Mensel offers some superb examples of Luckus' art, and explores how hard it is to know a time, place or worldview when one is removed from it in space and time. But also at how we, in our desire to simplify the world, often focus too much on the "accepted masters" of an art form, failing to look at or remember those who fly below the radar...

Photography is so dominated by iconic figures that some never reach fame, no matter how great they are or once were.

Kachka

Kachka: The Word That Saved A Family

Over on the foodie blog Salt, NPR correspondent Neda Ulaby, who has one of the most sonically pleasing names in journalism (and an on-air voice to match), takes us to Brooklyn to hang out with chef and cookbook author Bonnie Morales, who has just had published Kachka, A Return to Russian Cooking. The new cookbook

challenges assumptions that Russian food is bland and lacks variety. "That it's all for cold weather, very meat-heavy, that everything is pickled," she says.

 

You'll find recipes in Morales' cookbook for buckwheat blinis with lingonberry mustard, beet-and-caviar stuffed eggs, and, if truth be told, a lot of pickles.

The child of Russian-Jewish parents (her husband is part Mexican, thus her last name), Morales originally felt Russian food was "broken" or stodgy and needed a reboot, and nurtured a bit of a love-hate relationship with it.

"I thought the smell of mushrooms boiling was just disgusting," she confesses.

So what is the story about the book's title (which is also the name of Morales' restaurant in Portland)?

Kachka refers to a dramatic moment that took place during World War II. Morales' grandmother fled a ghetto in Minsk after barely escaping a mass killing. She was passing as a Ukrainian peasant when she was stopped by a Russian official working with the Germans.

 

"He was like, 'You're a Jew,' " Morales recounts. The official challenged her grandmother to say the word "duck" in Ukrainian to prove her identity. Morales' grandmother didn't speak Ukrainian, and she had to stake her life on linguistic overlap.

 

"She just hoped that maybe it was the same word in Yiddish and Belarusian," Morales explains. "So she said, 'kachka.' And it turned out it was the same word in Belarusian, Ukrainian and Yiddish. And he let her go."

Then follows the funniest passage in the post, when Ulaby demurs when Morales suggests maybe they try some tongue.

And then her editor steps in:

"Neda specifically told me she didn't want to taste any tongue. So let's get the tongue," she announces.

What Trump Really Told Kislyak

It wouldn't be a week in Washington these days without myriad new speculations, revelations, and perturbations in the Trump-Putin-Russiagate-Election-Tampering scandal.

It does all get a bit tiresome, so when a really well-researched, detailed article comes along, it pricks our ears. Howard Blum dives deep into what actually went on at that notorious meeting in the White House where only Russian reporters were allowed, and where the president appears to have tipped Russia's two top diplomats off as to Israeli intelligence's sources and methods in an antiterrorism operation. It was a case, Blum says, where

pretty much the entire Free World was left shaking its collective head in bewilderment as it wondered, not for the first time, what was going on with Trump and Russia.

Beginning with a cinematic opening about the Israeli intelligence op that revealed an incipient danger of laptops to commercial aircraft, Blum goes through the details of the case and the presidential leak to the country's adversary in jaw dropping detail. 

Why did a president who has time after volatile time railed against leakers, who has attacked Hillary Clinton for playing fast and loose with classified information, cozy up to a couple of Russian bigwigs in the Oval Office and breezily offer government secrets?

He also offers a fascinating look back at the history and importance of inter-state cooperation in the intel world (to wit: it was the Israelis that first obtained a copy of Khrushchev's Secret Speech), and how this one interaction may have endangered many of those relationships.


Thanks to Dave Edwards for the tip on the Kachka article.

You Might Also Like

7 Myths About Russian Cuisine
  • January 28, 2014

7 Myths About Russian Cuisine

There are many myths surrounding Russian food. Darra Goldstein, author of the cookbook, A Taste of Russia, addresses seven common ones.
Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

Life Stories: Original Fiction By Russian Authors

Life Stories: Original Fiction By Russian Authors

The Life Stories collection is a nice introduction to contemporary Russian fiction: many of the 19 authors featured here have won major Russian literary prizes and/or become bestsellers. These are life-affirming stories of love, family, hope, rebirth, mystery and imagination, masterfully translated by some of the best Russian-English translators working today. The selections reassert the power of Russian literature to affect readers of all cultures in profound and lasting ways. Best of all, 100% of the profits from the sale of this book are going to benefit Russian hospice—not-for-profit care for fellow human beings who are nearing the end of their own life stories.
Bears in the Caviar

Bears in the Caviar

Bears in the Caviar is a hilarious and insightful memoir by a diplomat who was “present at the creation” of US-Soviet relations. Charles Thayer headed off to Russia in 1933, calculating that if he could just learn Russian and be on the spot when the US and USSR established relations, he could make himself indispensable and start a career in the foreign service. Remarkably, he pulled it of.
Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Bilingual series of short, lesser known, but highly significant works that show the traditional view of Dostoyevsky as a dour, intense, philosophical writer to be unnecessarily one-sided. 
Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka

Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka

In this comprehensive, quixotic and addictive book, Edwin Trommelen explores all facets of the Russian obsession with vodka. Peering chiefly through the lenses of history and literature, Trommelen offers up an appropriately complex, rich and bittersweet portrait, based on great respect for Russian culture.
Turgenev Bilingual

Turgenev Bilingual

A sampling of Ivan Turgenev's masterful short stories, plays, novellas and novels. Bilingual, with English and accented Russian texts running side by side on adjoining pages.
Steppe / Степь (bilingual)

Steppe / Степь (bilingual)

This is the work that made Chekhov, launching his career as a writer and playwright of national and international renown. Retranslated and updated, this new bilingual edition is a super way to improve your Russian.
Murder at the Dacha

Murder at the Dacha

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin has a problem. Several, actually. Not the least of them is the fact that a powerful Soviet boss has been murdered, and Matyushkin's surly commander has given him an unreasonably short time frame to close the case.
Chekhov Bilingual

Chekhov Bilingual

Some of Chekhov's most beloved stories, with English and accented Russian on facing pages throughout. 
Survival Russian

Survival Russian

Survival Russian is an intensely practical guide to conversational, colloquial and culture-rich Russian. It uses humor, current events and thematically-driven essays to deepen readers’ understanding of Russian language and culture. This enlarged Second Edition of Survival Russian includes over 90 essays and illuminates over 2000 invaluable Russian phrases and words.

About Us

Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955