November 09, 2009

Freedom Fries


[Commentary Aired on Vermont Public Radio, November 9, 2009]

French fries. I will forever associate the fall of the Berlin Wall with french fries.

In 1989, my wife and I were living and working in Moscow. Our friend Bob was apartment-sitting in the American embassy complex; and on November 9 he invited us over for dinner. The meal included what was, in that time and place, a gourmet treat: a cookie sheet full of freshly-baked french fries. They tasted just like home. Better still, the apartment had a live feed of CNN, which was only available in a few places in Moscow back then. We dipped french fries in real Heinz ketchup and watched the amazing events unfold in Berlin, astounded at what we were witnessing.

Just a year earlier, Bob and I had been in graduate school together, studying the long and tortuous history of reforms in Russia and its East European vassal states. We huddled around seminar room tables, cranked up on coffee, postulating various futures for East Germany, Hungary and the rest of the Soviet Empire. But, like the rest of the world, none of us foresaw that this Empire would suddenly and unexpectedly collapse.

We were brought up in a bipolar world populated by John le Carré spy novels, the Red Menace, megaton warheads and strategies of containment. We could not see that our world was less one of concrete and steel than one of tissue paper and balsa wood. We knew that there were things wrong with the world, and we expected cosmetic reforms, implemented slowly. But history had other plans.

When things did collapse, we were in the thick of it in Moscow. It was exciting, exhilarating. But, of course, as expats, we were insulated from the worst aftershocks. The collapse of the Soviet Empire and economy brought more than a decade of human suffering to Eastern Europe and the former USSR, on a scale that dwarfs the current U.S. economic crisis. Russia has witnessed terrible things over the last 20 years, including strikes, Chechnya, devaluation, terrorism, privatization, oligarchs and coups. But it is amazing that we have not witnessed worse, and that, with the notably horrific exception of Yugoslavia, the 1989 revolutions were essentially peaceful.

Yet I also can't help wondering what it would be like to travel back in time to one of those seminar rooms in 1988 and calmly inform the students that, over the next two decades, the Soviet Union would cast off its communist husk and evolve into 15 mostly democratic, vigorously capitalist states; that Russia would become a member of the group of leading industrialized states; that Russians would travel the world freely; that Russian literature and art would be unshackled; that U.S. and Russian nuclear arms would be cut by two-thirds; and that the Berlin Wall would turn out to be more like a structure of tissue paper and balsa wood than one of concrete and steel.

Not a single one of those students, myself included, would believe me.

Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

Moscow and Muscovites

Moscow and Muscovites

Vladimir Gilyarovsky's classic portrait of the Russian capital is one of Russians’ most beloved books. Yet it has never before been translated into English. Until now! It is a spectactular verbal pastiche: conversation, from gutter gibberish to the drawing room; oratory, from illiterates to aristocrats; prose, from boilerplate to Tolstoy; poetry, from earthy humor to Pushkin. 
The Little Humpbacked Horse (bilingual)

The Little Humpbacked Horse (bilingual)

A beloved Russian classic about a resourceful Russian peasant, Vanya, and his miracle-working horse, who together undergo various trials, exploits and adventures at the whim of a laughable tsar, told in rich, narrative poetry.
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.
Jews in Service to the Tsar

Jews in Service to the Tsar

Benjamin Disraeli advised, “Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.” With Jews in Service to the Tsar, Lev Berdnikov offers us 28 biographies spanning five centuries of Russian Jewish history, and each portrait opens a new window onto the history of Eastern Europe’s Jews, illuminating dark corners and challenging widely-held conceptions about the role of Jews in Russian history.
Okudzhava Bilingual

Okudzhava Bilingual

Poems, songs and autobiographical sketches by Bulat Okudzhava, the king of the Russian bards. 
Tolstoy Bilingual

Tolstoy Bilingual

This compact, yet surprisingly broad look at the life and work of Tolstoy spans from one of his earliest stories to one of his last, looking at works that made him famous and others that made him notorious. 
A Taste of Russia

A Taste of Russia

The definitive modern cookbook on Russian cuisine has been totally updated and redesigned in a 30th Anniversary Edition. Layering superbly researched recipes with informative essays on the dishes' rich historical and cultural context, A Taste of Russia includes over 200 recipes on everything from borshch to blini, from Salmon Coulibiac to Beef Stew with Rum, from Marinated Mushrooms to Walnut-honey Filled Pies. A Taste of Russia shows off the best that Russian cooking has to offer. Full of great quotes from Russian literature about Russian food and designed in a convenient wide format that stays open during use.
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.
The Little Golden Calf

The Little Golden Calf

Our edition of The Little Golden Calf, one of the greatest Russian satires ever, is the first new translation of this classic novel in nearly fifty years. It is also the first unabridged, uncensored English translation ever, and is 100% true to the original 1931 serial publication in the Russian journal 30 Dnei. Anne O. Fisher’s translation is copiously annotated, and includes an introduction by Alexandra Ilf, the daughter of one of the book’s two co-authors.
White Magic

White Magic

The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.
93 Untranslatable Russian Words

93 Untranslatable Russian Words

Every language has concepts, ideas, words and idioms that are nearly impossible to translate into another language. This book looks at nearly 100 such Russian words and offers paths to their understanding and translation by way of examples from literature and everyday life. Difficult to translate words and concepts are introduced with dictionary definitions, then elucidated with citations from literature, speech and prose, helping the student of Russian comprehend the word/concept in context.

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