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Glas 8: Love Russian Style (Glass Innactive Series)

Natasha Perova

Reference

Glas

When a young American moves to Moscow in 1991, he brings with him scant knowledge of the country. In his discovery of Russia he witnesses an unsuccessful coup, an even less successful rebellion, rampant inflation, mafia infighting, and all nature of unprecedented change. "Why is it," his Russian friend asks, "that you Americans smile so much?" Our hero moves among ordinary new Russians, meeting curious characters, trying to drink vodka easily, and interpreting English grammar and other stumbling blocks of Western culture to his new countrymen. His misconceptions about Russia land him in amusing and sometimes dangerous situations, and provide a fresh and thoughtful perspective on Russian culture. New in the Glas series of new Russian writing.

Twelve Stories of Russia

A. J. Perry

Jews & Strangers

Literature & Fiction

Perova, Natasha

Short Stories & Anthologies

Love Russian Style (New Russian Writing)

Every society has had periods of totalitarianism and terror in one form or another. Russia is not exceptional in this respect. Whether the Russian brand of totalitarianism was worse or better than, say, the Inquisition in Spain, the slave trade in America, Nazism in Germany, or today's Islamic fundamentalism is hard to say. It would be interesting to attempt a comparative analysis.Slavery, or serfdom, was abolished in Russia only in 1862, but Alexander II's decreed could not abolish the mentality of servility overnight. Meek submissiveness of the bulk of the population on one hand, and authoritarian cruelty of the bureaucracy on the other, were to remain a feature of Russian society for a long time afterwards. The third factor in the social equation was the Russian intelligentsia, the bearers of culture in Russia who generated the country's intellectual and artistic values. This independent minded group caused the authorities particular concern and even fear as a constant source of dissidence both before and after the 1917 revolutions.In the initial decades of Soviet rule the working class and peasantry were forcibly driven into labour camps under various pretexts, because the dislocated country needed slave labour to realize its ambitious construction projects. The freedom loving intelligentsia was imprisoned in camps and lunatic asylums, so as to intimidate and exterminate them by apparently legal methods. Gradually the whole nation divided into civilian informers and alarmed citizens, trying hard to be law-abiding but still ending up in the labour camps accused of treason, espionage, cosmopolitanism, and a host of other imaginary crimes. They rarely survived to the end of their sentences in the arctic temperatures of Siberia and the Polar regions. Who can estimate how many political scientists, writers and artists of genius were lost to mankind in those inhuman conditions of the Soviet prison camps?It is no wonder that those decades of totalitarian rule affected people's minds so deeply that, even after several years of democracy, people in their sixties and seventies are afraid to discuss politics over the telephone for fear it might be bugged. The 1960's, a time of positive changes in the West, saw the first political "thaw" in Russia, following revelations about the Stalinist regime by Khrushchev at the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party in 1956. The generation of intellectuals who reached their prime in the 1960's, and who retained a sincere belief in "socialism with a human face", is known in Russia as the "shestidesyatniks", or sixties generation. Some of them fought for human rights and suffered repression in their turn, while others lay low, only daring to discuss politics or read samizdat poetry in a very narrow circle of friends (those famous gatherings in the kitchen, which was considered less likely to be bugged).The sixties generation are still very active in politics and public life today, and they are the target of hostility from both the right and the left of the political spectrum. The sharpest criticism comes from the younger generation who, happily, have never experienced the kind of pressure their elders were subjected to, and who have also never been thoroughly indoctrinated.Westerners often ask why we put up with bureaucratic oppression, food shortages and queues, violations of human rights, and so on even now. Why don't we protest? The two works we offer you in this issue of Glas convey the atmosphere of invisible oppression and all-pervading fear in which the sixties generation grew up. Boris Yampolsky's "The Old Arbat" set in Moscow in the 1950's, with flashbacks of the 1930's and 1940's; and Vasil Bykov's "Manhunt" is set in the country in the 1930's. In both stories innocent people are persecuted in a way which precludes effective resistance.

The Sacred Generation

When the Booker Prize Committee decided to institute a special Booker Russian Novel Prize, there were no other literary prizes in the post-perestroika Russia, the official Soviet prizes for literature having been abolished shortly after the collapse of communism, when most state-subsidized publishing also closed down. This left Russian authors with little choice but to flee abroad in search of employment and publishers, while most of those who stayed declared that the end of Russian literature had arrived, and set about dividing up the property of the Writer's Union among themselves. Authors, who earlier had not been published for political reasons, now were not published for economic reasons.But Russian literature did not die. It went through a period of crisis--together with the rest of the country--and gradually began to recover, bringing forth of profusion of styles and a new freshness of vision. Into the atmosphere of confusion reigning in literary circles, and the overall public indifference to literary developments, the Booker Prize came like Santa Claus, offering not only a substantial money prize (which after all can only be awarded to one writer each year) but an exciting literary race which generated much needed publicity for everyone involved. In spite of mutterings from the nationalistically minded that Russian writers should be ashamed of themselves for accepting money from abroad, the excitement generated by the Booker Prize spread like wildfire, with heated debate breaking out in the press and among critics and readers alike. Passions ran high, and public interest in literature was markedly boosted.Perhaps, however, the greatest achievement of the Booker Prize to date is the fact that it has inspired a number of Russia's new rich to institute national prizes themselves. Let us hope that this process of revealing new talent and giving publicity to short-listed authors will ultimately lead to change in the publishing business in Russia. Russian publishers currently focus on translated literature, which the Russian public was starved of under the Communists and which, naturally, excites much interest today. They are not at present in any great hurry to publish new Russian authors. The time will come, however, when Russia's readers will want to know what has been happening in their own culture all this time, and at that moment they will be particularly appreciative of all the present efforts to preserve Russian culture which, in the past, has given the world so many outstanding writers.True to our commitment to acquaint publishers and readers with the winners of the Booker Russian Novel Prize, we offer excerpts from the short-listed novels of 1994 with comments by the chairman of that year's jury, Lev Anninsky. All the excerpts selected read like complete stories and so can be enjoyed by the specialist and the general reader alike. As in previous years the Booker Prize spotlighted nearly all the outstanding novels published in the preceding year, and simply by showing a sustained interest in the Russian novel it encouraged authors to turn back to this genre from the short story and non-fiction which had been dominating Russian writing in the past few turbulent years.The third year of the Booker Games produced another rich display of varied and well-written works. There is no doubt that in the country of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky the standard of creative writing has never fallen. Now that most of the previously banned works have been published we can see that in each decade of this century at least a dozen excellent authors were actively writing, even though they could not always publish their works officially. The 1994 short list (as well as the long list) has shown up several definite trends in themes and styles. Writers are trying to take a fresh look at Russia's past from the vantage point of the present day and with the new knowledge that has come to light in recent years (Okudzhava, Dolinyak, Levitin, Buida). They enjoy delving into formerly forbidden subjects such as religion, sex, the subconscious, crime (Slapovsky, Aleshkovsky, Eppel, Klimontovich, Galperin). Biographies and autobiographies, mainly re-appraisals of the past, are very popular. There is much experimentation in style and form. Each year new literary discoveries from previous decades are still being made, works that for various reasons, but mainly because of their unorthodox nature, have remained unpublished to this day.Suffice it to recall that the present collection opens with a story by the first Russian Booker Prize winner, Mark Kharitonov, which was written in 1975 but published only in 1994; or take Asar Eppel who has been writing fiction all his life but only recently been able to publish some of it, instantly gaining a national reputation; or two outstanding poets, Georgy Mark and Genrikh Sapgir, whose long overdue fame came to them only in their later years. There is every reason to suppose that the full history of Russian literature had not yet been written, not all its treasures have been retrieved from the obscurity of the archives, and we can still look forward to exciting new surprises.Vladimir Makanin's "The Captive of the Caucus", which gives this collection its name, is one vivid example of the illusory nature of man's freedom. We are all in some sense captives: captives of a political system, of circumstances, of our obligations or our illusions, to say nothing of those who are captives in a literal sense. The world seems to be full of misplaced people trapped in captivity of one kind or another, sometimes self-imposed, but feeling nonetheless alienated from the hostile world around them.In Makanin's novella the invaders find that they are the captives of the country they have conquered. In Victor Pelevin's "Tambourine for the Upper World" enterprising girls resuscitate corpses from the battlefields of WW II so as to marry them and get themselves out of Russia. Emigres too are eternal captives of their former homeland and their Soviet past, their loyalties torn between a Russia they are losing touch with and the land that gave them asylum but where they are unable to strike roots (Zinovy Zinik's "The Moth", Vassily Aksyonov's "Palmer's First Flight").Georgy Vladimov, winner of the 1995 Booker Russian Novel Prize, features a decent Second Word War army commander caught in a web of intrigue, with all his subordinates spying on him for the army's secret police ("A General and his Army"). Oleg Pavlov, recently released from the army, depicts a platoon guarding a present-day prison camp where the convicts and the guards are both equally prisoners of the huge, merciless state machinery ("An Official Tale"). Yevgeny Fyodorov, who spent many years in Stalinist gulags, describes his personal experiences in surviving and preserving his sanity in "Odyssey".Alexander Terekhov sets his novel "The Rat-killer" in post-perestroika provincial Russia where not much has changed for the little man and totalitarian rule effortlessly prevails.Mark Shatunovsky depicts a man and a woman locked into their private lives and not venturing out into a warring world they are little interested in.Despite the unifying theme the aim of this, as of the other issues of Glas, is to present contemporary Russian literature as it happens. Traditionally we have offered excerpts from the novels short-listed for the Booker Russian Novel Prize to give publishers abroad an opportunity of acquainting themselves with what Russian critics have considered the best novels of the previous year. In his notes Stanislav Rassadin, Chairman of the jury of last year's Booker Russian Novel Prize, shares his thoughts on the current state of Russian writing.

Captives

From Three Worlds is a pathbreaking anthology from a long-suppressed culture of Europe, now re-emerging on the world stage. For 350 years prior to independence in 1991, Ukraine endured a subordinate relationship enforced alike by tsars and commissars. As the Soviet Union entered a new (and final) era after 1985, Ukrainian literature shed its underground existence. "It was largely the inner freedom felt by writers and intelligentsia that led to independence", asserts Solomea Pavlychko in her introduction. From Three Worlds is the first publication in English to witness Ukraine's literary renaissance.

From Three Worlds

Contemporary

A master novel set in the Russian north with a wealth of authentic details on forest life.

Skunk: A Life

Aleshkovsky, Peter

Aleshjkovsky, Peter

Literary

Physically unattractive, lanky Sonechka with her skinny legs and flat bum, has for defensive reasons been a bookworm since the age of seven. Only when she is twenty-seven is she discovered, working in the basement of a Siberian library by artist Robert Victorvich who, already internationally renowned, returned to Russia in the early 1930's only to be exiled to the labour camps. When in Robert's old age a new romance invades their marriage, Sonechka reveals unexpected reserves of womanly strength. Sonechka is a novel whose unconventional and understated heroine will delight the English-speaking world. Sonechka was short-listed for the Booker Russian Novel Prize and has been enthusiastically received in French, German, and Italian translations. It has been awarded the Medici Prize for foreign fiction in France and the Penne Prize in Italy.

Sonechka

Ulitskaya, Ludmila

Sergeev paints a picture of hitherto unknown 'catacomb Russia'. ... Sergeev's memory seems to collect mere trifles: children's ditties, counting rhymes, old slogans, newspaper clippings, snatches of conversations, official documents, urban folklore and much else. He fishes various fragments out of this detritus and files them carefully away in his "stamp album"...

Stamp Album: A Collection of People, Things, Relationships and Words

Biographies & Memoirs

Sergeev, Andrei

Arts & Literature

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