Your sustained ability to write with such authenticity just AMAZES me. My lowly Newsletter still struggles for topics and its inability to find such CONSISTENCY is a great effort. I think the disarray in the world that came to be after the violence of 100s of years of realignment in Europe (1800s, WW1, WW2), if run as a computer simulation would lead to WILDLY DIFFERENT results with only small changes in boundary conditions. After lots of history reading, my opinion of the Depression and WW2 was that the WHOLE WORLD chose dictators and regardless of the revisionist historians, America chose a BENEVOLENT leader in FDR. Different leadership for most of the world would have led to wildly different results. That, I believe is the REAL THREAT of the world we live in today.
It is quite easy to be dark and judgmental about what came to be in Russia, FSU and Russia 2.0. While some of it is likely cultural, there is also the result of chance cascading. I think the Korean Peninsula is the strongest validation of the theory of chance. North of the parallel they eat tree bark and live in perpetual darkness. Their relatives 30 miles south live a SciFi life.
Your writing energizes me to learn more about Russia. As far as chance, the FACT that your life bifurcates and ends up in this place and results in this great Newsletter is REASON FOR HOPE.
When I read yesterday about the death of Dugin's daughter I immediately thought of you. And wondered, what you and you Dad thought about this very dangerous development?
Wow, the perspective is eye opening to me. How easy if is to forget that time if you lived through it safe and far away in the middle US. Thank you for your story and wishing you lovely beets!
Thank you, Nia! Actually, the decision NOT to live in the Soviet Union was made when Sashenka (your sister!) and I came to Leningrad from Helsinki, the first your father had seen his child. When I'd left, a year before, I had agreed to live with him in Russia. But after the Soviets had refused a visa (usual runaround) for Sasha and me, I realized I couldn't do this to our child, no matter how much I loved your father, and Russia. She deserved to.make her choices, too, and they would never let her. Also, your Papa was very afraid - I had never seen him likecthat before. But when I said Sasha and I would go back to the U.S. alone, he begged me not to leave, saying he would "die" if we left. I didn't know what he meant, but had heard him say that people he had admired were "fools" to try to
stand up to the administration, that "they break everyone." In the end, he decided to come with us, or the KGB decided for him. That ugly organization seemed to me like a dirty joke, but when your family is threatened, they become Dostoevsky's dirty cell with spiders. Be glad you've never met up.with them. I hope all is going well for you, and Jessie and Zach - and your father and Olya. I remember yourcreturn through Helsinki, and what a shock the plethora of choices was. But those aren't, of course, the choices that matter.
Thank you, as always, Nia.
Hi Antonia,
Your sustained ability to write with such authenticity just AMAZES me. My lowly Newsletter still struggles for topics and its inability to find such CONSISTENCY is a great effort. I think the disarray in the world that came to be after the violence of 100s of years of realignment in Europe (1800s, WW1, WW2), if run as a computer simulation would lead to WILDLY DIFFERENT results with only small changes in boundary conditions. After lots of history reading, my opinion of the Depression and WW2 was that the WHOLE WORLD chose dictators and regardless of the revisionist historians, America chose a BENEVOLENT leader in FDR. Different leadership for most of the world would have led to wildly different results. That, I believe is the REAL THREAT of the world we live in today.
It is quite easy to be dark and judgmental about what came to be in Russia, FSU and Russia 2.0. While some of it is likely cultural, there is also the result of chance cascading. I think the Korean Peninsula is the strongest validation of the theory of chance. North of the parallel they eat tree bark and live in perpetual darkness. Their relatives 30 miles south live a SciFi life.
Your writing energizes me to learn more about Russia. As far as chance, the FACT that your life bifurcates and ends up in this place and results in this great Newsletter is REASON FOR HOPE.
When I read yesterday about the death of Dugin's daughter I immediately thought of you. And wondered, what you and you Dad thought about this very dangerous development?
Wow, the perspective is eye opening to me. How easy if is to forget that time if you lived through it safe and far away in the middle US. Thank you for your story and wishing you lovely beets!
Thank you, Nia! Actually, the decision NOT to live in the Soviet Union was made when Sashenka (your sister!) and I came to Leningrad from Helsinki, the first your father had seen his child. When I'd left, a year before, I had agreed to live with him in Russia. But after the Soviets had refused a visa (usual runaround) for Sasha and me, I realized I couldn't do this to our child, no matter how much I loved your father, and Russia. She deserved to.make her choices, too, and they would never let her. Also, your Papa was very afraid - I had never seen him likecthat before. But when I said Sasha and I would go back to the U.S. alone, he begged me not to leave, saying he would "die" if we left. I didn't know what he meant, but had heard him say that people he had admired were "fools" to try to
stand up to the administration, that "they break everyone." In the end, he decided to come with us, or the KGB decided for him. That ugly organization seemed to me like a dirty joke, but when your family is threatened, they become Dostoevsky's dirty cell with spiders. Be glad you've never met up.with them. I hope all is going well for you, and Jessie and Zach - and your father and Olya. I remember yourcreturn through Helsinki, and what a shock the plethora of choices was. But those aren't, of course, the choices that matter.
I read this through twice, savoring it. This passage (and, I realize, your writing as a whole) reminds me a great deal of the writing of Eavan Boland:
The photos look blank, empty. A reminder that for events to have meaning they must to be crafted into narrative, no matter how small, how individual.
Anyway, thank you for finding beautiful ways to express the things that must be said.
Also: Will you pickle the cucumbers?
I haven't read anything beyond the first paragraph. Because - good grief, that first paragraph.
Good lord.
I'll have a strong cup of tea to steady my nerves, then come back and keep reading.
Good *lord*.