Russians: they’re just like us, or probably desperately
want to be us, don’t they? Gregory Feifer’s wide-ranging and deeply felt exegesis of all things Russian posits
that a combination of history, repression, endemic corruption and even sheer
land mass have molded an otherness
that refutes this question as soon as it’s asked. Russians, in the aggregate,
most certainly wish to be Russians
more than anything else, warts and all. It’s these systemic and historical
warts that “Russians: The People Behind The Power” wishes to illuminate. How
does a country renown for centuries of contribution to literature and the arts,
and a purported “world power” to boot, come to be a gauche, hideously corrupt
cesspot of alcoholism, poverty, cronyism, inefficiency and bad taste? And why
does it seem that the populace – again, in the aggregate - continue to bow down
in meek subservience before its dictatorial leaders and say, “yes sir, we’d like more of that, please”?
A word of warning, though I don’t personally feel it
to be a drawback in the least to this terrific book: some might deem this tome
the “hatchet job” to end all hatchet jobs on Mother Russia. If you’re not a fan
of Vladimir Putin, has Greg Feifer got a book for you. Lucky for Feifer, I
think Putin and the Soviet culture he grew from and has brought back with a
vengeance is odious and foul. It may not be ahistorical, however. Over twelve
chapters, Feifer weaves a series of journalistic narratives on aspects of
Russia and Russian culture that’s truly more sad than angry. He himself comes
from Russian stock, and his well-told stories of his Russian-born and –bred
mother and her family form part of the backbone of stories of Siberian exile,
alcohol-soaked parties, secret police, KGB informers and tentative steps toward
the west during Soviet times.
It’s that intense, all-encompassing 74-year Soviet
experience, as well as previous heavy-handed repression under the tsar system,
that Feifer (and virtually every other Russianologist) believes has stamped
Russia’s culture for ill, and which he believes they’ll have a long, hard slog
to crawl out from. It’s no accident that Putin is generally supported by the
huddled masses of Russia, who aren’t yearning to be free so much as taken care of. The spasms of the early 1990s, when
“capitalism” meant appropriating or stealing as much state property as humanly possible
within a limited window, terrified much of the populace. Moscow, to say nothing
of the rural regions wholly dependent on all-encompassing state support for
decades, retreated into the comfort of the stage-managed modern tsar Putin, who
has bullied and broken virtually every obstacle that has stood in his way since
he entered the stage in the late 1990s, and who now enjoyed virtual dictatorial
power over nearly every aspect of Russian politics and society, with the
fortune of well-timed oil wealth giving him cover to plunder the country.
Feifer spares no vitriol in recounting the well-known
incidents that have been reported in western media about Putin and his gang of
oligarchs, as well as dozens that have barely registered outside of the
country. He’s spent much of the last twenty years traveling to, living in and
reporting from the country as a reporter for NPR and other publications. I like
that he wears his venom on his sleeve, and it’s hard to find fault with his
disgust with Russia’s squandered potential and the beaten-down people of the
country. Naturally, he sympathizes with those who’ve attempted to shine
democratic light into Russia’s dark corners, from Memorial, who are a brave
voice attempting to document Stalinist abuses to a country that prefers to
forget, to the more well-known political opposition figures such as Alexei
Navalny, who tend to appear every couple of years before being imprisoned on
trumped-up “bribery” or “forgery” charges before most of the West forgets about
them.
Beyond the criminality and the horrific work ethic
left over from Soviet sloth, it’s the country’s endemic alcoholism – a lament
that also formed a large part of Oliver Bullough’s recent (quite complementary)
nonfiction elegy for the country “The Last Man in Russia” – that is perhaps
more troubling. I learned here that there’s a political-industrial-alcohol
complex in Russia that feeds greater and greater tax revenue from vodka sales
into state coffers, and drinking, already part of a much-revered macho culture
in the country, is tacitly and often explicitly encouraged by the government.
Alcoholism rates are the world’s worst (and are actually getting worse), and
life expectancy is declining as a result. Feifer quotes the cynicism of many
Russians he’s met and interviewed, who see alcohol as a much-needed escape from
the tyranny of the state and the culture that surrounds it; there’s even an
entire chapter about the country’s legendary cold, and how even that plays into the country’s many myths and sad
realities, alcoholism included.
An uplifting tale about Russia’s imminent partnership
with the west it’s not – and it was written and published before the 2014 Ukraine crisis. The book is edgy, funny in parts,
and utterly bitter and sad. It completely ruined my long desire to visit St.
Petersburg, while redoubling my support for the few flickers of civil society
left in Russia. More than this, though, it’s helped me to understand and
appreciate that Russia is not a part
of Europe; never has been and never will be, and frankly – doesn’t want to be
either. That’ll be something to chew on in every wonky Russia news article I
read from this point forward.
