By ERIC LE ROY
Content 18+ Artem’s article “The Soviet Paradox: Women, Rights, and the Twisted Path of Progress” was highly informative, albeit a bit too glib (for my taste) in its glowing endorsement and idealized portraiture of the Bolsheviks. First, it might be recalled that there was not only one, but two revolutionary groups pressing their cause in the Russia of those frantic revolutionary days. The other was the Mensheviks. The ‘Reds’ versus the ‘Whites’, just like in the days of the Wars of the Roses in England, pitting the Lancastrian Red Roses against the White Roses of the Yorkists. (The Whites won in England; the Reds were victorious in Russia.) The same was true in France during the 1789-93 Revolution there, except that it was the more radical Jacobins fighting the more conciliatory Girondists. Guess who won?
The War of the Roses was about two competing sides both with conflicting and arguably legitimate claims to the throne of England. The Soviet and French revolutions were about overthrowing the tsar/king and radicalizing the entire social structure. And spirit. In both cases, the more extremist and ruthless contestants took the gold medal. The Mensheviks had favored a tzar with very limited powers, rather like what happened in England after the beheading of Charles I in 1649. The Bolsheviks said “Waste them all.”
Following the grim and gloomy years of Oliver Cromwell’s ‘Protectorate’, the English regained their senses and placed Charles’ son Charles II on the throne in 1660 with the provision that from then onwards, Parliament, not the Monarch, would be running things. Charles II, gently rubbing his neck and massaging his Adam’s Apple, quickly concurred.
Things went differently in Russia and France, and like the beheading of Charles I, there was bloodshed. This article is not designed to discuss the French at length, but everybody knows about Robespierre’s Reign of Terror. In other words, idealism gone mad, revolutionary zeal run amok. The Bolsheviks’ annihilation of the Mensheviks and murder of Tsar Nicholas and the rest of his family will give you a clue as to the very literal hammer and sickle philosophy of the Bolsheviks.
They may have begun as visionaries and self-appointed architects of a new, purified social order, and maybe for a while – two or three days possibly – they acted as such, but in reality they were nothing but a bunch of vicious, moronic thugs. In their ‘idealism’ they made a shambles of classical Russia right alongside its excesses, failures, and disorganized Russian block-headedness. The Bolsheviks did everything possible to sever all ties to the past, even in places where the past deserved preservation. They were like most revolutionaries: absolutely indifferent to what they destroyed as long as they destroyed it. What might have been of cultural value made no difference to the Bolsheviks as they trampled every garden that had ever been planted in Old Russia.
It didn’t help the cause of the monarchy that Nicholas himself was an incompetent oaf with that special kind of arrogance that even today one easily recognizes in Russian oligarchs and advanced internet hackers whose fortunes have been accumulated through one swindle after another. The Tsar’s disasters in the field led to the destruction of the army in the Crimean War (1853-56). His reign professed an ideology called “Official Nationality,” proclaimed officially in 1833, that was a reactionary policy based on orthodoxy in religion, autocracy in government, and Russian nationalism. (Where have we heard that before?) . Getting rid of icky ‘Nick’ was a good idea, but maybe slaughtering every last member of his family was a bit much. Still, we are speaking of Bolsheviks, right? So whatever the case, this was a shining example of Bolshevik mentality in action. Another Utopia down the shitter, which is where they all end up going.
As Artem points out accurately (though I really wish he had abjured the glamorous pictures depicting all Soviet women as drop-dead gorgeous – no idea why he did that but he must have had what be thought was a good reason), one of the genuinely laudable achievements of the Revolution was the emancipation of Soviet women. The wisdom of this (when English and American women in those supposedly enlightened countries still couldn’t vote in an election) was, I have no trouble admitting, totally remarkable. So were the new laws allowing for easy divorce and access to abortion.
But these liberties shifted with the tides of fortune in the Soviet Union. In wartime, when they were needed in the factories, women were discouraged from motherhood; in peacetime, they were expected to knock out the babies with the same tireless alacrity as they had turned handles and pulled the levers in the factories, plants, and warehouses. Indeed, women could enter the spheres of science, mathematics, and other bastions of masculine sovereignty. They could also do hard labor on construction sites; on the farms spread out across Russia’s great expanses, they were the symbols of Soviet vigor and implacability. Those big gals had power that would make today’s transgenders proud. Nothing was off limits. But they were still expected to clean the home, prepare the meals, and offer their husbands whatever relief was demanded.
If Russia had kept on like that, or been permitted to by its so-called ‘leaders’, then everything would have been better. But, as we know, along came Stalin, and the seeds were planted, figuratively and literally, for the disgusting situation that exists in Russia today: a cold-blooded dictator who can end human life with a single phone call or hard blink of his eye. And indeed with Stalin the worst instincts of the Russian mind were reinstated: unrelenting suspiciousness, distrust of even one’s closest neighbor, evasiveness, secrecy, casual violence and moral cowardice. Stalin re-established in Russian people their own centuries old sense of helplessness and inferiority; moreover, his own sickening arrogance gave great demonstration of the virtues of vicious oppression. Stalin managed to awaken, not the forward looking entrepreneurship of Peter I, but the remorseless savagery of Ivan Grozny (don’t be fooled by the famous,grief-filled eyes in the painting ); what Stalin taught was the inevitability of a fear-guided culture.
So after toying briefly with democracy which, if not exactly the pathway to heaven at least rewards ingenuity and innovation, as well as (oh by the way) permitting freedom of expression, Russia landed once more in the hands of the kind of leader it truly wants, savors, and even worships: a KGB guy. It’s the desired reality of 75 per cent at least of the Russian population. I have come to see this. And it’s a doggone shame, really, because Russian people at heart are good people: rough and ready to be sure, but generous in their hospitality and rich in their sense of humor. The latter, I have discovered in life – the ability to laugh through adversity – is a genuine sign of the vitality behind human greatness and endurance, and the Russians possess it innately. But they, like the African Americans of slavery and the Jim Crow era, also “know why the caged bird sings.” (title of the book by Maya Angelou). The bird sings out of pride and bravery to try and forget the conditions of the cage it is locked in. Moreover, scientific and artistic genius abounds among Russian people – as long as it is not squashed by the government.
Thus, until the Ukrainian war started, I saw Russians as they would like to be seen: generous, boisterous and jovial, full of big hearts and indomitable courage. Loyalty to the death bestowed on their true comrades and friends. I bought into it. And through the great period from 2009 to 2014, I, a foreigner, was like many Russians back then: having fun. The mystique, the sensuality, the artistry and the intellect were all there; everything seemed to be in place. The roads between Russia and the West were unblocked. The Winter Olympics and the World Cup were coming to Russia. Putin was speaking a lot about “our American partners”. There was no mention of “Russophobia” and that’s because there was none.
In fact, let me briefly address this “Russophobia” business. Nowadays, these ‘phobias’ are a dime a dozen. Islamophobia. Homophobia. Etc. It used to be that a phobia was when you didn’t like being locked in a closet or finding a tarantula on the end of your nose staring down at you as you woke up in the morning. Now everybody has some kind of goddamned phobia. The truth of the matter – which may startle many Russians – is that people in America: truck drivers crossing a dozen states in the dead of night; pimply teenage boys and girls slaving away in fast food joints; construction and factory workers in round-the-clock shifts; even the smart guys in three piece suits in high corporate offices – don’t give a fuck about Russia. They are more interested in whether the Jets or the Giants won the football game. They absolutely do NOT spend their time plotting ways to sink Russia. OK?
Even though the US stands (so far) as the Big World Power, what foreigners don’t realize is that Americans are mostly concerned about America. They tried desperately to stay out of World War I and would have resisted entering World War II if the Japanese hadn’t forced the issue at Pearl Harbor. Most Americans never even bother to get a passport. They’d rather visit Disney World in Orlando than travel to Europe, let alone Russia or China. If you live in South Carolina, a holiday visit to Yosemite National Park out west is like a trip to the moon.
Not for all Americans, of course; the planet has shrunk, and people get about. But all the average American guy really wants to see and know about Russia are the tall, ravishing Slavic women, even though it would never dawn on him that they might actually hail from Ukraine or Belarus. Before the war, the typical American would struggle to find Kiev or Minsk on a Map. But they would guess that these places were in Russia. Novosibirsk? WTF?? And if you mentioned Georgia, he’d say “How ‘bout them dawgs!” But he would be speaking of the University of Georgia football team, not a country with a city named Tbilisi (huh?) as its capital.
All was well. Then along came the invasion of Ukraine. Oh yes, I know that it didn’t just start there. There are always underlying reasons, previous factors not caught on camera, that can give the lie to even the most pointblank eyewitness testimony. But the invasion was Putin’s decision. Of course he had a Fool’s Gallery of sycophants and bootlickers shouting rah rah to his every utterance, but he was the one who started the tanks rolling. Millions of people have been subjected, in ways merely uncomfortable, tragic, or utterly devastating, to the grief that those imperialistic choices spawned. But Putin hawks try, as they always do, to blame the whole thing on the West.
And so now, with history against them and Putin an anachronistic taker of lives, the really negative outcome – if somehow we can look beyond the carnage – is that so many Russians today actually support this criminal nonsense; indeed,they embrace it. And this shows the willful ignorance of the Russian populace and it contradicts or casts doubt on many previous accounts of Russian heroism. And that’s a damned sad thing, really, because there are and have always been many legitimate heroes and heroines in Russia. The pity of it is that many of them, today as in the past, end up being shot or poisoned.
The fact is that where Russia has succeeded, it has done so, not because of its great qualities, but in spite of its worst. It makes me depressed to understand the gulf between my own mentality and that of so many Russian people I have liked, respected, and loved. The war has taught me that. One could say that Russians are Russians no matter what and that I was an admirer of Russians until something pissed me off and I changed my tune. Makes me look kind of weak, doesn’t it? Most Russians would think so.
But I see a deeper reality. We speak of Russian women? OK, let’s talk about the Russian woman of today. She lives in a despotic nation where women are now smothered under the government mandated dogma of ‘traditional values’. A nation where a man can beat or kill a woman while the police are off somewhere playing cards or drinking. A nation where ‘chanson’ elevates the idea of the ‘mother’ to the status of a goddess, but is sung by criminals who brought their mothers only grief.
The Russian woman today in the big cities is just like those in big cities everywhere. If they are beautiful – and not too dumb – they get the best of Russian life. Otherwise, they just push on, often without decent men to support them. And finally, old, bedraggled and worn out, they end up alone (because the husband had a stroke due to lack of self-care or just drank himself to death). Then they have the extreme pleasure of subsisting – after working for half a century – on a pension that usually amounts to the equivalent of about $250-300 per month. I noticed early on that Moscow, despite its surface glamor, is really a city of gloomy old women.
But they love Vladimir Putin. Powerful across the steppes, fecund in the fields and sexual in the cities, they take refuge in ‘patriotism’. I sometimes wish I understood them. But I see that both love and hate defy understanding, while moral cowardice invites only contempt. Russian supporters of Putin have basic answers when confronted with logic and undeniable facts about the current regime: 1. It’s false news. 2. Nobody really knows. 3. Everybody else does it, so why single out Russia? 4. It is all a conspiracy by the West to destroy Russia.
And that’s about it: the intellectual arsenal of answers to serious questions. Oh – I forgot one: the 5th answer, and in some ways the most impenetrable and final. #5. Who cares? That’s what they say, as they shrug away reality.
So look at some of the pictures I have included near the end of my article. The magnificent Ludmilla Tourischeva who, as a skinny American boy, I fell in love with after watching her gymnastics performances in the Olympics. And Zinaida Serebriakova, whose self portrait you see below. That was painted in 1912, and I dream of walking into that painting, into her room of total vivaciousness and self-confident optimism. And, yes, I dream of kissing her.
Maybe they are justification, such women, somehow, even for the worst sides of Russian life. Maybe it’s enough – those splendid ladies. After all, true love need not be rational. It’s stronger than that.
