Reflections on the essence of the Russian homeland: An American academic returns from New York to Moscow to take care of his grandmother | Israel today

Journalist and author Keith Gassen wrote from Brooklyn "Terrible Land" • In an interview with him he says: "Every time I leave Russia, I have relief and a feeling that I do not want to return. Time passes, and I am again attracted to her like a magnet" • and explains why his grandmother is proof of this That there are good sides to socialism

• "I am not a follower of Navalny, but his confrontation with Putin is a powerful message."

  Demonstrators in St. Petersburg last month

  Photo: 

  IPI

When American writer, translator and journalist Keith Gassen talks about Russia, the country where he was born four and a half decades ago, and from which he emigrated with his family to the United States as a 6-year-old - his eyes sparkle, and his voice is clear he feels great sympathy for her. The name of his latest novel - "A Terrible Land"? In the end, like everything in Russia with many mysteries and upheavals, it somehow works out. 

Andrei Kaplan, the main protagonist of "A Terrible Land" (Penn Publishing, English translation: Rachel Penn), is the son of Gassen's character.

When his career path in American academia gets stuck, Andrei lands his big brother's offer: to return from New York to Moscow to take care of their aging grandmother.

Andrei dives into the strange world of contemporary Russia, where despite the familiar language and roots he is a foreign guest.

The renewed acquaintance with his homeland invites him to a chain of human encounters with the locals, and reveals to him the important things in life, but the year ends with an inevitable departure to America and the abandonment of all that he has learned to cherish and love.

"The interesting things in the novel I drew from my life. For example, Andrei's grandmother is my grandmother, one by one," Gassen explains in a conversation with "Israel Today" in a mixture of East Coast English and fluent Russian.

"On the other hand, I replaced the circumstances of my life, which seemed less fascinating to me, with fabricated details. The method was as follows: I first wrote the sequence of my personal experience from a year of life in Moscow in 2009-2008, and then 'warmed' it to make more sense and less detached "It can be likened to a gentle regulation of the heating level, whose function is to add the steam to the cauldron and raise the temperature."

In contrast to the temperatures in the Russian winter, the history of the Gassen family in recent generations has always excelled in excessive heat, to the point of burn danger.

If you will, they contain all the details that make up the intricate mosaic of Jews trapped in Eastern European space in the 20th century: grandmothers who left Jewish towns and flocked to the temptations of education and assimilation but found themselves captured by the Stalinist system;

A grandfather who was drafted into the Red Army and did not return from the war against the Nazis;

Parents who belonged to the dissident intelligence class and hurried to leave for America when the opportunity fell to them;

And finally the generation of children, who even in the new state find no rest and continue to ferment in an endless ideological search.   

The detachment of America

Rosalia Solodovnik, Gassen's grandmother on his mother's side, inspired him to become "Grandma's grandmother," Andrei's grandmother.

She translated the best of world literature into English, French, and German, but in Stalin's days she worked as an international correspondent for the Moscow Central Post Office, tossing and turning between her role in the regime's service and the possibility of becoming his immediate victim.

His second grandmother, Esther Goldberg, also a translator and writer, came from a Zionist family in Poland, went through hardships, persecution and imprisonment in the USSR, dreamed of immigrating to Eretz Israel and could not fulfill it. 

When the two grandmothers called their country a "terrible land", they knew what they were about. However, they both remained in Moscow even after their children and two grandchildren (Masha and Kostya, who changed his name to Keith) immigrated to the United States in 1981, and even after the collapse of the USSR, and lived a long life years after New Russia renounced communism. Thanks to them, their American grandson could return to 21st-century Moscow and feel like a "capsule of time." Thanks to them, his gaze on the USSR, whose horrors he did not experience firsthand, is mixed with sweet nostalgia far from the factual basis. 

Gassen, who now lives in Brooklyn, began traveling back to Russia as early as the 1990s, a few years after the collapse of the communist regime, out of curiosity and self-searching: "I was interested to see where I came from, where my parents came from, to find out what life they had there. They looked a little weird, ridiculous and detached. Although their immigration story was considered happy and good, in a cultural sense they were not assimilated into the American environment but preserved the world they brought with them from Moscow. But apart from the personal roots, Russia I found was so fascinating, open, promising and dynamic I was captivated by her charms. It was much more interesting than in the US. "

Since the 1990s, Russia has changed beyond recognition, and with this change, the real Keith Gassen and Andrei Kaplan, each in his own unique way, are trying to deal with each other. Gassen often writes about Russia to American media "In his view, the explanation for the empathetic view of Russia is based on an attempt to adopt a Russian point of view instead of external criticism. 

" Many of those who emigrated from Russia return to it from time to time to look at it for a moment, for example to write an article about it. And leave immediately, "he explains," their articles draw to Ler

And Russia as a terrible, monotonous and groaning country under Putin's yoke.

It is sinful to reality and quite insulting, although I understand that I do too in a sense.

This is a vicious circle that cannot be broken, because even if I decided to stay in it, I as an American always have somewhere to run.

The Russians have no. "

Who is responsible for the injustice?

Gassan's literary figure went a few steps further in trying to get along with his old-new homeland. In one of the amusing scenes in the novel, Andrei hurriedly throws at his party friends, all Westerners looking at Russia from above, the defiant question" What are you? Did you do for Russia? ", And was offended along with her. In addition to the question, the attempt came to give her an answer, and Andrei joins a group of underground activists who seek to return Russia to the familiar tracks of socialism and social justice.

" This is the transformation I experienced, in Russia I became a socialist. Gassen. "During my time in Moscow with Grandma Rosa, I really became part of a group called the 'Russian Socialist Movement.'

These are Trotskyists, and to me they are good people with a deep and sober view of what is going on in capitalist Russia.

Just like them, I recognized the bad trends back in my visits to Russia in the 1990s, when the oligarchs amassed a fortune at the expense of the common people who were deprived of what little they had. " 

Putin's criticism of Russia focuses on violating freedoms and moving away from Western values. And too capitalist. 

"When Russia moved from socialism to capitalism, my grandmother lost all her savings.

The millions in her generation have had terrible years.

The West does not see its tragedy and that of people like it.

In the American media, you will excuse these sick evils in a communist heritage, and this is a great example of a skewed and misguided look.

When I examined the reality in Russia, I saw that the injustice was rooted in the capitalist social order.

I went back to the US, and saw that the same reality of dispossession of the weak and poor by the strong and rich exists in it as well, and I came to the conclusion that the problem lies in the capitalist system. Injustice in the US is less blatant than in Russia, and instead of scenes of a young man in a luxury jeep. By force you will see a young man in a suit signing an African-American grandmother on a bite-sized loan agreement designed to take her home cunningly. "

You choose to ignore the tradition of individual oppression practiced in Russia under all regimes, from tsarist times, through communist rule to Putin's new Russia. Is it the main thing?

"It's hard to argue with that.

Still, in my opinion, the principles and slogans in whose name and for which things are done are important.

What would my fellow Russian socialists respond to?

Surely they would have emphasized the benefits and achievements of Soviet socialism, such as the eradication of ignorance, the leading role in achieving victory over Nazi Germany or establishing equality as a value in human existence.

One of my areas of writing these days deals with early childhood education, and I was exposed to a comparative study on the lives of 3-year-old toddlers in different countries of the world.

One of the characteristics of Soviet and post-Soviet education was the complete absence of residential segregation.

There were no housing for the rich and housing for the poor.

There were no neighborhoods for a particular national or race. ” 

Is it moral to miraculously raise the“ equality of the prison, ”where everyone is equal, because no one is really equal?

"Let's look at this on 'Grandma', or actually on my real grandmother. My grandmother hated the USSR and felt nauseous towards her.

Her Jewish name was enough to provoke the manifestations of anti-Semitism, and she suffered from them in everyday life.

While there were no liberties, there was political and mental suffocation.

But at the same time, she had a good job in this country, she could support herself and her daughter, my mother, without feeling poor.

Her second husband was a respected physicist, who was given the opportunity to engage in scientific research. 

"The world that this generation built was completely destroyed with the end of the socialist regime and the transition to a market economy, and they had nothing left. My parents who immigrated to America could read everything they wanted and think every thought, could buy a house and two cars, but also lost something in this transition, something left In the USSR and they did not have the capitalist West again. " 

Wissotzky's memories of

Andrei and his grandmother's Judaism are presented in the novel as Judaism without pride, a Judaism of fear of anti-Semitism.

Is this the situation in your eyes as well?

"In my opinion, the Jewish component is a significant part of Russia's history and experience. It has a more central place than the Jewish component in the United States. I am proud of the Jewish contribution to Russian culture, and that is another root of my interest in Russia.

I grew up in an environment that feared anti-Semitism and assimilated, in part because it identified Judaism with the provocations and limitations of Jewish towns.

When I was younger, I was more concerned with questions of Judaism and Israel, and I expressed this in my first novel, which was not translated into Hebrew.

I visited Israel twice - as a child with my parents, and again in 2002, when I lived for a month with my uncle in Jerusalem and my aunt in one of the most beautiful localities in Judea and Samaria. " 

Despite the idealization of Soviet past and general sympathy for Russia The island of Crimea and turned to confrontation with the West.However, in his criticism of Russia he does not come close to the level of sharpness characteristic of his older sister, Masha Gassen, known for her two hats - as a stubborn opponent of the Putin regime in Russia and an influential radical left in the US.

Unlike Keith, Masha returned to live in Russia in 1993 and became one of the symbols of the liberal opposition to the almighty president. 

After the publication of her book "Putin: The Man Without a Face", Gassen chose to leave Russia and join teaching at the academy and writing for The New Yorker magazine.

Similar to her, her brother Keith remains torn between the different identities and has a hard time deciding which is more - American or Russian.

"I will probably always remain a Russian American," he notes thoughtfully.

"I grew up in the United States, I studied in her education system, yet Russian culture - Russian literature, Wissotzky and Galich's poems that my parents listened to as a child - is close to me, and without it I would probably be a completely different person."

As an American-

Russian

how do you see the future of Russia?

”Every time I leave Russia, I have a relief that I could get out of it and a feeling that I would not want to return to it.

Some time passes, and I am drawn to her again.

It has something that attracts like a magnet.

There is no doubt that something fascinating is happening there now following the appearance of opposition leader Alexei Navalny against Putin.

I am not one of his political followers, but he is a unique figure on a global scale, and he should be appreciated not only for his personal courage but for turning to the conscience and self-respect of the people.

"I'm not afraid, and do not be afraid either," he calls on everyone.

This is a powerful message, not because there is nothing to fear but because a life of fear is incompatible with self-esteem.

"Figures of this kind have been in other countries, and for the first time there is such a leader in Russia as well."