But the Russians' Empire is not theirs

In one of his letters to his wife written during world war two, Pasternak wrote: “It is impossible to express how much I want Russia to be victorious. I have no other desire. But can I possibly desire the victory of stupidity and of eternal banality and lies?” The remark may have been literary – read in one way, Pasternak might appear to intend here a criticism of the Russian literary establishment rather than the Politbureau; but then maybe not? On the other hand, his desire for Russia’s victory may also be not all it appears: his letters, like those of most others, were read by the secret police; this made it customary to make assurances of one’s loyalty to Stalin and of one’s patriotism in private letters.

Whatever the truth of this quote, it captures the central problem of the Russian soul: Russians have an empire to which they are intensely attached and intensely loyal; and an empire which they also intensely hate because it enslaves them. This split personality – or shall we call it two-facedness – goes back centuries: in 1820’s Pushkin quarreled with Mickiewicz over it. Pushkin would criticize the Russian regime when in the company of other Russians; but when talking to foreigners (Mickiewicz was a Russian subject, but not ethnically Russian, which made him a foreigner in Pushkin’s eyes), he would immediately jump to the regime’s defense – with the sort of vehemence which betrayed a deeply felt shame at his own duplicity.

I suppose Russians see logic in this combination of mutually exclusive attitudes – hate it but love it – though just how perverse it is illustrates the case of a Russian Jew I once knew in the US. His family had been refusniks – they had asked for the right to emigrate; they were immediately subjected to economic hardships and persecution; a condition in which they lived for several years until they were finally granted the exit visa. Yet, ensconced in America, where no one persecuted him anymore, over a glass of vodka, Sasha would wax lyrical at the memory of the glorious footage, played over and over again on Russian TV when he was a tender youth, of the first U2 American spy shot down by the Soviets.

The perversity of the situation did not occur to him but struck me: Sasha was wallowing in the glory of a successful shooting down of a plane – in itself a sick cause for pleasure, if you ask me; but, what’s worse, he was glorying in the shooting down of a plane by the very Soviets who had persecuted him. An American citizen by then, Sasha was still taking pride in the Soviet Empire; “his” Empire.

And of course this is the Russian pride: it is “their” empire, even though it does them no good at all and even though they have no say in its management. Most normal people would not consider such an empire as “theirs”. But then if Russians were to admit to themselves that their empire isn’t really theirs, what would they have left? A low standard of living, poor health care, low life expectancy, alcoholism, drug resistant tuberculosis?