Betrayals
I grew up feeling like a traitor for leaving Russia, the country of my birth. I felt this way even though it was my parents, not me, who decided to go. I felt this way even though our standard of living improved a lot due to immigration. Something inside me kept saying, “You left, buddy, you left,” a constant accusation in the back of my mind
I missed the country where I was born. When I went back for a visit in 2003 I felt giddy. On the bus, I let older people have my seat. I went fishing with a bare line and ran through the woods getting chased by mosquitoes. I met old friends and walked through the streets I remembered as a kid. I found the mural I painted when I was ten: a spaceship zooming on the side of an apartment building, still there after 13 years.
It was difficult to cope with the contradiction of immigration: enjoying a better life yet feeling remorse. Sometimes, during quiet moments, I would imagine the globe, and Russia, and the USA, and all the countries, and I would ask, “What is greater than all these nations?” and I would perceive a glow emanating from somewhere in between, somewhere in the North Sea, a bright golden glow which told me that there are things more important than all nations.
The attack on Ukraine has made this situation of dual emotional allegiance impossible. It has pushed me to examine what it is exactly that I am attached to, what my heart really wants. In this examination, I go back decades to the 80’s and 90’s.
Do you remember the song “Winds of Change” by the Scorpions? You may not, it’s not a song we hear often. This song celebrated the fall of the iron curtain. If you give it a listen, you may feel caught up in its euphoria: the relief of war averted and of anticipation limitless possibilities:
The wind of change blows straight into the face of time
Like a storm wind that will ring
The freedom bell for peace of mind
Let your balalaika sing
What my guitar wants to say…
This feeling was shared by Russians. The desire for peace, for economic possibility permeated Soviet music at the time. The band DDT rose to fame with their anti-war song “Don’t Shoot!” which was much beloved as you can see in this live concert video. We watched anti-war movies like Short Circuit (1986). We goggled at American exchange students, begged them for Bazooka Joy gum, craved western culture… and we were giddy when the Soviet Union fell. We even made up dirty rhymes about the August Coup organizers and rejoiced when the coup failed.
You might think that our attraction was purely materialistic, some cheap fascination with the wealth and prosperity we saw in the west. Maybe it was that for some, I am not sure, but for me, disillusionment with the Soviet system defined my coming of age. You see, my family did not teach me about the dark side of communism until I was eight or nine, for fear of me accidentally blabbing about it at school. Thus, I learned all about how good Grandpa Lenin was until one day, when Gorbachov eased censorship, I watched a movie which showed all the horrors of the Bolshevik Revolution. I remember looking at my dad, “Is this true?” In response he just said, “That’ll teach you to wave your red flag at the Demonstrations!” I guess he had been wanting to tell me that for a long time.
After that I learned. I learned about the concentration camps, about the tragedy of the steam-ship Indigirka, in whose demise 745 convicts were locked in the cargo hold and needlessly drowned. I learned about the history of my family, the two great-uncles who were killed in Stalin’s purges, my great-grandparents who did time. I learned about what the cult of Stalin’s personality was like — my great grandmother loved him to her death, despite having done time in the 30’s… A utopia cannot be built on blood, if it can be built at all.
Again, I was not alone in this. I felt like Russia — at least my sphere of society, the educated academics, my parents and their friends — was totally on board. On vinyl records and reel-to-reel tapes they would play the protest songs of the “bards”. The poet Galich mocked the nationalism used to justify Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia. “Our tanks on foreign soil” were his words, “Citizens! The Motherland is in danger!” and then again, “our tanks on foreign soil”. The poet and singer Vladymir Vysotsky lamented the cycles of repression of Soviet life as he imagined the thoughts of a newly freed gulag convict:
Turns out its just as it was
In the old times, in the old times
If you cross the mob
Hang from the light, the street light
Steal and do some time,
Just do some time, merely time
But if you knew too much
Firing squad, firing squad…
From all these songs I concluded (falsely, as it turns out), that there was an understanding, a national awakening to humanity, a realization of the value of the individual. I was wrong, of course — as Vystotsky himself commented in a song about someone just recently released from the gulag:
What for did I curse my difficult fate?
Twas for naught, twas for naught.
What for did I long for and seek my release
From the camps, from the camps?
Crowds of people I see, who don’t seem human
Indifferent, blind,
I peer into the gloomy faces of strangers-
Neither enemy, nor friend.
Just like many Americans were shocked and surprised in 2016 by the rise of Donald Trump, so I was surprised by the shallowness of the democratic instinct in Russia. Even among people who suffered under the Communists, who lost family members to authoritarianism, who lamented the inevitable corruption of dictators, I now find support for Putin’s new regime: maybe I did betray Russia by leaving, but Russia betrayed me too. And while my betrayal was geographic, Russia’s betrayal was far deeper.
The KGB is in charge, and they are lying to people once again. And whose who were once “democracy-curious” are swallowing these lies hook, line and sinker. Corruption, which ran rampant after the fall of the USSR, is now swept under the rug, state-sanctioned and quiet. Free press is done with, and we’re back to one political party. Just like in Vysotsky’s song, “Turns out it’s just like it was, in the old times.”