Secondhand Time, by Svetlana Alexievich

This oral history covers the periods 1991-2001 and 2002-2012 in Russia and former Soviet republics. Alexievich’s technique is to sit with people, to interview them as they remember the changes since the collapse of the Soviet Union. And it’s appalling how many miss Stalin. The sovoks would gladly trade the new cutthroat capitalism that favors the unscrupulous (while everyone with honest jobs struggles and starves) for the iron fist of Stalin. Some ascribe this perversity to Russian sentimentality, simple-minded and simple-hearted; others miss the feeling of being part of something grand – a movement for The People, not for oneself. In the name of The People they worked hard, went to prison, endured torture, starved – and believed. The new system rewards the selfish, its purpose and future meaningless.

She speaks with a man who tortured prisoners under Stalin’s regime, who did that as a job, thoroughly but without joy or vengeance. He remarked that if a true sadist worked among them, they would get rid of him. And what of the woman denounced by a neighbor who lusted after her? She went to the gulag for years, eventually her husband was arrested too. And yet, they remained true believers – Lenin and Stalin were great men, the ideals were worth everything. The feeling of everyone working for the common good was overwhelming – they miss that; it has left a vacuum in their hearts. “With an Iron Fist, we will chase Humanity into Happiness!” Their most precious possessions were their Party cards.

For decades, the death machine worked nonstop… Its logic was brilliant: The victims are accused of being executioners and then, in the end, the executioners themselves become the victims. As though it wasn’t just people running it… Things are only that perfect in nature. The flywheel turns, but there’s no one to blame. No one! Everyone wants to be pitied. Everyone is a victim.

We see the sweep of tribalism: Russia for Russians. Tajiks in Moscow live in basement warrens, robbed and abused, doing work no Russian will touch, and thrown out on a whim, documents confiscated, attacked on the streets by skinheads… Sound familiar? The new economy has enriched gangsters, oligarchs, young people swept up in materialism. During Soviet times, books were precious, often samizdat (published and distributed hand to hand illegally) – but after the Soviet Union fell, no one cared. No Pasternak, no Akhmatova; no Sakharov, no Solzhenitsyn, only money, Italian bathroom fixtures, salami… and vodka. A drunkard nation.

Alexievich interviews mothers whose children were confiscated and raised in mass orphanages, and children who grew up without a mother’s love but with the Party to look up to. And, the bright thread through all the gloom: love. A mother who will do anything for her child. And a woman considered insane by her friends and family for pursuing a man she’d never met, based on a dream she had as a teenager – she knew she was in this life to love him. After two husbands and three children, she found him – a prisoner who had murdered a man. And her love, the Dostoyevskian saintliness of it, broke down every barrier. She made him her life.

Russia is an outsized example of humanity’s potential and pitfalls – in these stories we read extremes of what happens everywhere, because humans are pretty much the same everywhere, only more so in Russia through its unique combination of vast inhospitable lands, simple beauty, and the yearning of the spirit toward something greater than this miserable existence. Hope and love seem more precious and fleeting in the face of starvation, brutality, and repression. These folk and their dreams have been brought to life by the great Russian writers: Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Bulgakov, Solzhenitsyn – and now Alexievich.

A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles

This elegant 2016 novel crosses time (1922-1954) in a very constrained space. The fellow of the title, Count Alexander (Sasha) Rostov, is under house arrest in the Hotel Metropol in the center of Moscow. Holding fast to his gentlemanly principles, he makes the best of his restrictions, in the process offering lessons to those around him of what living well consists of, and how it is practiced.  His “descent” from nobility lands him among the free spirits of the hotel staff; though their tasks are menial, they perform them with enviable grace and pleasure.

The plot hangs on his relationships with a nine-year-old girl whose impulsive curiosity draws him into friendship, and later her six-year-old daughter whom he raises as his own child. If one were to voice complaints about so charming a tale, one might bring up the ease with which the Count adapts to his shrinking privileges - it seldom takes him more than a moment, an hour, or a day, to adjust. Why, one might wonder, does he not only remain alive while most of his aristocratic peers have been murdered or shipped off to Siberia, but drinks in the Metropol’s lovely bar with international journalists and the occasional diplomat? One might carp about the buffoonery of the apparatchiks who made the existence of so many Russians so unlivable, or quibble with the characters, so easily sorted into “good guys” who have deep, useful skills and joie de vivre, vs. “bad guys” who are petty, vindictive, and lack soul.  And above all, how, in such a finite space, is Rostov able to keep his secrets, the keys to his vitality?

I won’t spoil the story by answering those challenges. But I will say that it is such a delight to read this fluid prose, and to appreciate this kind well-mannered gentleman, that one forgives Mr. Towles for allowing the Count a better life than he could so easily have endured. The appeal of the novel rides in no small part on its philosophical asides, for example:

“For however decisive the Bolsheviks’ victory had been over the privileged classes on behalf of the Proletariat, they would be having banquets soon enough... [H]aving gathered around a grand circle of tables, the new statesmen would nod their heads in order to indicate to a waiter... that yes, they would have a few more spears of asparagus.

For pomp is a tenacious force. And a wily one too.

How humbly it bows its head as the emperor is dragged down the steps and tossed in the street. But then, having quietly bided its time, while helping the newly appointed leader on with his jacket, it compliments his appearance and suggests the wearing of a medal or two.”

The hotel itself is as important a character as anyone who passes through its revolving doors, and in the Count’s company we explore it from boiler room to roof, back stairs and front suites, the finest restaurant in Russia, and a ballroom where the Soviet assembly argues details of policy. Its position overlooking Theater Square guarantees visits by performers and artists, international tourists, diplomats, and spies. Its legacy as a premiere hotel is grounded in its capable staff: doorman, seamstress, and barber; chef, maitre d’, and headwaiter; and concierge, bartender, and conductor of the late-evening ensemble, to name but a few.

Towles’s understanding of Russia is essential to the book, and through his characters paying homage to their culture, offers us a taste of Russian soul.

“ 'But with Chekhov and Tolstoy, we Russians have set the bronze bookends on the mantelpiece of narrative. Henceforth, writers of fictions from wheresoever they hail, will place themselves on the continuum that begins with the one and ends with the other. For who, I ask you, has exhibited better mastery of the shorter form than Chekhov in his flawless little stories? Precise and uncluttered, they invite us into some corner of a household at some discrete hour in which the entire human condition is suddenly within reach, if heartbreakingly so. While at the other extreme: Can you conceive of a work greater in scope than War and Peace? One that moves so deftly from the parlor to the battlefield and back again? That so fully investigates how the individual is shaped by history, and history by the individual?' ” [The Count, enumerating to a German challenger Russia's contributions to the West]

The author is too modest to place himself in that pantheon, but by honoring writers and poets throughout the book, he elevates his own chances.

War and Peace Wrap-up

I finished reading War & Peace a couple of weeks ago, but I've been stymied by the challenge of distilling this 1200 page tour-de-force into a manageable review. The work consists of a fictional story, with characters immersed in the challenges of war and love; views of battle bowing to both historical record and these characters; and philosophical ruminations on a range of subjects: history; war; power; genius; human searches for meaning; life and death; and Russia as a nation and its people.

Tolstoy places his characters at critical events to provide us eyewitness experience, and while these events are as historically accurate as any account can be, they are also beautifully written. The night before he is killed in battle, 16-year-old Petya Rostov, who has run off to immerse himself in the thrill of war as part of the Russian force pursuing the retreating French, has a reverie while listening to a man sharpen his saber: the youth directs a many-voiced hymn which becomes a march, and at his command it takes glorious form: "Ah, how lovely that is! As much as I like and however I like," Petya said to himself... "Softer, softer now, fade away." And the sounds obeyed him[...] and drops dripped, and bzhik, zhik, zhik... whistled the saber, and again the horses scuffled and neighed, not disrupting the chorus, but entering into it. (Vol IV, Part 3, Ch. X). A mere two pages later, "Running into the campfire smoldering in the morning light, the horse balked, and Petya fell heavily onto the wet ground. The Cossacks saw how his arms and legs jerked rapidly, though his head did not move. His head had been pierced by a bullet." (ibid, Ch. XI).

Tolstoy intersperses these vivid scenes with treatises on how wars come to be. He regards Napoleon as the inevitable consequence of myriad actions and movements - though the man is hailed by historians as a military genius, Tolstoy goes to considerable lengths to explain the chaos of battle, the involvement of myriad individuals in actions which create the whole, and generally discredits the "great man" theory of history. He finds it all, to some degree, preordained: this soldier will utter a valiant full-throated cry which inspires his regiment to unwonted bravery, while other regiments in the same battle retreat in confusion because the captains leading them are uncertain, disorganized or afraid. None of this occurs in response to orders from generals, who in an age of limited communication are not aware until afterwards what has actually happened, including even victory or defeat.

About the "rules of war" he has this to say, "Let us imagine two men who came with swords to fight a duel by all the rules of the art of fencing; the fighting went on for quite a long time; suddenly one of the adversaries, feeling himself wounded, realizing that it was not a joking matter, but something that concerned his life, threw down his sword and, picking up the first club he found, started brandishing it...
"The French were the fencer who demanded a fight by the rules of the art; the Russians were the adversary who dropped his sword and picked up a club; those who attempt to explain everything by the rules of fencing are the historians who have written about this event.
"From the time of the burning of Smolensk, a war began that did not fit any of the former traditions of war. The burning of towns and villages, the retreats after battles, the blow struck at Borodino and then another retreat, the abandoning and burning of Moscow, the hunt for marauders, the cutting off of transport, the partisan war - these were all deviations from the rules.
"Napoleon sensed that, and from the moment when he stopped in Moscow, in the correct position of a fencer, and instead of his adversary's sword, saw a club raised over him, he never ceased complaining to Kutuzov and the emperor Alexander that the war was being conducted against all the rules (as if there existed some sort of rules for killing people)." (Vol IV, Part 3, Ch. II). Here is Tolstoy, heaping his scorn upon the pretensions to civilization of the brutish business of war.

Meanwhile, even as he repudiates the historians and tacticians for their orderly views of battle, he takes us into the mind and soul of a fatally injured man. Andrei Bolkonsky, severely wounded at Borodino, has been transported to and beyond Moscow with the Russian retreat. "But Prince Andrei's soul was not in a normal state in this respect. The forces of his soul were all clearer and more active than ever, but they acted outside his will. The most diverse thoughts and notions took hold of him simultaneously. Sometimes his thought suddenly began to work, and with such strength, clarity and depth as it had never been able to do in healthy conditions; but suddenly, in the middle of its work, it broke off and was replaced by some unexpected notion, and he was unable to return to it....
"And each time the fly touched his face, it made a burning sensation, and at the same time he was surprised that, hitting against the very area of his face where the edifice was being raised, the fly did not destroy it. But besides that, there was something else important. It was the white thing in the doorway, it was the statue of a sphinx, which also weighed on him." (Vol III, Part 3, Ch. XXXII). This "white thing in the doorway" is Natasha, lodging in the same inn, compelled to look at this wounded man to whom she had been in love and betrothed, but through the interference of others, had rejected. In the days that follow, the pair grow close, then Andrei puts aside all human affection as he faces his death:

"Prince Andrei not only knew that he would die, but felt that he was dying, that he was already half dead. He experienced an awareness of estrangement from everything earthly and a joyful and strange lightness of being. Without haste or worry, he waited for what lay ahead of him... Formerly he had been afraid of the end... The more he pondered the new principle of eternal love revealed to him, the more, though without feeling it himself, he renounced earthly life. To love everything, everybody, always to sacrifice oneself for love, meant to love no one, meant not to live this earthly life....
"Love? What is love?" he thought. "Love hinders death. Love is life. Everything, everything I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is connected only by that... Love is God, and to die - means that I, a part of love, return to the common and eternal source." These thoughts seemed comforting to him. But they were only thoughts. Something was lacking in them, there was something one-sidedly personal, cerebral - there was no evidence."...
"But in the same instant that he died, Prince Andrei remembered that he was asleep, and in the same instant that he died, he made an effort with himself and woke up.
"Yes that was death. I died - I woke up. Yes, death is an awakening." Clarity suddenly came to his soul, and the curtain that until then had concealed the unknown was raised before his inner gaze. He felt the release of a force that previously had been as if bound in him and that strange lightness which from then on did not leave him." (Vol IV, Part 1, Ch. XVI)

I could not help feeling that Tolstoy himself must have experienced a moment close to death, to write about it with such convincing beauty. Even as he applies his intellect to it, he tells us that's what he's doing, and that it's false, failing to grasp the completeness of death.

Pierre, in a group of prisoners of war, witnesses the firing-squad execution of a number of his fellows. He expects to be shot next. "Another two were led up. In the same way, with the same eyes, these two also looked at everyone, in vain, with their eyes only, silently, begging for protection, and clearly not understanding and not believing what was going to happen. They could not believe it, because they alone knew what their life was for them, and therefore did not understand or believe that it could be taken from them....
"Pierre ... saw smoke, someone's blood, and the pale, frightened faces of the Frenchmen, who again were doing something by the post, pushing each other with trembling hands. Pierre, breathing hard, looked around as if asking, "What does it mean?" The same question was in all the gazes that met Pierre's gaze.
"On all the Russian faces, on the faces of the French soldiers and officers, on all without exception, he read the same fear, horror and struggle that were in his heart. "But who, finally, is doing this? They're all suffering just as I am. Who is it? Who?" flashed for a second in Pierre's soul." (Vol IV, Part 1, Ch. XI). Pierre is spared execution, but this confrontation with death has demolished the life he once prized. He becomes fully the earthy simple Russian who has lived unacknowledged beneath his wealth, idleness and comfort - being a prisoner has liberated him.

Do not be intimidated by the length of this book. Chapters are short, often only two or three pages, and once you settle in with the principal characters you enter a world so fully realized that it has the force of truth in all its particulars. Whether it's Tsar Alexander afraid to make his horse jump a ditch; or generals at a party ignoring the news that the French forces have crossed into Russia; or the burning of Moscow because a wooden city will inevitably have fires, and once the residents have fled, no one has the responsibility to quench them - we see simultaneously the broad sweep of war and the details of struggle. Tolstoy exposes the mundane actions that underlie events, and convinces us theory is a vain attempt to force order onto the chaos of life.

This writer has written not only a history that will stand alongside any other account of the Napoleonic wars, he has given us individuals in all their complexity: weak and brilliant, foolish and courageous, petty and joyful, brash and impressionable. He spares none of them the heights of glory and depths of human suffering, and we scramble to keep up, fascinated at this mirror held up to our own souls.