Contemporary academic elite in the US is rather timorous bunch. If in the 1950s many professors resigned from California public universities rather than sign infamous “loyalty oath”— dismissed professors faced much more difficult perspective of finding jobs in McCarthyte America than they are now—these days academic dissent is but non-existent even when professional integrity is concerned. For instance, I haven’t heard a single top international relations expert on the eve of Iraq invasion who mumbled, in any form and shape, that the occupation of the country of 26 million Moslems might not be a walkover imagined by the Bush Administration.
Because of the reported closeness of McFaul to the Obama election campaign, I decided to study his views on my country of origin. I took to McFaul and Weiss-Stoner piece in the “Foreign Affairs” not because I expected to agree with him. Yet, I felt a need to read his article if only to understand opposing point of view and analyze the arguments of the other side. However there was little to understand and argue.
Mike McFaul started his academic career with insightful pieces about Russia. Yet, as a smart man, he quickly understood that saying positive things about Russians does not earn you tenure, especially under motherly eyes of his Chancellor, someone Condi Rice. I am not blaming him: he has a family to feed, or other important ones. To compensate for the sins of a misspent tenure-track youth, i.e. describing events in Russia avoiding overtly abusive if not racist terms of the “mainstream” media, he ought to reform. His exculpation meant engaging to the propaganda, which cannot be characterized in terms other than Goebbelsian.
While the latter term was much overused, it still retains an original meaning of “perversion of facts of grotesque proportions in service of political propaganda.” As an epitomic Nazi intellectual, he sometimes employed pseudo-intellectual garbage, which must have looked high-minded and erudite to haphazardly educated journalists and security police bureaucrats. Few such examples are provided in the "comments" section [1].
I would not entertain an honorable reader with a prolonged exposure to his verbal filth, if it the debating methods quoted in somewhat lengthy Endnote 1 were not entirely applicable to the tone of McFaul and Weiss-Stoner. For instance, McFaul and Stoner compares rates of Russian economic growth to other post-Soviet states, majority of which have either statistics determined entirely by the orders of the local El Supremo (Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, etc.), or whose economy largely consists of foreign aid and remittances of the guest workers, not in the least, from Russia itself (Georgia, Moldova, etc.). Yet, they also unfavorably compare Russian public health statistics to developed nations some of which have four times her GDP per capita (but extremely low growth rates, as it should be). Brazil or Mexico, which have similar per capita incomes also show comparable indicators of public health. [2] When it comes to demographics authors of the “Foreign Affairs” piece tell horror stories about Russians literally dying out because of Putin, as if devastation of two world wars and 75 years of Communist misrule didn’t exist. Yet, easily available sources clearly demonstrate that extremely low fertility rates and, hence, negative population growth are typical for all European post-Soviet states including, by the way, massively subsidized eastern parts of Germany.
Some of the “facts” are either totally fabricated or are the results of institutional malaise of the US agencies having nothing to do with Russia. During the Cold War, CIA and DoD grotesquely exaggerated the levels of technical and economic development of the USSR in support of more funding for the defense programs. After its collapse they revised their estimates as to prove that Russian Federation is a semi-medieval state, which can be safely ignored or harassed. Indeed, there was no more dough in promoting defense acquisitions but plenty in support of America’s colonial wars and possessions. [3] Collision of these revisions sometimes produced comical results. In mid-1990s, according to some US sources (DoD, now-defunct ACDA), Russia spent on the military more than 100% of its entire budget.
I would not spend that much time discussing of what I can not characterize other than a racist pamphlet but I afraid that McFaul and other “experts” have as much influence in Washington now as similar-quality experts on the Middle East before the Iraq invasion.
Note: For viewing in-text references, please navigate to "Comments."
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Saturday, January 10, 2009
T. J. Binyon, Pushkin: a new biography. Knopf Publishing Group, 2004, ISBN 9781400076529, O. Figes, Natasha's Dance, Picador, 2006, 9780312421953
In Blairite Britain, writing an anti-Russian rag became a hallmark of a public intellectual. In 30-40s France to exist as a public intellectual one had to be either a Communist or a Nazi. In the 50-60s only a self-proclaimed leftist could be published or be appointed to an academic post in humanities though the approval of USSR's policies became outmoded and one had to to be anti-Soviet, Maoist leftist. Italy repeated this trajectory with 10-15 year lag. From late 70s to early 2000s, to be in good standing with the French intellectual milieu one had to praise Islam and publicly support islamist causes. British situation is peculiar only because the requirement to publish anti-Russian rants somehow graduated from being a necessary to an only qualification of an intellectual. Even "The Economist", which used to be a voice of intellectual British establishment turned in requisite parts into a mouthpiece of a Polish plumber: hatred of Russia with racial undertones poorly covered up, the picture of the Cold War having all of the sophistication of McCarthyist leaflets and stories from the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistant wars, reminiscent in their candor or truthfulness of Napoleon's "Moniteur" war reports from 1812 Russia.
This justifies an emergence of such bizarre opuses as Binyon biography of Alexander Pushkin or Orlando Figes' "Natasha's Dance", which he modestly qualifies as "Russian cultural history." So far, poor A. Pushkin, an approximate counterpart to the English Bard, was a relatively uncontroversial figure among Russian greats. He was killed on a duel long before the Communist takeover, progressed from youthful radicalism into safe Monarchist-liberal conservative political views and did not care much of the Ortodoxy. Compared to his contemporaries, he did not sexually abused children like Lord Byron, stupefied himself by drink to the degree of Alfred de Musset, or consumed copious amounts of opium as did poor Coleridge-- as a result of medical quackery-- or T. DeQuincey, completely voluntary.
From Binyon's book you will hardly learn that Pushkin wrote something of value,
for which he provides self-excuse that he will not discuss his poetry, prose or dramaturgy. But there is also nothing about the evolution of Puskin's political views, journalism-- in his world of aristocratic artists he practically pioneered for-profit writing-- or historical scholarship.
His book a scurriluous collection of obscene anecdotes and sexual affairs mostly lifted from the writings of Pushkin's personal enemies. And he had plenty: cuckolded husbands, police spies, usually lowlifes with a prurient eye for the lifestyles of the hereditary aristocrats, and high society homosexuals and their hangers-on whom he outed with savage epigrams. Binyon repeats their accusations verbatim without slightest attempt at verification of their plausibility or bias.
Even if these slanders were 100% true, all that would prove is that Pushkin was a typical nobleman of his time, progressing from adolescent sex with female servants to prostitutes, with the acquisition of independent means, and settling for continuous nights of drinking and gambling in his thirties, then into comfortable marriage within his own class punctuated by mutual adultery. This makes him little different from Wellington, Palmerston, Disraeli, Beau Brummel or any number of approximate contemporaries.
Yet, these dissolute rakes mapped the South Pacific, discovered Antarctica,
defeated Napoleon, criss-crossed a couple of continents with railroads and, amidst these distractions, created the like of "She walks in beauty" or the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner."
I can envision Binyon spilling ink from his quill, or drumming at his laptop in
his Oxford townhouse with exclamations of bravado: "Damn Russkies! Get this, and this and now this. How about this?" I am not offended, just sad, that Oxford tenured this bigot.
Orlando Figes' book is not much better. Based on strange interpretation of alleged uniquely Russian infatuation with the culture of the raw and primitive (how about Paul Gogen, or Mata Hari, or the Der Brugge?), he proclaims that human sacrifice and cannibalism are the centerpieces of the Russian culture. A single unconvincing example of the "Rites of Spring" by Igor Stravinsky is being dragged through nearly 800 pages of Figes' screed. Certainly, the great composer, as were most intellectuals of his age and his class, was a (very non-radical) racist and an anti-Semite. But, first, he is about as representative a figure for the Russian turn-of-the XXth century culture as De Sade was for the French Enlightenment. Second, he hardly was a born-again pagan with occultist sympathies similar to the members of German "Thule Society" or D. H. Lawrence or Windham Lewis.
Similarly to Schoenberg whom he scorned during the latter's life but reappraised after his death, Stravinsky had a taste for mysterious and unexplicable and a very keen eye for tradition as well as the trends of contemporary life. As a member of propertied classes uprooted by the Russian Revolution, Stravinsky had conservative political leanings and resented socialist tendencies in contemporary Europe.
If anything, these two books, contrary to racist and vulgar intentions of their authors, confirm how thoroughly and boringly European Russian intellectuals have become since the birth of Pushkin just on the eve of XIX century till the death of Pasternak and Akhmatova who became the last vestiges of the "Silver Age" of Russian letters and arts.
This justifies an emergence of such bizarre opuses as Binyon biography of Alexander Pushkin or Orlando Figes' "Natasha's Dance", which he modestly qualifies as "Russian cultural history." So far, poor A. Pushkin, an approximate counterpart to the English Bard, was a relatively uncontroversial figure among Russian greats. He was killed on a duel long before the Communist takeover, progressed from youthful radicalism into safe Monarchist-liberal conservative political views and did not care much of the Ortodoxy. Compared to his contemporaries, he did not sexually abused children like Lord Byron, stupefied himself by drink to the degree of Alfred de Musset, or consumed copious amounts of opium as did poor Coleridge-- as a result of medical quackery-- or T. DeQuincey, completely voluntary.
From Binyon's book you will hardly learn that Pushkin wrote something of value,
for which he provides self-excuse that he will not discuss his poetry, prose or dramaturgy. But there is also nothing about the evolution of Puskin's political views, journalism-- in his world of aristocratic artists he practically pioneered for-profit writing-- or historical scholarship.
His book a scurriluous collection of obscene anecdotes and sexual affairs mostly lifted from the writings of Pushkin's personal enemies. And he had plenty: cuckolded husbands, police spies, usually lowlifes with a prurient eye for the lifestyles of the hereditary aristocrats, and high society homosexuals and their hangers-on whom he outed with savage epigrams. Binyon repeats their accusations verbatim without slightest attempt at verification of their plausibility or bias.
Even if these slanders were 100% true, all that would prove is that Pushkin was a typical nobleman of his time, progressing from adolescent sex with female servants to prostitutes, with the acquisition of independent means, and settling for continuous nights of drinking and gambling in his thirties, then into comfortable marriage within his own class punctuated by mutual adultery. This makes him little different from Wellington, Palmerston, Disraeli, Beau Brummel or any number of approximate contemporaries.
Yet, these dissolute rakes mapped the South Pacific, discovered Antarctica,
defeated Napoleon, criss-crossed a couple of continents with railroads and, amidst these distractions, created the like of "She walks in beauty" or the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner."
I can envision Binyon spilling ink from his quill, or drumming at his laptop in
his Oxford townhouse with exclamations of bravado: "Damn Russkies! Get this, and this and now this. How about this?" I am not offended, just sad, that Oxford tenured this bigot.
Orlando Figes' book is not much better. Based on strange interpretation of alleged uniquely Russian infatuation with the culture of the raw and primitive (how about Paul Gogen, or Mata Hari, or the Der Brugge?), he proclaims that human sacrifice and cannibalism are the centerpieces of the Russian culture. A single unconvincing example of the "Rites of Spring" by Igor Stravinsky is being dragged through nearly 800 pages of Figes' screed. Certainly, the great composer, as were most intellectuals of his age and his class, was a (very non-radical) racist and an anti-Semite. But, first, he is about as representative a figure for the Russian turn-of-the XXth century culture as De Sade was for the French Enlightenment. Second, he hardly was a born-again pagan with occultist sympathies similar to the members of German "Thule Society" or D. H. Lawrence or Windham Lewis.
Similarly to Schoenberg whom he scorned during the latter's life but reappraised after his death, Stravinsky had a taste for mysterious and unexplicable and a very keen eye for tradition as well as the trends of contemporary life. As a member of propertied classes uprooted by the Russian Revolution, Stravinsky had conservative political leanings and resented socialist tendencies in contemporary Europe.
If anything, these two books, contrary to racist and vulgar intentions of their authors, confirm how thoroughly and boringly European Russian intellectuals have become since the birth of Pushkin just on the eve of XIX century till the death of Pasternak and Akhmatova who became the last vestiges of the "Silver Age" of Russian letters and arts.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Martin Amis, House of Meetings, Child 44, Tom Rob Smith, Sashenka, Simon Sebag Montefiore
These works of fiction cannot be understood without the Bacchanal into which Blairite "Cool Britannia" has proliferated. Racial paranoia--with Russians in hell, Israelis in Limbo and EU in Purgatorio-- in the Blair's Britain is a logical answer to the Londonistan. To symbolically redeem the balkanization of the English society, intellectuals needed to invent and exorcize a bogeyman. Not that there hard-line islamists, Eastern European irredenta and Nazi sympatizers and ex-Soviet mobsters who immediately transform from "Freedom Fighters" against Russian Imperialism into Russian Mafia as soon as they cross the channel, are as numerous there as in Holland, or in France. What is peculiar about the UK is the leeway, which was given by the Blair's Government for their self-organizing, dropping out of the mainstream society and subsequently popularizing their extreme views as a new mainstream. Similar processes were going in Jospen's France where some cities, such as Orleans, allegedly became a virtual no-go zone for the French police. However, French bureaucratic system immediately began a crackdown on these liberties when the political climate changed.
And so, in Blairite Britain, writing an anti-Russian rag became a hallmark of an intellectual (see my review of T. J. Binyon's "Pushkin" and O. Figes' "Natasha's Dance"). Too bad that quickly it became the only hallmark . And once the [Economist comment] movement is initiated, everyone jumps on the bandwagon [Tyler Brule comment].
So the emergence of Martin Amis' "House of Meetings" was not surprising: to justify his elite status in the world of English letters he was obliged to write something demeaning and portray Russians as a nation of alcoholics and rapists. His knowledge of Russia was probably limited to small talk in cocktail parties with a few oligarch exiles to London, their bodyguards and whores, and Discovery Channel-style series listened to between numerous drinks. Interestingly, in 30 raving Amazon reviews posted so far, only about 1/3 praise his use of language, a few find a story or characters particularly well developed but a vast majority highly values his book for showing what the brutes Russians are. Obviously, these are repressed souls who cannot say this loudly anymore about African-Americans or, for instance, Albanians or Chechens, not that many of them ever met one.
It is not surprising to pour disdain on people, more precisely, on cutout characters, for becoming bestial in the inhuman conditions of the gulag, nor it is surprising. What is surprising and I claim it through knowning much more former gulag prisoners than Amis ever did, how many of them retained humanity and even
sense of humor.
However, by common recognition of the English-language critics, Amis Jr. is a fine writer. So we could forgive his racism in a testament to W. H. Auden: "...And will pardon Paul Claudel, pardon him for writing well." [Paul Claudel was a right-wing Catholic who applauded Nazi killings of Jews and Communists. Unlike fellow Nobelists Hauptmann and Hamsun, he escaped WWII with his reputation unscathed because of a few protests against cruel treatment of French POWs, which fit nicely into the Gaullist legend of the "fighting nation."]
After Amis, the bandwagon was jumped by everybody with literary talent and totally without. Simon Sebag Montefiore certainly knows more about Russia than Amis but who told him he can write fiction? Tom Rob Smith's "Child 44" is a bestseller thriller but his depictions of the life in USSR behind the Iron Curtain are about as true to reality as James Bond movies. Let me provide random glances into his masterpiece. A provincial cop on the beat in the late 1940s USSR has a Jewish first name Aron, about as probable as an English bobby being named "Hassan" or "Fikret" at the same time. A provincial sleuth drives his car on a highway from his sleepy township of Voulsk to a regional center. Him traveling on horseback over the steppe would be strange but not that unreal. While it is possible that a police precinct would have a (chauffered) car, or even two, usually a truck with back seats or a jeep from the Lend Lease War surpluses, the whole idea of a personal car is ridiculous. Finally, there is a lawyer building the case of retarded defendant in his care on the notions of English Common Law! I am not very much offended by his treatment of Mother Russia, neither one can expect accuracy of detail from a successful thriller writer. Yet his characters are cutout automatons with primitive motivations so much so that after half-an-hour with his book I completely forgot the name of the book's protagonist.
Ultimately, I am not asking the reader why this garbage gets written. I am asking why they publish them all? Could the publishers just settle on one or two of the better selling lot, if needed in triplicate number of copies and save on fees and trees? Is this a conspiracy of dunces or groupthink unbound? I reserve my opinion.
And so, in Blairite Britain, writing an anti-Russian rag became a hallmark of an intellectual (see my review of T. J. Binyon's "Pushkin" and O. Figes' "Natasha's Dance"). Too bad that quickly it became the only hallmark . And once the [Economist comment] movement is initiated, everyone jumps on the bandwagon [Tyler Brule comment].
So the emergence of Martin Amis' "House of Meetings" was not surprising: to justify his elite status in the world of English letters he was obliged to write something demeaning and portray Russians as a nation of alcoholics and rapists. His knowledge of Russia was probably limited to small talk in cocktail parties with a few oligarch exiles to London, their bodyguards and whores, and Discovery Channel-style series listened to between numerous drinks. Interestingly, in 30 raving Amazon reviews posted so far, only about 1/3 praise his use of language, a few find a story or characters particularly well developed but a vast majority highly values his book for showing what the brutes Russians are. Obviously, these are repressed souls who cannot say this loudly anymore about African-Americans or, for instance, Albanians or Chechens, not that many of them ever met one.
It is not surprising to pour disdain on people, more precisely, on cutout characters, for becoming bestial in the inhuman conditions of the gulag, nor it is surprising. What is surprising and I claim it through knowning much more former gulag prisoners than Amis ever did, how many of them retained humanity and even
sense of humor.
However, by common recognition of the English-language critics, Amis Jr. is a fine writer. So we could forgive his racism in a testament to W. H. Auden: "...And will pardon Paul Claudel, pardon him for writing well." [Paul Claudel was a right-wing Catholic who applauded Nazi killings of Jews and Communists. Unlike fellow Nobelists Hauptmann and Hamsun, he escaped WWII with his reputation unscathed because of a few protests against cruel treatment of French POWs, which fit nicely into the Gaullist legend of the "fighting nation."]
After Amis, the bandwagon was jumped by everybody with literary talent and totally without. Simon Sebag Montefiore certainly knows more about Russia than Amis but who told him he can write fiction? Tom Rob Smith's "Child 44" is a bestseller thriller but his depictions of the life in USSR behind the Iron Curtain are about as true to reality as James Bond movies. Let me provide random glances into his masterpiece. A provincial cop on the beat in the late 1940s USSR has a Jewish first name Aron, about as probable as an English bobby being named "Hassan" or "Fikret" at the same time. A provincial sleuth drives his car on a highway from his sleepy township of Voulsk to a regional center. Him traveling on horseback over the steppe would be strange but not that unreal. While it is possible that a police precinct would have a (chauffered) car, or even two, usually a truck with back seats or a jeep from the Lend Lease War surpluses, the whole idea of a personal car is ridiculous. Finally, there is a lawyer building the case of retarded defendant in his care on the notions of English Common Law! I am not very much offended by his treatment of Mother Russia, neither one can expect accuracy of detail from a successful thriller writer. Yet his characters are cutout automatons with primitive motivations so much so that after half-an-hour with his book I completely forgot the name of the book's protagonist.
Ultimately, I am not asking the reader why this garbage gets written. I am asking why they publish them all? Could the publishers just settle on one or two of the better selling lot, if needed in triplicate number of copies and save on fees and trees? Is this a conspiracy of dunces or groupthink unbound? I reserve my opinion.
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