Arthur Miller, Inge Morath: In Russia. New York: Viking Press, 1969. Ill. 240 pp.
In Russia consists of five chapters of text by Arthur Miller, with the bulk of the book taken up by Inge Morath’s mostly black and white photos. The first picture shows a sleigh drawn by five white horses, while last shows the same (?) horses and sleigh from behind, departing from us, as it were. The cover picture is somewhat different.
No attempt is made to integrate text and pictures, not even on the relatively few occasions where they overlap – they simply coexist within the same covers and follow their own trajectories, the pictures beginning for example in Leningrad, the text in Moscow.
Personally I found Morath’s portraits most compelling. These include Joseph Brodsky in Leningrad before his forced emigration, Andrei Voznesensky, Konstantin Simonov, and other prominent cultural figures. In Miller’s words, Morath “took no photographs of turbines, dams, construction projects, or the other usual scenes that attract foreign cameras in Russia…. What is shown in this book is what one feels in the country, and it is probably what lies imbedded in the minds of the people, rather than the images of the oil-cracking plant, the machine shop, and the new hotel.” (pg. 14) Nor are there scrapbook images of “Arthur on Red Square.”
Since their visit was not officially sponsored, Miller and Morath were free to accept or refuse offers of guided tours, which gave them a certain degree of independence that many other Western VIPs did not enjoy. No precise dates are given, but the trip evidently took place shortly after the Prague Spring was brought to a halt by the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries. For the most part, Miller steers clear of current events, cultural criticism, or any hint of flag-waving. Still, though he forswears comparisons, invidious or otherwise, he cannot help making them occasionally, all the while attempting to do justice to the country and the people who were such gracious hosts. “The irony is that the Russian aspires to hard, materialist, dialectically sound explanations of processes – the American style – when in fact he is extraordinarily quick to idealize and to reach for general principles. Nothing could be more alien to the American.” (pg. 8) Likewise, the pursuit of personal happiness has never been the Russian – much less Soviet – ideal. The people taken collectively are the measure of all things, not the individual.
His comparisons also touch on specifics. “The streets of London, Paris, New York, Milan are in motion with people going somewhere. In Moscow they are all on their way home.” (pg. 30) The Russians throw garbage in their forests and out the car window, but the Moscow metro is “terribly clean” – the exact opposite of what obtains in America and the New York subway. (pg. 14) On the other hand, there was some degree of overlap: The questions once put to Miller by the chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee, such as “Why do you write so sadly about this country?” were “truly Stalinist.” (pg. 18)
Miller was interested mainly – though not exclusively – in the cultural sphere. He was intrigued by a society in which literature was still considered important and writers still revered as seers. At the same time, he understood that the Russians he spoke with were constantly aware that their conversations were probably being taped surreptitiously, which made them careful to toe the line. In a meeting with culture minister Ekaterina Furtseva, he told her how his play “A View from the Bridge,” a performance of which he had attended the previous night, had been cut and altered in translation. Though he admired the sheer physical exuberance of the actors, all the psychological motivation had been removed, which made him wonder how the play could ever have been a success. This led to a discussion of translation. Furtseva and her team of editors offered the explanation that the translators in effect selected themselves, with nobody responsible for checking the accuracy of their work. She assured him that in future she herself would see to it that they were chosen more carefully.
Miller does not say so, but presumably he was aware that Soviet translations were always ideological in nature, whether one is talking about plays by Miller – or Gerhart Hauptmann or the memoirs of W.E.B. Du Bois, to take two cases I have done some research on. Russian translators had a high degree of professionalism, and only rarely were changes the result of misunderstanding. They had no hesitation in trimming a text to conform to ideological guidelines. No choice, either.
The conversation with Furtseva had a postscript: A few days later, Miller was handed an envelope full of cash – “your royalties,” came the explanation. When he expressed surprise, this was misunderstood as a request for more. One wonders how many exchanges took place in which Miller and his interlocutors seemed to be discussing the same thing but in fact were talking at cross purposes.
He was also interested in how Russians interacted on a human, personal level, wondering why some who had the opportunity to leave did not do so, but rather continued to live “in a place that must be alive with ghosts, not alone the ghosts of the unjustly punished but of high promises rudely smashed…. I have never met cunning so naïve or naïveté so cunning” (pg. 10 – words reminiscent of Hippel, who once said, “the subtlest cunning is always related to simplicity”). He marveled at their political fatalism and trust in the country’s leadership, trust born of an acute sense of their own innate nihilism that, in the absence of a strong leader, might send everything flying out of control. As Richard Pipes once observed, the Russian people are both inherently anarchic and frightened of their own nature. They see tyranny and repression as the only alternative – sticks, not carrots.
On a visit to Pasternak’s dacha in Peredelkino outside Moscow, Miller made the mistake of taking a picture of two men standing at the train station, one of whom proved to be a soldier who did not appreciate being photographed without permission. Harrison Salisbury, in his New York Times review, speculates that this man “was probably one of the M.V.C. security guards assigned to prevent foreigners from visiting the great poet’s resting place.” Even Morath had hurriedly warned her husband, “Don’t do it,” but he went ahead and snapped it anyway. This led to a confrontation when the soldier, now rapidly sobered up, demanded the film, which Miller was quite willing to surrender. In the end, it took an intervention by their local hosts to calm things down and avert a scandal. Miller was able to keep his snapshot, though it is not reproduced in this volume. A possible contributing factor to this confrontation is left unmentioned: It was forbidden to photograph trains and railways in all Warsaw Pact countries. One wonders what Miller’s hosts made of this display of American naïveté.
Miller was not just “in Russia,” he was in other parts of the USSR too, including Georgia and Uzbekistan. He offers a memorable description of a provincial opera performance in Tashkent, and sketches his growing sympathy for the performers who were knocking themselves out for an empty house. “The public has vetoed this opera, is all one can say. It has definitely decided to risk everything and not come.” (pg. 54) I suspect this and similar jokes were saved up from Miller’s Broadway days for deployment here.
Quite different was a performance at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater, “the mirror frames gilt, deeply carved – the very flower of the great age of the cataclysmic Czars.” (pg. 60) Here they were led backstage and introduced to prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, whom he compared not to a swan but to a racehorse. Her dancing almost won over this self-confessed non-fan of classical ballet. “Here you are Russian and here you are free,” away from the slogans and the unrelenting daily inconveniences.
Miller was no visionary who predicted the end of the USSR, but he did at least sense that it was possible: “Are they about to break through this unfreedom, are they perfectly aware of what must be done and merely awaiting the right or the possible moment to do it?” (pg. 51) In the end, though one senses he enjoyed his time in Russia, the sojourn proved strenuous. “What a relief, like finally getting out of a six-thousand-mile-wide country full of Irishmen. They are, you know, a lot like the Irish when the Irish are just a little bit blasted. You never know what’s going to come out of them next.”
Update
Because of this book’s allegedly distorted view of life in the Soviet Union, after its publication Miller’s works became unavailable there. “This [In Russia] prompted also a reevaluation of his plays which are now, retroactively, declared to be marred by existentialist philosophy, efforts to pronounce capitalism and communism non-antagonistic (in The Crucible!), and by Judaism (presumably Incident at Vichy). Even Death of a Salesman was not exempt.” Maurice Friedberg: “The U.S. in the U.S.S.R.: American Literature through the Filter of Recent Soviet Publishing and Criticism,” in: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Spring, 1976), 519-583, here pg. 545.
© Hamilton Beck
hamiltonbeck 