Jonathan Brent: Inside the Stalin Archives. Discovering the New Russia. NY: Atlas, 2008. 335 pp.
As someone who has lived in Moscow since 2001, I particularly enjoyed reading Jonathan Brent’s sharp observations on daily life in this city shortly after the end of the USSR – everything from broken-down furniture and improvised lighting fixtures to desultory restaurant staff (as the old joke goes, ‘the prices are capitalist but the service is still socialist’). Particularly memorable is the description of his own growing nervousness as he rides a city bus that does not – at first – take him where he thought it would. Anyone who has been alone and slightly lost in a foreign city should be able to identify with that.
I can imagine that some Russian readers of this book may take offense at the pointed remarks he makes about frayed carpets or bad dentistry, or feel that he is mocking them. And no one likes to be laughed at by an emissary from a conquering foe. But while understandable, this reaction would be unfair. Underlying Brent’s occasional acidity there is a deep layer of sympathy for ordinary Russians living in the 1990s, a time of severe economic hardship. And he acknowledges the improvements in the standards of living that have been made since 2000.
Brent makes palpable the excitement he felt at being one of the first Westerners allowed access to the Soviet archives; likewise he conveys the skepticism and outright suspicion many of his hosts greeted him with. In some cases he was able to overcome this mistrust. Others thought they had him pegged once they identified him as a Jew. Brent is highly alert to manifestations of anti-Semitism, and finds distressingly numerous examples of it, from reprints of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to the circus chimp wearing a yarmulke. He notes that a book by David Duke is offered for sale in the lobby of the State Duma. What he doesn’t mention is that Duke himself spent some months in Moscow in late 2001, promoting his book. I know because I ran into him a few times at an English language club not far from the Kremlin. If I had not known better, I would have thought – based on his conversation – that his main preoccupations were physical fitness and a healthy lifestyle. “Don’t gain weight, girls – once you do, you can never lose it.”
Back to Brent. I do wish he had stuck to his brief and just told the story of his pioneering work in a mostly alien and sometimes Kafkaesque society. When he muses on the meaning of Stalin, as he does with increasing frequency towards the end of the book, he tends to wax metaphysical. Not in any positive sense of course, but he does indulge in what could be called the mythologizing of Stalin. A little of this goes a long way. As any reader of, for example, A.S. Byatt’s Possession knows, it’s the chase for hidden documents that’s the thing. His chapter, “The Secret Death of Isaac Babel” is a perfect example of this. Too bad his efforts did not lead to similar results for Wallenberg.
Another shortcoming: the book could have used an index and bibliography. Perhaps they are lacking because the author wanted to keep the tone informal and somewhat impressionistic. Fine. But the reader is reduced to pecking through the notes to find sources.
One minor detail should be corrected: Though the Nazis approached the very gates of the city, they never “encircled Moscow.” (p. 268)
Update 1: Here’s another anecdote about suspicion of foreigners in the former USSR. Once when I was teaching in Moldova, one of my colleagues was a young American woman whom the Peace Corps had placed in a small town (Călărași, I believe). There she ran into difficulties when the son of her landlady stole some items from her room, such as her CD player. The local police were called, but they proved ineffective. Eventually the Peace Corps office in Chisinau dispatched a car to her town to help with the investigation. From then on, she noticed her neighbors started giving her knowing looks, as though their suspicions had been confirmed. When she asked them about it, they explained that after examining the markings on the official car, they had seen for whom she really worked: Interpol!
© Hamilton Beck
Update 2: See Brent’s article, “The Order of Lenin: ‘Find Some Truly Hard People’ ” in the New York Times, May 22, 2017.
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