THE WEST IN RUSSIA

Mikhail Epstein

 

 

I will begin by shamelessly quoting myself. 1974 was the very heart of Stagnation, if we count that period from Brezhnev (1964) to the final year before Gorbachev, the year of Chernenko (1984). This same 1974 is located in the middle of a great period of "opening to the West for the USSR," it divides the three decades from 1959-1989 equally in half: from the first American exhibit in Moscow to the fall of the Berlin Wall,

 

A recent graduate of the Moscow State department of philology jots down in his diary for 14 July 1974:

 

Generally speaking I am not a westerner, but a westernizer, i.e. I aspire to the West, but do not belong to it, and value it not as reality, as everyday life, as an object, but as an idea, an ideal, a future. There is nothing more hostile and even irreconcilable than westerners (zapadnye)  and westernizers (zapadniki). The former are satisfied with themselves (like the rest of the Slavs and their "philes" [Slavophiles]), the later are unsatisfied with themselves. To be a westernizer means to be out of place, not to be where your mind is. It is a condition of anxiety, a lack of tranquility. In the West there is no place for westernizers because everyone there is a westerner, i.e. they are for themselves, like the Slavs in the Slavic world. You can only remain a

westernizer in Russia (or perhaps  somewhere in Latin America).

 

Westernism in Russia is a specific state of mind that is drawn to the West just as much as it wishes to defer meeting with it. A variation on Herzens theme: "Europe is necessary to us as an ideal, as a reproach, as a good example; if it weren't so it would be necessary to invent it." [1]  Using poststructuralist jargon one could say that the West is the transcendental signified of westernism, which is always postponed to the unknown, put off until later. A direct meeting with the West is devastating for westernism, just as it was excruciating for Herzen and most certainly would have been for other  westernizers, such  as Chaadaev and Belinskii. Westernism is an intention or even intentionality which can nowhere and in no way be fully realized, and least of all in the West, better in Vilyuisk or Karaganda. My subsequent experience in many things has confirmed this excessively categorical idea: eventually  I did find myself in the West, but ceased to be a westernizer.

 

In no way does it follows from this that westernism is only a system of signs referring to nothing. In the place of the absent West-- by the principle of complementarity-- arises our own, inter-Russian west: an archipelago West within the territory of the USSR. Exploding out into nowhere and yearning, these signs of another culture build a noxious and smoke-laden existence on this earth by virtue of partial combustion and the mixing of earthly matter with an ideal, with the signified, with the air of the heights.

 

An archipelago West within the territory of Russia. Such a country will be never more. Its lifespan: 1959-1989, from the first small break in the iron curtain to its ultimate fall. 30 years that created and carried away another world. For isn't the brilliance of a culture formed by its contrast to the background against which it appeared? The brilliance of the West is almost just as dull against the background of the West as Russia is against the background of Russia. But their meeting gave birth to an unbelievably bright pattern of interference.

 

I would like to describe this remarkable, but little noticed civilization, which

has had hardly any luck with historians since it was never on a world map and did not have its own system of government. But it had its own geniuses and prophets, disciples and traitors, patrons and spies, its own philosophical and artistic movements, its own language, territories and even its own economic life, but most importantly a feeling of a certain kind of citizenship.

 

Of course, the archipelago West on the territory of the USSR cannot be compared in size and sociopolitical weight with the more famous archipelago Gulag. If the Gulag sprawled out over almost all of Eurasia, then the archipelago West was a dwarfish territory, about the size of Luxemburg or even Lichtenstein, with its capital in downtown Moscow and tiny specks in a few other cities:  Leningrad, Kiev, Odessa, the Baltic capitals. But it should be noted that between the two archipelagos was a certain reverse dependence, a negative symbiosis: one contracted if the other expanded. Not pretending to a systematic description of the archipelago West, I would like only to single out a few of its typical features, which, perhaps, can even be found in other subcultures founded on the same principle of "restricted sovereignty" within the confines of another culture.

 

                            *        *       *

 

            It has always struck me that western life, such as it penetrates Russia, has nothing in common with life in the actual West, although it sharply differs from the everyday Russian way of life either. Foreign companies and products, in whichever realm they appear --in economics, everyday life, entertainment - are not at all reflected brilliance, not second-rate imitations of the West, but a sort of special, third means of existence - chic, splendor, intoxication - which is not encountered in the West, even in the most well-to-do strata. It is a joining of a Russian melancholy and a breakthrough to nowhere, with western material capabilities - all those millionaires’ clubs, night-time movie viewings, secret associations for the rich and distinguished, “pineapples in champagne”, theatrical shows and suppers in the company of famous artists, rowdy presentations with the blinding flares of the floodlights [jupitery] and the drunk prattle of saturnalia. This spirit of ferment and disintegration, this tickling of the nerves is possible only in Russia, on the background of surrounding poverty and flabby melancholy - in risky solitude so that someone would want greedily to take a peak through the hole in the wall, doomed to remain outside on the frozen porch in the piercing wind. It is like the sweetness of sin in a monastery, in a forbidden place.

 

As a whole, American life is quiet, meek, without any particular temptation or rupture--a complete contrast to how the West was presented in Russia. People diligently take care of their business, get very tired, don't interfere with anything, don't particularly strive for anything. As far as noise, advertisements, and entertainment, that's a special profession that other people get involved with just as quietly and meekly.   I even want to say piously, also not investing in these loud occupations any kind of spiritual impulse except for the purely professional aspiration to do one's work ably and successfully. People study, get married, work almost according to exemplary models, like it could be described in a textbook called

"a good and wholesome life." In general, American society is post-individualistic: the motifs of ambition and fame play a smaller role here than in countries where people's lives are hard, uncomfortable and they try to compensate for life's failures by the success of one's name and the impulse for immortality. Americans as a whole are satisfied with their work, family, country and so on, and for this reason they don't have the itch to make their mark, to endure for all times; the wish for glory does not torment these people. They try to do their job well, earn a lot of money, do their duty before the Almighty, that is, build their life here andthere, and not later among their descendents.

 

Of course, there are exceptions, but the most surprising thing is that rules are

followed as rules, and not as exceptions, as was customary in Russia. It turns out that when man is more or less free, he chooses on his own the path of nobility, and not of sin and repentance. Among all the apparent vulgarity [poshlost'] of such an existence, in it lies much virtue and a sort of primordial humility. This life just isn't as interesting. And why should it be interesting? It's not a novel, not a utopia, not an adventure story. In Russia life was measured by literature, and if life did not achieve the fascination of a novel, people were disillusioned, would skulk around, get depressed, do harm to themselves -- or run off and start a revolution. That's how they created an interesting life for the entire 20th century!

 

            The West by itself is a diverse, but rather dull and regulated place, in so far as each person acts to the extent of his own abilities in his professional or social niche, which is sufficiently broad to take away all strength for long-term progress. In Russia, niches are narrow, and so people want to get out of them, try everything else, break open what is locked, join what is hidden. In Russia the pleasure of life is the tearing down of curtains, and of course, of that last and thickest curtain, the one separating Russian from the West. In this sense, Russia always has before it the consolation, of which the West is deprived, of getting to the West, of tracking something down, and of bringing it back. There is no place for the West to go off to, it is at home where it is, and the only thing which the West might want (not counting the brief and insignificant, exotic charms of the poor East) is to throw back the heavenly curtain, to partake of eternal life. What the West is for Russia, is, for the West, the other world; that is why the number of believers is not diminishing, but growing in the West, along with the growth of material prosperity.

            A Russian citizen is missing many things, but above all, the West, and for this reason his religious belief is not like it is in the West: it is, perhaps, at times even stronger, but somewhat more spasmodic, more jerky, darting between fits of atheism and asceticism. He strains for the heavenly kingdom - not because he has already gotten everything from the earthly one, but because he does not wish to get anything from it; for him the heavenly kingdom takes the place of earthly joys, and any substitution is metaphysically suspect and dangerous. For what if it turns out that he does not give a damn about the heavenly kingdom, since in this life he has not been payed his due and in general, could there be a God, since it is so foul and loathsome here? Thus, from his vantage point, it is difficult for a Russian person to decide what is more necessary: a desperate belief in God or an equally desperate revolt against Him. He is more desperate to get to heaven then someone from the West - out of turn and before his time, because here, on Earth, he has nothing to lose except his rusty chains. But as far as the source of this break is an unsuccessful life on earth, the goal can by all means become mixed up with the here-and-now, with a hope for success, for a sort of drawing near to the West - and then the secret motive of his belief fails, giving way to an attack of recurrent utopian love for life. A Russian revolts and is resigned, believes and is tempted by doubt. These discrepencies do not exist in the West - a man calmly awaits his turn for the right of setting out for a better world, having fulfilled his duty before the lesser world, which is good enough in and of itself. No government has the power to put a Berlin Wall or Iron Curtain that can hinder him from crossing over to that world, and so he calmly takes up the betterment of this world, knowing that never-the-less, the other one will not get farther away.

            But for this reason, someone from the West is deprived of that sharp feeling - aching, nagging, sweetly inaccesible - which the Russian is given to experience by his relation with the West. This feeling of the otherworldy here, on this Earth, is all-in-all behind a certain geographical frontier. Perhaps, only in the pangs of death, when the first spectre of liberation has already appeared, when something pure, sweetly billowing descends to the bedside is it given to live through this oppressive feeling which a Russian experiences for the West. This place, where the otherworldy draws near - there it is, in calculated stages, hours, kilometers - the world where people go about their daily lives calmly and deserving, in no way alarmed, like souls which have already risen above the slime of ailing and stinking bodies. Clean cities, respectable mores, shining smiles, comfortable silence, an expanse of shops, a proliferation of goods, freedom of travel - such are signs of the kingdom of God here on Earth.

            For the West itself, the otherworldy remains just that, in the “other world” [po tu storonu], not getting involved with earthly prosperity - measured, dullish, respectable, uncapricious, full of a calm expectation of death and what comes after. In Russia, any spectres of the West - imported cars, jeans, or just bracelets and buttons - penetrate with transcendental joy and melancholy at the same time, like all that is inviting and unattainable. All of this is “from there”, because any bagatelle begins to be overgrown with a string of some sort of almost religious experiences. In Russia it all shines somehow brighter than in its usual western world where it is difficult to distinguish it from shuch a stereotypically bright background. Never in the West did I see so many expensive, refined, elegant, wonderfully made, bewitching things as those western suits, cars, wallets, phones which from time to time fell into my hands in Russia. There is no such West in the West, it exits only in Russia, and this Russian “quasi-West” is the sole and unique form of existence in history where the imitation of another country has become a means of spiritual transcendence.

            And because of this, all these millionaire’s toys, secret amusements, lakes of champagne and mounds of oysters, public half-nakedness and the dependence of famous actresses, an unquenched thirst to rule and possess which has awakened in the recently promoted workers [vydvizhentsy] of big business - all of this is truly similar to the death pangs of a body which is searching for the billowing of something different, higher, of a free soul. There would not be this sharp, stinking smell around “quasi-western” enterprises if there were not some sort of truly spritual process going on in them. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. In the West similar spiritualless things are done spirituallessly, not giving off a harsh smell, because they lie in a purely economic or purely physiological realm - they serve the enrichment of some and the thinning out of others within the framework of profit and the law. A beauty pageant is purely a business endeavor for some and an agreeable means of leisure for others. Criteria of effective publicity or aesthetic pageantry enter into it. In Russia such a pageant is an explosion of passions, finally granted the right to lawlessness, a grandiose fight of influence and pride - between rich men and beautiful women, for and against each other. There takes place in Russia the self-liberation of the spirit, an unsealing of a mystery which, “like in the West”, assumes the form of lots of beautiful cars and beauty pageants. But the underlying idea of these enterprises is insanity, crime, readiness to lose one’s mind, or leaving this world, because the sharp effect of a once worthy freedom, of an overcome barrier requires going further, liberating oneself completely, dying all the way to death itself.

            There is no more intoxicating, depraved, charming, disastrous civilization in the world than the Archipelago West in the territory of Russia.

 

 

1. A. I. Herzen. My Past and Thoughts. Part 6, chpt. 3. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaya literatura, 1982, p. 48.

 

                                                                                                August 1993

                                                                                                Transl. Thomas Dolack