Three decades after perestroika, Russian studies experts re-examine the policies that have defi ned U.S.-Russia relations for 30 years

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev began his famous restructuring, known as perestroika 30 years ago this spring. From 1985, when the

reforms began, until the end of the Soviet Union, the interest of Americans in the So-viet Union and Russian language increased, and Soviet-American ties were strength-ened through student and professional ex-changes as well as through telecasts that connected Soviets and Americans, who were separated both geographically and ideologically.

According to the Modern Language As-sociation, enrollment in Russian language classes in the U.S. nearly doubled during the years preceeding and throughout per-estroika. Between 1980 and 1990, the num-ber of people studying Russian in the U.S. increased from about 24,000 to more than 44,000.

Research from Victoria Bonnell and George Breslauer at the University of Cal-ifornia, Berkeley indicates that Gorbachev’s reforms and, particularly, his policy of glas-nost – or openness – which attemped to establish freedom of speech and transpar-ency in governmental institutions, raised excitement among American academics and experts. “From a trickle in 1986, glas-nost opened a floodgate by 1989-90; cen-sorship declined dramatically; increasingly sensitive archives were opened both to So-viet and non-Soviet scholars,” Bonnell and Breslauer wrote.

Most importantly, perestroika allowed Soviet and American scholars to exchange opinions and publish articles together. Peo-ple also had the opportunity to regularly participate in joint events such as telecasts and international forums, where, as Bon-nell and Breslauer put it, “Soviet scholars became increasingly emboldened to speak their minds.”

“The perestroika experience in the ■ PAVEL KOSHKIN

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PERESTROIKA LESSONS

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Discover the Unknown War in the Special Report on pages 4 and 5 of this issue and find out much more at unknownwar.rbth.com

people from the U.S.S.R. are estimated to have died during the Second World War, suffering more ca-sualties than any other country.

were provided by the U.S. to the U.S.S.R. through the Lend-Lease Act. Sup-port also included nearly half a million vehicles, 2 million tons of gas and oil and nearly 4.5 million tons of food.

women were mobilized in-to the Soviet Army. They served as nurses, radio operators, pilots and even snipers. Three combat re-giments of female pilots were created in 1941.

27million

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U.S.S.R. was a unique phenomenon deter-mined by very specific conditions – most im-portantly the Soviet Union’s reevaluation of its foundation myths and achievements,” said Anton Fedyashin, director of the Carmel In-stitute of Russian Culture and History at Amer-ican University in Washington D.C. “Doubt is always a healthy thing in human societies since it stimulates introspection and this ex-perience led many people in the U.S.S.R. to express genuine interest in the U.S. and its culture.”

Gregory Feifer, a former Moscow correspon-dent for National Public Radio (2005-2009) and for Radio Free Europe (2009-2012) in Prague, consider the thaw of perestroika as “a great example of two states with appar-ently opposing ideologies beginning to un-derstand” that cooperation benefits both sides.

Feifer, 43, graduated from Harvard Uni-versity with a master’s in Russian studies in 1998, long after the Soviet collapse. How-ever, since his mother is Russian and his fa-ther, American George Feifer, is a journalist who reported about Soviet life during the Cold War, he grew up very much aware of Soviet life.

“My early perception of the U.S.S.R. was little more than a stereotype: a place where life was grim and everything was gray – but that under the surface people were warm and valued love and friendship,” he said. “When Gorbachev began perestroika, it was a period of great optimism that the Soviet Union was finally opening.”

Kenneth Martinez, who graduated from

Stanford University with a master’s degree in international studies, focusing on Russia, was born during the very beginning of per-estroika in 1985. He studied this period in detail, and sees perestroika as “the shift of power from an older generation to a newer one,” a sense of movement in a stagnant society long in need of change.

“What is quite interesting...are the person-al ties and trust that characterized the rela-tionships of many diplomats of the older gen-eration during this period,” Martinez said. “This created a sense of stability that allowed relationships to be built on mutual respect and on trust – a wary trust, well-character-ized by Reagan’s slogan of ‘trust but verify’, but trust nonetheless.”

Perestroika: The other side of the coinIn contrast, Nicolai N. Petro, professor of po-litical science at the University of Rhode Is-land who specializes in Russia, warns against romanticizing perestroika.

“For the Soviet leadership at the time, it was not an effort to promote mutual under-standing with the West,” he argues. “Rath-er, it was an attempt to reform the U.S.S.R. and reconnect with the original Leninist ide-als of the Bolshevik Revolution.” At best, it was seen as an opportunity to achieve the advancement of U.S. policy interests by tak-ing advantage of the fact that Gorbachev had temporarily disoriented the Soviet lead-ership; at worst, it was seen as merely an-other effort by Soviet leaders to bamboozle the West.

Other experts, academics and journalists also do not see perestroika as a clear-cut phenomenon in Soviet-American relations. Many argue that it didn’t meet the expec-tations for either country, which, finally, lead to mutual misunderstanding.

According to Fedyashin “once the flood-gates opened, Western and American cul-ture quickly overwhelmed the U.S.S.R., but the dismantlement of the country in 1991 led to two unfortunate consequences,” he said. “In Russia, the end of the Cold War in-spired unrealistic expectations about becom-ing part of a greater West. In the U.S., tri-umphalist interpretations of victory in the Cold War resulted in unrealistic assumptions about Russia’s cultural and political conver-gence with the West. The outcome was a reluctance to study Russian culture as an in-tegral part of Russian national identity in the West.”

Martinez argues that perestroika “opened a can of worms... that acted more like a kicked bag of snakes,” and one of them bit its main architect: Gorbachev.

“What resulted was the chaotic Russia of the 1990s, out of which Russia’s current in-stitutions were born and that gave ‘democ-racy’ and ‘capitalism’ a bad connotation for many Russians,” he said.

Anti-perestroika in U.S.-Russia relations todayPetro believes that the U.S. must look be-yond Gorbachev’s perestroika to “anticipate the emergence of a new national consensus

based on traditional Russian values. Failure to do so would result in misreading Russia as simply an extension of the Soviet Union, and blind us to opportunities for forging a new relationship that come but once in a lifetime,” he warns.

“The good news...is that government sup-port will afford more opportunities to study Russia,” Petro said. “The bad news is that we will have replicated the ideological, or-ganizational and institutional perspectives of the Cold War, and once again lost sight of the complexity and diversity of Russian life and society.”

At the same time, Kenneth Martinez ar-gues that the current trend in U.S.-Russia re-lations is far different from the one that ex-isted in perestroika. According to him, the potential for open conflict is even greater now than at almost any time during the Cold War.

“There are no established rules to the game, and the amicable relations of the previous generation have crumbled into mutual dis-trust,” he said. “I think this lack of certainty and degeneration of personal relationships are probably one of the worse outcomes for those of the older generation.”

When then, will the increasing interest in Russia after the Ukrainian crisis translate into more funding for Russian studies programs in the U.S.? Petro said that “initiatives of this magnitude take years to establish and our focus on Ukraine is barely two years old.”

However, as of March, Fedyashin is the di-rector of a new center for Russian studies at American University, christened the Carmel Institute of Russian Culture and History, after philanthropist Susan Carmel Lehrman, who endowed the program in perpetuity for the purpose of continuing the ongoing study of Russian culture and history.

American students pose with a sculpture that says “love” in Russian at Sparrow Hills in Moscow.

RICHARD PORTWOODPHOTO

P2 // rbth.com // May 29, 2015

Politics & Society

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RUSSIAN EVENTS IN THE U.S.

“Rodin” by the Eifman Ballet of St. PetersburgMay 29-31The Kennedy Center, 2700 F St. Northwest, Washington, D.C. 20566This ballet is devoted to the life and work of two great sculptors: Auguste Rodin and his pupil, mis-tress and muse Camille Claudel. The Eifman Ballet will be on tour in Los An-geles and Costa Mesa, Cal-ifornia until June 14. › www.eifmanballet.ru/en/

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Russia Day in New YorkJune 12 Carnegie Hall 881 7th Ave., New York, N.Y. 10019 Russian Day is a worldwide celebration, culminating in New York at Carnegie Hall with this return appear-ance by the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra. Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4 and Shostakovich Sym-phony No. 5 are on the program. › www.ruscon.org/

NEWS IN BRIEF

The Russian Federation has taken the pres-idency of the BRICS grouping of develop-ing nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) for a year. The organization’s 7th annual summit will take place July 8-10 in the city of Ufa, the capital of the Re-public of Bashkortostan (800 miles east of Moscow). Russia will give priority atten-tion to financial and economic cooperation within the BRICS group, including launch-ing the New Development Bank and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement.

Russian Central Bank buys dollars to replenish foreign reserves

Read Russia Prize 2015

Russia prepares to host BRICS Summit

VIEWPOINT

OBAMA’S LEGACY AND RUSSIA

First and foremost, we have to remem-ber something that was almost for-gotten: communication between na-tions is not necessarily about

negotiating deals. During the Cold War, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. made an effort to be in touch, but the purpose was not primar-ily to conclude agreements or resolve spe-cific issues. There was another, much more vital concern: both parties needed to un-derstand the logic and, if possible, the in-tentions of the other.

At the start of the 1990s, the countries began to lose these corresponding tools and skills, as it seemed then there was no need for them anymore. The danger of war was no longer perceived as real, and negotiations were henceforth supposed to deliver tangi-ble results.

Nevertheless, the political changes of 2014 and 2015 have proven that the hopes for a final and irreversible end to all confrontation were misplaced. The habits and customs of the Cold War era are back, but there are no implements to keep these in check.

The U.S. policy on Russia since Crimea was incorporated into the Russian Federa-tion can be summed up this way: minimize

all communication until the Kremlin chang-es its behavior.

This policy has not produced any results. The U.S. expectations that Russia would change its stance on Ukraine were not met. On the other hand, it became clear that Mos-cow cannot count on a sufficiently stable Ukraine against the will and without the par-ticipation of the U.S. Finally, general tensions began to rise, manifesting in all sorts of un-pleasant incidents with Russian and NATO warships and planes.

That said, a full-scale Cold War is out of question; there are still “common challeng-es” and they are here to stay. For instance, Russia and the U.S. may have different views on the origins of the events that are unrav-eling the Middle East, but they still agree that ISIS is a menace.

President Barack Obama is entering the final stage of his presidential term, which is the time when presidents tend to think about their legacies. Obama became president in a period of ever-accelerating deconstruction of the world order, so it was difficult to achieve international success. Besides, he made some mistakes. In this context, it is all the more important for him to focus on the areas that will become part of history. For Obama, it is mostly Iran, and probably Cuba. The com-pletion of the Iranian epic will necessitate hard work on all tracks. The agreement about to be achieved will be fragile, so maximum cooperation is needed from all sides, includ-ing Russia.

More broadly, President Obama will un-doubtedly not want to leave the Middle East

in its current chaotic state – and for that he will also need cooperation, or at least non-interference, from Russia. Ukraine, on the contrary, does not bode well for his legacy, and Obama understands there will be no rapid advances there.

This is why the new stage of U.S.-Russia relations, which will last until 2017, will prob-ably look like this:

The parties will establish communication between officials charged with political and military security to minimize the risk of acci-dental collisions; they will also exchange views on the situation in the Middle East and de-termine possible common steps. There will be no consensus, but there will also be no explicit confrontation; in Iran, the countries may even work together, and they will not take any drastic measures in Syria. The com-peting stances on Ukraine will remain the same, but it’s highly likely the parties will try to avoid escalation.

The modus operandi described here does not imply the rhetoric will become less harsh; rather, both parties will probably have to compensate for the easing of tensions with even more bellicose statements. But overall, this situation may continue until the end of the Obama presidency. Later on, the situa-tion will depend on a great deal of factors, not least of all on the relations of both coun-tries with China.

Fyodor Lukyanov is the editor in chief of Russia in Global Affairs magazine and chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy think tank.

Different motives drive recent talksDespite visits by John Kerry and Victoria Nuland in May, gap with Russia still exists

■PAVEL KOSHKIN

RUSSIA DIRECT

After U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s May 12 visit to Russia, experts expressed a wide range of views about its potential effect on U.S.-Russian relations.

Many welcomed Kerry’s negotiations with Russian For-eign Minister Sergei Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin as a good sign. Likewise, others viewed the visits of high-profile U.S. officials such as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Special Envoy for Syria Daniel Ru-benstein as an attempt to repair the damaged relations with Moscow and resume talks on the thorniest issues.

However, Russia’s Foreign Ministry has interpreted the visits by Kerry and Nuland as a victory of Russian diplo-macy. These negotiations indicate that “attempts to iso-late Russia failed,” said Lavrov during a business lunch at the editorial offices of newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta on May 18. Lavrov also pointed out that there are many in-ternational challenges – from Ukraine to Syria and Yemen – that are impossible to resolve without Russia’s involve-ment. Lavrov regards Kerry’s visit as a “responsible” step in tackling regional conflicts and helping to end the stand-off in U.S.-Russia relations.

Just talks, not a game-changerDuring the May 18 lunch with journalists, Lavrov ad-mitted that restoring trust between Moscow and Wash-ington would be difficult, given their different interpre-tations of the details of the Minsk II agreements on the

conflict in Ukraine. Experts from both the U.S. and Rus-sia have warned against being overly optimistic regard-ing the visits of Kerry and Nuland and argue that they do not necessarily mean that Russia and the U.S. are preparing to rise out of the historic low in their rela-tions.

Matthew Rojansky, director of the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center, is skeptical, because Russia and the U. S. are “still very far apart on the core dispute over Ukraine.” He highlights the core differences remain-ing in the Kremlin’s and the White House’s official posi-tions.

The Russian side focuses on the U.S. returning to the table seeking the “normalization” of ties with Russia, and realizing that it cannot get very much done without Rus-sia’s partnership, according to Rojansky.

“From the U.S. side it was almost the opposite – send-ing top diplomats to remind Russia that its past and on-going bad behavior is unacceptable and [to] underscore why Russia simply must cooperate with the West on Syria and Iran, which the U.S. describes as being ‘in Russia’s interest,’” Rojansky said.

According to Rojansky, the main motivation behind the Kerry and Nuland visits is to demonstrate to domes-tic and international stakeholders, primarily Germany, that the U.S. is doing its utmost to sustain the “vulnerable” Minsk agreements before the White House “gives in to

what appears to be overwhelming political pressure from Congress to send U.S. weapons to Ukraine.”

U.S. President Barack Obama is personally against sending weapons and, like Germany’s Chancellor An-gela Merkel, he understands the negative implications of such a risky move. However, the U.S. Congress has already authorized sending weapons with a veto-proof supermajority in the case of a major escalation of vio-lence in eastern Ukraine.

“His only way forward is to show that he has done everything he can diplomatically even if in the end he authorizes even a symbolic weapons delivery. If that does happen, the conflict will of course become even more intractable with greater casualties on both sides,” Rojansky said.

Andrei Tsygankov, a professor of International Relations and Political Science at San Francisco State University, believes that “the shift doesn’t necessarily mean that Russia and the U.S. have passed the low.”

“We don’t exactly know what went into the deci-sion’s black box – strategic considerations or politics,” Tsygankov said. “It may be that the decision reflects Obama’s desire to improve his foreign policy record as a part of his legacy or as a way to preempt a future debate on Russia during the next presidential elections. We may yet remember Obama as the least anti-Rus-sian of all American presidents since the Cold War.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met Russian For-eign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Sochi on May 12.

READ THE FULL STORYat rbth.com/46233

The Russian Cen-tral Bank has be-gun replenishing its foreign-exchange reserves by pur-chasing U.S. dol-lars. Some Rus-sian analysts argue these purchases are directed pri-marily against the strengthening of the ruble, which would call into question

the plans for import substitution. Oth-ers say the small amounts involved indicate that the regulator is mere-ly sending a signal to the market. The Central Bank’s new practice contradicts the decision on the transition to a free exchange rate for the ruble.

The annual Read Russia Prize is awarded in New York on May 29 for works of Russian lit-erature in English translation. There are seven nomin-nees on the short-list, including two new translations of Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina,” one by Rosamund Bartlett and another by Marian Schwartz.

Other books include translations of Fy-odor Dostoyevsky’s, “Crime and Punish-ment,” modern Rus-sian literature and the book “Push-kin Hills” by Ser-gei Dovlatov, which was translated in 2013 by his daugh-ter. Read Russia, founded in 2012, is an initiative that cel-ebrates Russian lit-erature and culture.

In April, Russia Direct released its comprehensive ranking of Russian and post-Soviet Studies programs in American universities, together with analysis of the current state of Russian Studies programs in the U.S.

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Business

Raising retirement age fuels debate

The change would take pressure off the budget but the majority of the population is opposed to it.

Coping with the Crisis: “You have to work much harder now.”

Russian tourist industry rises in ranks of competitiveness

Once an ephemeral threat, Russia’s econom-ic crisis has become a serious challenge for small businessmen and entrepreneurs in Mos-cow over the past several months.

Between February and March, Russia’s economy began to contract rapidly, accord-ing to numbers from the Ministry of Eco-nomic Development and Russian business newspaper RBK Daily. RBK Daily reported on April 30 that the volume of Russia’s GDP fell by 3.4 percent year-on-year as of March 2015, compared to the 1.2 percent the ministry had predicted in February.

The ministry’s forecasts for inflation and GDP growth are also fluctuating dramatical-ly. At the moment, it is predicting 11.9 per-cent for 2015 overall.

This is just the latest bad news for restau-rant owners, who have taken blow after blow, including a ban on imports of food from many countries last August, rising prices de-manded by suppliers nervous about enter-ing the Russian market, and restrictions on credit and expensive domestic loans brought about by economic sanctions imposed on Russia by the west.

“You have to work much harder now,” Alexei Gisak, 37, co-founder of the pan-Asian fast-food chain Wokker, told RBTH.

New circumstancesGisak is keenly feeling the effects of the eco-nomic crisis in his business, which is much less stable than it was, he said.

Prices have gone up for just about every-thing, Gisak said. In turn, the increase in sup-plier prices has forced businesses to choose between absorbing the losses, and raising their own product prices, Gisak said.

“We haven’t raised our prices, because pur-chasing capacity has not increased – it’s dropped,” Gisak said. “The decrease in re-ceipts is apparent, profit is minimal.”

One of the most painful issues for business owners has been the steep increase in rent-al rates, which are in some cases directly linked to the dollar exchange rate, and which few business owners will be able to afford for long at market value.

Personal financeGisak isn’t scrimping and pinching just yet.

“I spend less than I make, and I haven’t started to economize on anything,” Gisak said.

Amid universal panic over the devaluation of the ruble, Gisak hasn’t dipped into his sav-ings. “I had some money in rubles, but I failed to react at the right moment, so I de-cided not to touch it,” Gisak said.

After entering the market during the pre-vious crisis in 2008, the Wokker chain has thrived, and now operates 23 restaurants in Moscow and eight in other regions.

These crises actually prove easier for new-comers to weather, Gisak said.

“Such is the situation in the market; it’s easier for newcomers to come to terms with lessors and receive preferential terms com-pared to those who have been working for a while,” said Gisak.

The situation will eventually come to an end, Gisak said – and there is hope that the end is only a year or two away.

■EKATERINA SINELSHIKOVA

RBTH

■ALEXEI LOSSAN

RBTH

■ANASTASIA MALTSEVA

KOMMERSANT

Russia has become much friendlier to tour-ists in recent years, according to a recent in-ternational study of the industry.

Russia was been ranked 45th in the 2015 edition of the biennial Travel & Tourism Com-petitiveness Report, published May 6 im-proving its performance by 18 points from its 2013 ranking of 63rd.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) and Strategy Partners Group rank countries every two years, using the latest Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index and assessing “the set of factors and policies that enable the sustainable development of the Travel & Tour-ism sector, which in turn, contributes to the development and competitiveness of a coun-try,” according to the report.

Thanks to the 44 percent drop in the val-uation of the ruble, Russia’s national curren-cy, against the U.S. dollar, since May 2014, hotel rates have become markedly cheaper and travel has become more affordable, ac-cording to the report. In 2013, the WEF cited hefty prices as a main disadvantage of the Russian tourist market.

Russia also gained points in the availabil-ity of national and cultural heritage sites, ranking 34th and 21st, respectively.

Low scores holding Russia backStrict visa requirements and a lack of inter-national openness are obstacles to those look-ing to visit Russia, according to the report, which ranked Russia 120th for visa require-ments (one rank behind the country of Su-riname) and 99th for internation openness (trailing both Paraguay and China).

Russia’s poor business climate and high number of safety and security concerns also hurt its attractiveness as a tourist destination, according to the report. The country ranked 109th in business climate, one step behind Colombia, and 126th in safety and security, after Myanmar and Jamaica.

This does not even include the effect of recent conflicts in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, Strategy Partners Group partner Alexei Prazdnichnykh pointed out.

“The potential impact of current macro-economic and geopolitical factors can be assessed only on the results of the next rank-ing and the position of Russia,” Prazdnich-nykh said.

Russian rankings up; tourist totals downAlthough the total number of registered vis-its to Russia has dropped in recent years, the drop in tourism has not been as large as that number might indicate.

Russia saw 3 million fewer inbound trips in 2014 than in 2013, dropping from 28.4 million to 25.4 million, according to the re-port and the Federal Agency for Tourism.

However, the number of foreign tourists who arrived in Russia in 2014 dropped only 3 percent from the 2.6 million recorded in 2013, according to the same data sources.

The reason: Most of the visitors are from Soviet republics, many of whom do not re-quire a visa to enter the country.

Russia saw some 28.4 million internation-al arrivals in 2013, with each visitor spend-ing an average of $423 in the country, for a total $11.98 million in receipts, according to WEF estimates. In comparison, the Unit-ed States, which the WEF ranked 4th overall in tourism, saw some 70 million foreign tour-ist arrivals, and$173 billion in total receipts.

Tour operators began to register a sharp drop in interest in traveling to Russia among foreigners at the end of 2014; against the background of the conflict in Ukraine, the number of bookings for trips to the country fell to almost zero.

However, market participants are now giv-ing more optimistic forecasts.

IN FIGURES

25.4 milliontrips were made into Russia in 2014 according to the Federal Agency for Tourism.

$160is the price for a multiple en-try Russian visa for Americans, good for up to three years.

IN FIGURES

71years is the average life expectancy in Russia according to the Health Ministry.

80%of Russians expressed opposition to the proposal of raising the retirement age.

40million pensioners live in Russia, almost a third of the population.

The current retirement age in Russia – 55 years for women and 60 years for men – was set in 1932. Americans born after 1960 can receive full Social Security benefits at 67.

Alexei Gisak, co-founder of the pan-Asian fast-food chain Wokker in Moscow.

Foreign visitors tend to visit large cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg.

READ THE FULL STORYat rbth.com/45897

Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has called on the government to raise the retire-ment age starting in 2016, the TASS news agency reported on April 14.

“From the viewpoint of the economy, the quicker we solve this problem, the better it will be for the budget,” said Siluanov.

International experts suggest Russia raise the retirement age to 65 for both men and women, instead of the current 55 for women and 60 for men, said Siluanov, who believes delaying retirement would provide the coun-try with more labor resources, important given not only the economic crisis but also Russia’s demographic situation.

Siluanov’s predecessor, Alexei Kudrin, sup-ports the initiative to increase the minimum

age of retirement. “It’s necessary to raise the age, but the specific parameters need to be discussed... but 65 years is an understand-able option,” Siluanov said.

However, Russian President Vladimir Putin recently spoke out against the initiative dur-ing his annual live TV call-in show in April.

“The pension reform must be carried out in an open dialogue with society, so that people understand what is happening,” said Putin. “Life expectancy is now growing in Russia, but for men it is still 65.5 years.”

Easing the burden on the stateAccording to Anton Soroko, an analyst from investment holding Finam, sooner or later the retirement age in Russia will be raised.

“For the last several years the pension age has indeed been a headache for the govern-ment,” said the analyst. “The annual trans-fers that are needed to make the current payments are not only not decreasing, but are even increasing.”

His point is illustrated by the fact that in 2014, due to the budget deficit, the govern-ment used about 300 billion rubles ($5.9 bil-lion) of future pension savings to pay today’s pensioners.

Russia’s retirement age is low, said Soroko, but it takes life expectancy into consider-ation. According to Health Ministry data, life expectancy in Russia grew to 71 in 2014, having reached a historic maximum of 65.4 for men and 76.5 for women.

Public opinion set firmly against changesDespite the possible benefits of raising the retirement age, 80 percent of Russian citi-zens opposed the idea in a Russian Public Opinion Research Center survey conducted in April 2015.

The population often reacts negatively to any changes affecting pensions, said Anton Soroko.

“The question is how will the age be raised: The government would have to create an algorithm of gradual increase connected to real data on the average life expectancy,” Soroko said.

During an annual account on the govern-ment’s work, Prime Minister Dmitry Medve-dev suggested raising the retirement age of only deputies and state officials.

Alexander Safonov, Rector of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration told RBTH that “raising the retirement age during an eco-nomic recession or weak economic growth will substantially increase the risks of unem-ployment for people of pre-retirement age.”

Safonov said this will lead employers to send these citizens into early retirement, and cautioned that a major consequence of ex-tending the retirement age will be high youth unemployment resulting from a lack of op-portunities on the job market as older spe-cialists continue to occupy working places.

READ THE FULL STORYat rbth.com/43773

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Special Report

The Order of the Patriotic War, established in 1942, was the first military award the Soviet Union designa-ted for this conflict. It was awarded at first- and se-cond-class levels for heroic deeds by troops, security forces and partisans. Re-latives were permitted to retain the award after the recipient’s death, making it the only Soviet award from the war that did not have to be returned to the state if the honoree died.

THE HEROES OF VICTORY ONLINE

During the nearly four years the Soviet Union fought in World War II, soldiers of the Red Ar-my were awarded over 38 million various or-ders and medals. Unfortunately, in many cas-es the award never made it to the person who earned the honor. Now the families of veterans and in some cases the veterans themselves, can check online to see if there are awards that belong to them. The goal of the Stars of Victory Internet proj-ect is to provide a way for these far-flung for-mer Soviet citizens to receive their honors. There are more than 8,200 names listed in the database, which can be read in Russian at rg.ru/zvezdy_pobedy. With the help of readers, RBTH editors have already found the families of five women listed in the database. If you have Russian friends who live in your country; you are an émigré or a descendant; or if any of your relatives, male or female, fought or served in 1941-1945, please visit the web-site and check to see whether you or they are among those still awaiting an award.Unfortunately, any honor or award issued dur-ing World War II can be legally given only to the person who actually won the award. If the person was killed or lost in the war, or has since died, the heirs of the person have the right to receive a certificate noting the honor won by their loved one upon presentation of the relevant documents.RBTH will update readers with details of those veterans who have been found through the online database. Please let us know if you think you or people who you know might be eligible, by emailing info@rbth.com

Discover the Unknown War in the pages of this issue

and fi nd out much more at UNKNOWNWAR.RBTH.COM

VIEWPOINT

BROTHERS-IN-ARMS, RIVALS IN PEACE

IVAN KURILLASPECIAL TO RUSSIA DIRECT

Seventy years ago in May 1945, Nazism was defeated and the bloodiest war in Europe-an history ended. For most European na-tions, and especially for the Russian people,

that war had a profound impact on national mem-ory, and its trauma is still very much alive.

Similarly, 150 years ago in May 1865, the Civil War in the U.S. ended. After a century and a half, that event remains the deepest trauma in Amer-ican memory and the most important point of reference for U.S. history.

These two May anniversaries and the tragic events that surrounded them also remind us that in those two calamities, Russia and the United States were friendly powers and allies. Indeed, during the Civil War of 1861-1865, Russia remained the only Eu-ropean power that openly supported the federal cause by diplomatic means, and even sent its fleet to New York harbor in 1863, while Russian public opinion was decidedly on the Northern side.

Certainly, the fleet had more complex reasons for this action, including Russia’s strategic plan to keep its navy outside of the Baltics in case of a new war with England, but the inspiration sparked by the Russian Navy visiting the U.S. was remarkable.

Likewise, the 1861 abolition of serfdom in Rus-sia in 1861 and the 1863 emancipation of slaves in the U.S. in 1863 promoted mutual sympathy and that reinforced the spirit of freedom preva-lent during that epoch in both countries.

Eighty years later, the meeting of Soviet and American soldiers on the Elbe River and the de-feat of a common foe, Nazi Germany, became the symbol of another war collaboration that in-

cluded many more instances of mutual support and military cooperation in 1941-1945.

This was not a rare coincidence. During the Crimean War of 1853-1856, U.S. public opinion supported Russia against joint European interven-tion, and many American surgeons even hastened to serve in Sevastopol hospitals. In fact, it was an American journalist, Januarius MacGahan, whose description of the Turkish atrocities helped Russia gain the Europeans’ support in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878. Russia and the United States were also allies in World War I, and even during the War on Terror in the early 2000s.

But outside these periods of conflict, relations between the two nations have not been as good. Brothers-in-arms during war, they became rivals in peace. Why is it that during peacetime, these two countries migrated into opposite corners of world politics?

Ideological competition, geopolitical rivalry, and the Hegelian logic of history may offer explana-tions. However, the causes are less relevant for us today than the lessons of the past two centuries. That shared history may be interpreted different-ly in order to support one or another political po-sition during the current period of tensions.

A struggle for the past is unfolding in and around Russia, with its focus on World War II. At the bot-tom of this struggle is the problem of martyrdom: For what reason did 27 million Soviet people die?

The answer is not obvious in the contemporary world. It is more traditional to say that the Soviet people, together with the liberal democracies of the Western allies, fought to eliminate Nazism, the worst evil in human history. According to this logic, the great alliance helped humankind reach for a better future, despite the differences of the allies’ political organizations.

Another interpretation, however, is gradually gathering more supporters in the new generation of politicians. It states that World War II was es-sentially a fight between two evils, Nazism and

Communism (in its Stalinist form). According to this second view, there was not a big difference between those two regimes, and the Red Army did not liberate Eastern and Central Europe, but rather conquered it for Communism. “Western victory was a liberating victory; Russian (Soviet) Victory was a subjugating victory,” the theory goes.

The history of post-war Europe went in differ-ent directions, and Soviet leaders helped to im-pose pro-Soviet regimes in Eastern Europe. How-ever, in no way did such a political development denigrate the martyrdom of the Soviet people and the fight for freedom from Nazi rule.

In addition, when we look at the implications of the second view, we see that it gives World War II a purely geopolitical interpretation at the ex-pense of a moral one. The war, at least on the Eastern front, was waged for dominance, not for liberation.

Strangely, this interpretation, promoted by the anti-Stalinists in Europe, helped the Russian Stalin-ists. Refusing to view the Soviet Union as on the right side of an epic moral battle, it turns the mil-lions of Soviet dead from heroes who fought against evil into fallen martyrs spreading the influence of Soviet might.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine society ready to abandon such a martyrdom – it does and it will determine the value system of Russians for gen-erations to come.

This year of anniversaries is full of troubles. How-ever, let us focus on the longer-term perspective. The history of the U.S.-Russian relationship ex-tends more than two centuries into the past. Let us use that history to make the future better and deepen our mutual understanding.

Read the full storyat russia-direct.org

Ivan Kurilla is a former Kennan Institute fellow and professor at Volgograd State University.

When East and West met in the middleAn American veteran with Russian heritage recalls his personal experiences at the Elbe

On April 25, 1945 Soviet and American troops cut through the Wehr-macht divisions and met in the middle of Germany near the town of Torgau, 85 miles from Berlin, on the Elbe River.

American veteran Igor Nikolaevich Be-lousov, 93, was born in Shanghai and grew up in San Francisco. He was a direct participant in the Elbe meeting that took place April 25, 1945, and this year he came to Moscow to watch the May 9 Victory Day parade. At his home in Falls Church, Virginia, just outside Washington D.C., Belousov spoke about how the soldiers from the Allied armies met, and what the meeting meant for them.

It is not difficult to detect Russian lin-

eage in your name. How did it happen

that you fought in the American army?

My father was a “white” immigrant. After the 1917 Revolution, he managed to get to Khabarovsk from central Rus-sia, where he met my future mother and married her. Then they crossed the bor-der to China. I was born in Shanghai, and seven years later ,my family moved to San Francisco. Back then, 1,000 Rus-sians lived there. They all lived togeth-er. At home everyone spoke Russian, all our friends were Russian. With time, I obviously became American, but I still have this so-called double personality. After growing up I started at the Uni-versity of California, Berkeley, but did not finish my studies due to the war.

How did you wind up at the front?

I think it was in 1943. Back then, there were various educational programs in the Army for students, and taking my background into consideration, I was sent to study Russian at Syracuse University. But the director of the Slav-ic department was convinced that I knew Russian quite well and there-fore switched me to a German course.The army in Europe needed reinforce-ments, so my studies were interrupt-ed. We were distributed among the military units, and I found myself in

the 69th infantry division as a regu-lar lance corporal. At the end of 1944 the division was sent to England and then to the front near the Belgian-German border. My last military cam-paign consisted of capturing Leipzig.

How did you become part of the group that established contact with the So-viet units?We were fighting in the eastern part of Germany and our regiment stopped near the Mulde River, a tributary of the Elbe. Parts of the Red Army were somewhere on the other shore of the Elbe. For several days, we did not move anywhere – everyone was very cautious. Just think: If we had not rec-ognized each other and started a skir-mish, this would have been very bad. Finally, when three patrols were formed to establish contact, one of the regiment commanders remem-bered that someone among the sol-diers spoke Russian. I was called and placed in one of the patrol units.

Early on the morning of April 25, we crossed the Mulde Bridge in our jeeps. In about two or three hours, our three groups managed to established con-tact with the Russian army. We would later say that any one of the soldiers in our three patrol units could con-sider himself a participant of the first meeting with the Russians.

When and where did you personally

come into contact with the Soviet sol-

diers?

At a distance we spotted a cavalry column, which, after seeing us, gal-loped in our direction. I had a small photo camera in my pocket, the only one in all the patrol units. I took some photos of the cavalrymen, and then of the meeting itself.A commander of one of the Soviet detachments told us which roads could be taken to the Elbe and to the town of Torgau. [Editor’s note: Tor-gau is considered the offical meeting location.] I was the only one to speak

both languages, so I translated. Then the cavalrymen went to Dresden and we arrived at the Elbe. We were met by a group of Soviet officers, includ-ing a commander from General Vlad-imir Rusakov’s 58th guards division.

The meeting on the Elbe is sometimes

considered the final defeat of Nazi

Germany. What feelings did you per-

sonally have at that moment?

The only thing I regret is that at that moment I only had one roll of film. I knew that it was a historic occasion.By the way, Russians have always re-spected this date. Here in Washing-ton, in the Arlington Cemetery, there is a memorial that honors the meet-ing at the Elbe, and every year the Russian Embassy invites veterans to a wreath-laying ceremony and orga-nizes a reception for them.

How did the American soldiers per-

ceive the meeting?

Among the Americans, there were few who had an idea of the Soviet Union. But of course they knew about the bloody battles on the Eastern Front. Back then there was no such thing as the Cold War. Even though we spoke different languages, the meeting was very friendly. Everyone patted each other on the back, and smiled. There were no serious talks or negotiations. I translated a lot. We were given a lot to eat and drink and then we slept in our hosts’ camp. In the morning I had a terrible head-ache.

Did the ordinary soldiers exchange

anything as tokens?

Yes, everyone wanted to take some kind of souvenir. We were interested in the stars with the hammer and sickle on the Russians’ caps. But the most important souvenirs for me were the memories and the photos. The film was later developed at our com-mand post and much to my surprise, the photos and the negatives were returned to me.In two weeks the war in Europe was over. Our unit organized the move-ments of migrants who were head-ing west. In two or three months we were transferred to the rear, and then we returned home, and that is how it all ended.

■IGOR DUNAEVSKY

ROSSIYSKAYA GAZETA

American veteran Belousov poses with a Shpagin submachine gun.

Did you know? Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov presented Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower with the Soviet Order of Victo-ry, while Eisenhower gave Zhukov the Legion of Honor.

In early May, RBTH published its special edi-tion “Brothers in Arms,” which focuses on co-operation between the United States and the Soviet Union during World War II. A PDF ver-sion of the booklet is avaliable at rbth.com.

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Special Report

Of the 258 Soviet war cameramen active during WWII, only two of them are still alive.

AND ONLY ONE STILL LIVES IN RUSSIA: 95-YEAR-OLD BORIS SOKOLOV.

WATCH A VIDEO about him atrbth.com/multimedia/94491

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1  “THE CRANES ARE FLYING” (1957) BY MIKHAIL

KALATOZOV

Soviet cinema’s critical engagement with the war began in many ways with Ka-latozov’s film, which Russian critics voted the best film of the first 50 years of Rus-sian cinema in 2008. Kalatozov’s film was the first among many classics from the Thaw era that dealt with the war’s significance, preceding Grigorii Chukh-rai’s “Ballad of a Soldier” (1959), Sergei Bondarchuk’s “Fate of a Man” (1959), Chukhrai’s “Clear Skies” (1961), and Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Ivan’s Childhood” (1962). “The Cranes are Flying” focuses on Veronika, who sees her boyfriend Boris off to the front before dealing with with the hardships the war causes at home. Tatiana Samoilova’s nuanced performance is one for the ages.

2  “TRIAL ON THE ROAD” (1971/1986)

BY ALEXEI GERMAN

Banned for 15 years, German’s first film tells the sto-ry of a Soviet soldier who defects to the Nazis, then switches sides again to fight with Soviet partisans. Based on his father’s novel and adapted by Eduard Volodarskii (who has written a number of important films dealing with the war), “Trial on the Road” is a profound examination of concepts such as “patriotism,” “hero” and “traitor.” German also directed another classic about the war, “Twenty Days Without War” (1976).

3  “THEY FOUGHT FOR THE MOTHERLAND”

(1975) BY SERGEI BONDARCHUK

A veteran of the war, Bondarchuk first turned to it on-screen with his 1959 classic, “Fate of a Man.” After winning an Academy Award for his six-hour epic adaptation of “War and Peace,” Bondarchuk returned to World War II in “They Fought for the Motherland.” “They” are a com-plex collection of wounded, weary, broken, older sol-diers defending a small, relatively unimportant plot of land in July 1942, as the Red Army begins to fight at Stalingrad. The famous battle only comes in at the end: After defending some far-flung locales, the regi-ment, which has lost all of its officers, learns it must head to Stalingrad.

4  “COME AND SEE” (1985) BY ELEM KLIMOV

Klimov’s masterpiece,

set in occupied Be-larus, is the story of Flyora, a young boy who gets caught up in the conflict and goes stumbling through the hell-ish landscape of the Eastern Front. Klimov’s film has consistently been cited as one of the best films ev-er made about the war, if not the best. When it ap-peared in the U.S., Walter Goodman declared its “history is harrowing and the presentation is graph-ic,” and its director was “a master of a sort of unreal realism that seeks to get at events terrible beyond comprehension.” “Come and See” is violent, brutal, horrific and profound.

5  “THE CUCKOO” (2002) BY ALEXANDER

ROGOZHKIN

Among the more recent Russian movies about World War II, Rogozhkin’s “The Cuckoo” may be the most satisfy-ing (although Dmit-rii Meskhiev’s 2004 “Our Own” is also worth a watch). In it, a Finnish soldier conscripted to fight for the Nazis and then chained to a rock after being labeled a pacifist makes his way to the house of a Sami woman whose husband has also left to fight in the war. She is nursing an injured Soviet sol-dier who was sentenced to death for anti-Soviet ac-tivities but who managed to escape his execution. Rogozhkin’s film explores how misperceptions and differences in language affect the three individuals’ of each other, often to comedic effect.

5 MOVIES TO SEE Russian/Soviet:

KINOPOISK.RU

KINOPOISK.RU

KINOPOISK.RU

© RIA NOVOSTI

KINOPOISK.RU

Movies and politics:filming the warAfter World War II, U.S. and Soviet movies allowed the Cold War to strongly shape the narratives their fi lms told

After World War II, the two superpowers produced two different narratives about the conflict, how it was fought, and how it was won.

In 1949, Allan Dwan’s “The Sands of Iwo Jima,” starring John Wayne, established what would be-come the archetypal version of America’s war in the Pacific. Wayne’s Sergeant Stryker, an authori-tarian squad leader, is initially hated by his men, before their fight for Iwo Jima forges them into a team and leads them to appreciate Stryker’s meth-ods. Stryker is shot by a Japanese sniper and dies just as his men take the hill and raise the Ameri-can flag over it. His sacrifice allows his men to continue the fight and to win the war.

“The Sands of Iwo Jima” premiered just four days before Joseph Stalin’s 70th birthday in 1949. Mikhail Chiaureli’s present to the Soviet leader, “The Fall of Berlin,” was released in two parts in early 1950. The film follows Alyosha, a Stakha-novite steel worker who is in love with a teacher named Natasha. When the Nazis invade, Alyo-sha is knocked unconscious in an air raid and falls into a coma. He recovers, fights his way through the Soviet Union and then to Berlin, where he helps to raise the Soviet flag above the Reichstag.

The hero of the film, however, is Stalin. The Soviet leader guides his people to victory and even arrives in Berlin to help Alyosha find Nata-sha again. While “The Sands of Iwo Jima” estab-lished the parameters adhered to by American movies about the war, culminating in the on-screen flag-raising over Iwo Jima, “The Fall of Ber-lin” did the same for Soviet cinematic narratives, culminating in the flag-raising over the Reichstag.

After Stalin’s death, Soviet films stripped away his wartime significance, and continued to focus on the sacrifices Red Army soldiers made to de-fend their motherland. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a series of Soviet movies, including Mikhail Kalatozov’s 1957 “The Cranes are Flying” and Sergei Bondarchuk’s 1959 “Fate of a Man,” cap-tured the humanistic elements of the war even while reaffirming that the defense of Russia, cul-minating with the victory at Stalingrad, served as its turning point. While these films were well received by American critics, they were frequent-ly interpreted through Cold War lenses: the New York Times wrote of “The Cranes are Flying” that “the Russians have finally found romance” and even “with each other, not with a tractor or the Soviet state.”

At the same time, American movies were dom-inated by action-adventure flicks – often co-pro-duced with British companies – such as J. Lee Thompson’s “The Guns of Navarone” (1961), Don Siegel’s “Hell is for Heroes” (1962), Robert Sturges’s “The Great Escape” (1963), Robert Al-drich’s “The Dirty Dozen” (1967), and Brian Hut-ton’s “Kelly’s Heroes” (1970). Most of these films, along with epics such as “The Longest Day,” es-tablished D-Day as the turning point in the war. They all tended to tell the war as an action story involving a group of ragtag soldiers coming to-gether to accomplish a mission that contributes to the overall victory. These Hollywood interpre-tations of the war did not sit well with Soviet crit-ics: In a 1963 Iskusstvo Kino review of “The Lon-gest Day,” Lev Ginzburg concluded that it was an attempt to use the Second World War in order to legitimize NATO’s Cold War policies.

upon us” and called for renewed interest in Rus-sian movies about the war.

The subsequent return of the war to Russian screens – both large and small – has had some notable moments, particularly in films that explore subjects deemed taboo during the Soviet era. Niko-lai Dostal’s acclaimed 2004 TV series “Penal Bat-talion,” brings to light the neglected story of So-viet citizens forced to fight as cannon fodder, but does so by reaffirming that “ordinary” men and women defended their motherland. This timeless value, combined with a willingness to sacrifice oneself for victory, is also at the heart of Fedor Bondarchuk’s 2013 blockbuster, “Stalingrad,” which became the highest-grossing movie in Rus-sian history. American films, from the critically lam-basted blockbuster “Pearl Harbor” (2001) to the hugely successful HBO series “Band of Brothers” (2001) and “The Pacific” (2010), have also con-tinued to operate within the frameworks estab-lished during the Cold War. Even films that intro-duce new elements – John Woo’s “Windtalkers” (2002), which focuses on the role of Navajo code talkers in the Pacific, and Spike Lee’s “Miracle at St. Anna” (2008), which narrates African-Ameri-can contributions to the war in Italy – do so by sticking to established paradigms.

Perhaps the clearest sign that war movies have established fixed narratives in both countries can be detected in two recent films, one from each country. Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Basterds” (2008) is not meant to be a historical film at all. Tarantino’s tongue-in-cheek take on the war, as the director noted, was meant to be “my ‘Dirty Dozen’ or ‘Where Eagles Dare’ or ‘Guns of Na-varone’ kind of thing.” The same year Tarantino’s film debuted, Marius Veisberg released his paro-dy of Soviet war films, “Hitler Kaput!” A gradu-ate of USC Film School and a fan of 1980s screw-ball comedies such as “The Naked Gun,” Veisberg particularly pokes fun at the mythic version of the war created on Soviet screens. Veisberg ar-gued that he wanted “not to make light of World War II, but rather of how the war was actually sold by the communists to the masses.” Even in these films, however, Americans are still liberat-ing France and Soviets are still headed to Berlin.

■STEPHEN M. NORRIS

SPECIAL TO RBTH

■PHOEBE TAPLIN

SPECIAL TO RBTH

Brave women protected the Soviet skies

On the first page of Lyuba Vinogra-dova’s fine book about Soviet women pilots, she compares Hitler’s attempted invasion of Moscow in 1941 to Napoleon’s in 1812. Vino-gradova centers her comparison on the neo-gothic Petrovsky Palace, built on the road to St. Petersburg in the late 18th-century as a rest house for traveling royalty. Napoleon sheltered here as Moscow burned and the pal-ace later became an aeronautical academy, whose alumni included cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. By World War II, when Vinogradova takes up the tale, the palace’s rooms are noisy with “a more motley assembly than they had ever witnessed,” directed by women in uniform.

Vinogradova’s skill as a writer is to see both the larger, historical pic-ture and the vivid, individual detail.

Born in Moscow, Vinogradova de-scribes herself as “not an historian,” but she has worked in many Rus-sian archives. She helped research Antony Beevor’s skillful patchwork of human stories in “Stalingrad” and many other books. Introducing Vi-nogradova’s new book, Beevor calls her theme “a unique phenomenon in the history of modern conflict,” which also tells us a great deal “about Soviet society under Stalin.”

Arch Tait, who translated Vino-gradova’s book from Russian, has captured her slightly breathless style as she details the lives of these di-verse and courageous women.

But Vinogranova’s book is not a

simple tale of idealism, heroism and survival. Marina Raskova, whose re-cord-breaking adventures as an avi-atrix inspired “millions of Soviet women,” is soon revealed as a secret officer of the NKVD, the KGB’s murderous precursor.

Legendary pilot Valen-tina Grizodubova later said bitterly of Raskova: “I have no doubt that people suffered because of her.” Vinogradova’s awareness of context and complexity show how one generation’s idols can become uneasy ghosts. In the cold, retrospective light of history the image of young Raskova skywriting “Glory to Sta-lin!” at the annual Soviet air show Tushino Aviation Day, is more chill-ing than heartwarming.

There is plenty of real heroism in “Defending the Motherand,” which includes first person accounts from survivors. The feared “Night Witches” brigade switched off their engines to glide silently, but hitting an unexpected snowstorm in March 1942 was like “flying though milk;” four women died in the disorientat-ing whiteness, where “lights on the ground … began to seem like dis-tant stars.”

Lilya Litvyak, the “White Lily of Stalingrad” was the first woman who came to Vinogradova’s attention, and her story forms a narrative thread throughout the book. A beau-

tiful, formidable fighter pilot, she was killed in her early twenties. Her sudden disappearance led to con-flicting rumors: that she was cap-tured alive or that she had crashed, leaving only scraps of parachute-silk underwear and bleached blonde hair. In her last letter to her mother she wrote, “I have a burning desire to drive those German reptiles out of our land…”

During World War II, nearly half a million women served in the So-viet forces and Vinogradova, whose next book will cover female Red Army snipers, has unearthed a rich seam of historical detail in charting their relatively unknown stories.

American movies focused on the Pacific Theater or on D-Day. Soviet movies focused on the Nazi invasion and the victory at Stalingrad that led to taking Berlin.

The Cold War provided the context for the two nations’ film industries to construct two dis-tinct memories of World War II and to under-stand the other’s movies. By and large, Ameri-can movies focused on the Pacific Theater or on D-Day and the liberation of France or Italy. So-viet movies almost exclusively focused on the re-action to the Nazi invasion, the heroic defense of the motherland and the victory at Stalingrad that led to taking Berlin. These narratives should come as no great surprise, yet the unintended consequence was that movies about World War II had the effect of justifying the Cold War. The war could no longer be imagined as a shared experience.

Steven Spielberg’s 1998 global blockbuster, “Saving Private Ryan,” would help to bring about a renewed dialogue between American and Rus-sian films. In addition to the acclaim it received, Spielberg’s movie generated a lot of discussion in Russia. Karen Shakhnazarov, the head of Mos-film Studio, criticized “the American films with their own evaluation of the war constantly thrust

Female aviators played a vital role defending the Soviet Union during the war

P6 // rbth.com // May 29, 2015

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ANNAKHARZEEVASPECIAL TO RBTH

What’s the latest diet craze? For Russians, who are deal-ing with the ban of many imported foods, learning to cook like a Soviet may be more of a necessity than a choice.Anna Kharzeeva, with help from her grandmother, has been testing out this theory, cooking her way through “The Book of Healthy and Tasty Food” — an iconic cook-book that was the ‘go-to’ book for just about every So-viet family. The book features more than 1,000 recipes and includes not only classic Russian dishes, but also Uz-bek, Georgian and Ukrainian meals. It was published for the first time in 1939, and an updated version appeared in 1952.“The Book of Healthy and Tasty Food” is not just a cook-book. Its goal was to explain to every Soviet woman ev-erything she needed to know about food. It was also a cultural phenomenon that promoted Soviet ideas about life and health. In her columns, Kharzeeva discusses the background of the Soviet diet along with how Soviet food appears to modern Russian cooks. Join RBTH on this culinary journey.

Looking for sweet recipes to make this May, I stum-bled upon biskvit (sponge cake) with sour cream. Biskvit has always been on the table in our family, but I only recently asked Granny why — she says that her mother found it very easy to make, and as she was always on the go, it suited her character perfectly.May 9 marks an important date — Victory Day, the day Russia observes the end of World War II. This day is celebrated on a grand scale – there are parades and concerts on Red Square and at Victory Park.As for regular people, they get together, cook up a feast, raise their glasses to the victory over the Nazis, and remember those who didn’t come back.In my family, Granny makes the ever-present sponge cake and we remember her father, who went missing in 1941, and her husband, who served and came home. He passed away 16 years ago. In 1941, Granny was nine. Her father went missing just three months after leaving home. His name is on a stone memorial outside the factory he left to go war — along with the names of 1,000 others, of whom on-ly one or two came back.After her family had been evacuated from the city and was living in the village, Granny and her mother would make sponge cake and send it to the soldiers based nearby. In honor and memory of those times, I made sponge cake today for a kind of Victory Day memorial tea. “On May 2, 1945 we were in Moscow, and I had a beautiful American coat on — the Allies would send us food and clothing,” Granny remembers. “Mom was putting pins in it to make it shorter, and we heard a

special announcement on the radio: an important no-tice about taking over Berlin! We ran down the streets to Red Square — me still with pins in my coat — to see the fireworks.”We don’t have particular dishes that should be cooked on May 9, and I don’t know what the rules are about grandchildren setting up traditions, but it might be nice to have sponge cake with sour cream and co-coa on the side — something sweet to remember the loved ones by, and all the other soldiers.

Sponge cake with sour cream

Ingredients:2 cups flour; 1 ½ cups sour cream; 6 eggs; 1 cup sugar; vanillaSeparate the eggs. Whip the egg whites into a foam. Combine sugar and egg yolks. Mix well.Add vanilla. Add sour cream. Stir.Add flour and egg whites. Stir. Pour the batter into a greased dish and cook on a low temperature for 20-25 minutes.

THE SOVIET COOKBOOK

VICTORY DAY MEMORIAL TEA: A SPONGE CAKE TO CELEBRATE

Although there are no specific Victory Day recipes, the author associates the holiday with sponge cake topped with sour cream and cocoa on the side.

IN BRODSKY’S FOOTSTEPS

Find more places connected with this famous poet’s life at rbth.com/multimedia/96069

■DOROTHY BUTCHARD

SPECIAL TO RBTH

4PLACES TO EXPLORE BRODSKY’S LIFE AND INFLUENCES

Brodsky’s poetry spanned worldsEmigre’s writing was profoundly infl uenced by American and British poets

From 1955 to 1972, Joseph Brodsky lived in the Muruzi House (Liteiny Prospect, 24) in his “room and a half.” At the end of 2015, a Brodsky museum is scheduled to open in this apartment.

In 1964, Brodsky was arrested, accused of “parasitism,” and sentenced to five years of forced labor. After 18 months, he was released on parole and allowed to return to Leningrad from Norenskaya, where a museum is now being created.

In July 1972, Brodsky moved to the U.S. and became the poet-in-residence at the University of Michigan in Ann Ar-bor, where he intermittently taught, fol-lowing in the footsteps of Robert Frost, who taught at Michigan decades earlier.

In 1980, Brodsky moved from Ann Arbor to New York, where he lived in a Green-wich Village apartment at 44 Morton St. In 1993, he bought an apartment in Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn, where he died from a heart attack in 1996.

St. Petersburg, Russia

Norenskaya, Arkhangelsk Region

Ann Arbor, Michigan

New York City, NY

Joseph Brodsky, who would have turned 75 this month, was heavily in-fluenced by such great American poets at Robert Frost and Robert Lowell.

Joseph Brodsky, who would have turned 75 on May 24, was one of the most prom-inent Russian poets of the 20th century. As a young man in the Soviet Union, he refused to bow to the conformist atti-tudes of the day, writing poems charac-terized by a sparkling wit and indepen-dent thinking. Given the repressive, censorship-driven Soviet society, it came as no surprise when he was arrested for “social parasitism” in 1964 – eventually spending 18 months in a remote village as a punishment – and ultimately expelled from the country in 1972. His poetic style combines technical brilliance with the in-timate, lyric poet’s concern with transcen-dent themes such as exile, love, death and nature. It is a measure of Brodsky’s skill as a poet that he was also able to master the poetic form in both his native Russian and in English, a language that enchanted him from an early age.

Learning English by nightAs a young poet in Soviet Russia, Brod-sky pursued his interest in English verse with admirable determination. Brodsky’s biographer Lev Lossef describes how the poet spent his time in exile in Norenskaya village, Arkhangelsk region “slowly mak-ing his way through English texts: “At night, in his hut on the edge of a village on the banks of a stream, there was noth-ing to distract him […] His object was not to learn another language; it was to learn another poetry.”

Brodsky’s fascination with poetry in Eng-lish lasted his whole life. He translated the works of several poets into Russian, and in later years began to write his own poems in English. He also wrote several essays in English, many of which can be found in the award-winning collection “Less Than One: Selected Essays.”

Growing into poetry with Robert FrostA profound early influence on Brodsky’s verse was the American poet Robert Frost. Many years after his first encounter with Frost’s poetry, Brodsky recollected his as-tonishment when he first read Russian translations of them at the age of 22.

“With Frost, it all started,” Brodsky re-membered in a 1975 interview for the Paris Review. “I was absolutely astonished at the sensibility, that kind of restraint, that hidden, controlled terror. I couldn’t believe what I’d read.”

Brodsky saw the restraint of Frost’s writ-ing as a way of expressing a uniquely American experience. To journalist Solo-mon Volkov, he suggested the “absence of emotion” was “representative of an art that simply doesn’t exist in Russian.”

“Greatest mind of the 20th Century”Brodsky’s admiration of Frost indirectly led him to discover works by the English inter-war poet W.H. Auden. In his Paris Review interview, Brodsky recalls sending

his own poems to Frost’s Russian transla-tor, who said one of them “really resem-bles Auden in its sense of humor.” Brod-sky sought out examples of poetry by Auden, who became his friend and men-tor after Brodsky left the Soviet Union in 1972.

It is difficult to underestimate Auden’s significance for Brodsky’s writing. The writ-er and critic John Bayley suggested that “without Auden, Brodsky would possibly never have made himself into a poet writ-ing in English.”

After Auden’s death, Brodsky mused that “belief in the immortality of his soul becomes somehow unavoidable.” Dis-cussing his efforts to write poetry in Eng-lish, Brodsky explained, “My sole purpose […] was to find myself in closer proxim-ity to the man whom I considered the greatest mind of the 20th Century: Wystan Hugh Auden.”

Auden’s poem “In Memory of W.B. Yeats” was a particularly important refer-ence point for Brodsky, who wrote of his fascination with its description of “time that is intolerant” yet “worships language and forgives.” Critic Adam Weiner sug-gests that this relation of language, time and space became a “cornerstone” of Brodsky’s own poetic practice. Auden’s poem also provided a template for Brod-sky’s tribute to the poet T.S. Eliot, where he declares that “in the rhyme / of years the voice of poetry stands plain.”

Moving into EnglishAfter leaving the Soviet Union and mov-ing to America, Brodsky became close with the American poet Robert Lowell. They met when Lowell volunteered to read trans-lations of Brodsky’s poems on stage at the 1972 International Festival of Poetry, which Brodsky attended with Auden. The critic and expert Derek Bethea suggests, that both elder poets had a profound influence as they helped Brodsky settle into his new life in America:

“It was these two – Auden and Lowell – who left an indelible personal residue on Brodsky and his language at a very vulnerable and impressionable time,” Brodsky said. It was also at Lowell’s fu-neral that Brodsky first met fellow Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott. “I found work-ing with Walcott that his intuition is stun-ning,” Brodsky confided in a 1993 inter-view with Blair Ewing.

The pair became close friends and mu-tual influences, translating each others’ work and sharing techniques. Brodsky and Walcott also joined with Irish Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney in the book “Homage to Robert Frost,” revisiting the influence of one of Brodksy’s early favor-ites.

In 1985, Walcott praised Brodsky’s “in-dustry, his valor, and his intelligence.” These qualities are most evident in Brod-sky’s passionate pursuit of poetry in Eng-lish throughout his career, as he endeav-ored to draw together two great literary traditions in his own verse.

VISIT A SPACE CREATED FOR ALL THOSE WHO WOULD LIKE TO DISCOVER MORE ABOUT RUSSIAN CUISINE AND THE COUNTRY’S CULINARY TRADITIONS.

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