From Miami to Moscow and Back Again
I am in Moscow. I have been here a lot over the years. It is part of what I do as a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union; I visit archives, libraries, bookshops and talk with as many people as are willing to listen to my now strained Russian [it was once my party trick: being able to speak really well]. This morning on my way into the library I stopped at a café on the Prichistinka Embankment that was marked “student café” and ordered a cappuccino; the young student working the coffee bar began to chat me up and asked where I am from. “Miami,” I said. And he smiled the biggest smile I have seen in a while (there is a tendency for straight faces in public here). “I am in a band called Electric Monkeys* and we were invited to a “summer camp” on Miami Beach this summer to practice yoga, drink healthy smoothies and play music.” “Come!” I said and was on my way. This would never have happened when I first visited Moscow in 1988. At that time, in the era of Gorbachev and Glasnost, it was like I was the party trick: “Look Misha, we have American over: do you love the Beatles?” The world is of course much smaller than it once was. And I am much older.
That brings me to the Moscow Metro. It is a highlight of any trip to this great city. Many of the stations are artworks in and of themselves, commemorating history and great Russian [Soviet] accomplishments, from the partisans in WWII at Partizanskaya to the great poets of Russia’s past at Mayakovskaya station. Well, here is my story. As some of you may know, I have grey hair (or, if you want to be kind, silver) and a lot of it. Well, on the Moscow metro, as soon as I walk on someone gets up and offers me their seat. That person might be a young teenage boy with earbuds in; a middle-aged man reading his newspaper or; even, an older woman (older than I am for sure) with brown hair who stares exhaustedly out the window. All they see is the hair, and then, as if on automatic pilot, they get up. On the one hand, it is a real thing to be in a culture where older citizens get the respect they deserve and are catered to; on the other hand, I am not old and I hate it!
So why am I here, riding the metro, strolling along the embankment, neglecting my job as Faculty Fellow for two weeks? I am taking what I hope will be a final research trip to the libraries and archives to finish my book, to move on to the next project and next phase of my career. Because, damn it, it is time.
The real question is why am I telling you all of this? Well, because – even though I have learned that many 5th floor-administrators continue to do research – a colleague in the Provost’s Office suggested that I “blog from Russia”, that way I can pump up my faculty creds, I am a researcher still, really, rather than describe what I see in the meetings on the 5th floor. So, I happily took up the challenge.
Moscow looks beautiful; truly so. I have been coming to this city with some regularity since 1988 and I have never seen it looking so wonderful: clean, lively, proud. There is not just a veneer of “western modernity” as there seemed to be in 2012, now, it seems to me at least, the flirtation with a hyper west has become integrated, some discarded, some transformed. Of course if you are inclined to open a newspaper or your smart-phone screen you know that there is much more to it than that. My friend Olga, a brilliant scholar of Russian cultural studies, told me over pelmenyi the other day that things have gotten much more bureaucratic at her university; medical care is pretty lousy (unless you have private insurance or connections); and that there are many people suffering from lack of resources all around. So, the center of the city is orderly, WWII commemorative statues, posters, etc. are all over the city, and there are groceries in the store. But, people are not free to speak, to be and, in many cases, to subsist on their wages.
But, I am not a political scientist or sociologist, I write about the past. And, to know about the past, I find myself spending hour after hour and hour at the library. Here is my first encounter with the library, the huge Russian State Library sitting proudly across from the Kremlin, a huge grand building with a much larger-than-life Lenin statue out front, and home to every publication I could ever wish to see. It is the old Leninka (Leninskaia Biblioteka as it was called); you get the point. Reading Room Two. I am in Reading Room Two of three possible ones (there may be a fourth for the truly disenfranchised). Back in the day, all foreigners, whether full professors or graduate students starting off were assigned to Reading Room One. My fellow pipsqueak graduate students and I used to wander those hallowed halls among the greats of the Russian academies and universities. We had no right to be there, in our jeans and our overblown sense of importance (or at least the importance of our dissertations). But, there we were, proudly and nervously working in Reading Room One. It is the grandest room and the only one on the floor with the card catalog; seats have a cushion, so your bottom does not ache with the hours of sitting and there is always someone there to help.
But, no, not me, I get a card with Reading Room Two blazoned across the top. It is my own fault, really. When I came to Moscow in 2012, I went straight from the airport to the Leninka, so desperate to dig in. No sleep, no eat, no wash…just straight there. Well, I think I looked such a mess that they ignored my credentials at the Registration Desk and gave me: Reading Room Two. So it goes. I had bigger plans this time: I did not go directly to the library; I brought a letter escaping my impressive credential signed by our very own Vice Provost Meredith Newman; I wore professional clothes and made a point of discussing my research with the woman at Registration. But, no luck. She turned to me after trying something on the computer: “I am so sorry madam, but it says you are Reading Room Two. This does not expire until May 2017. There is nothing I can do.” So, there you are. I am among the bright-eyed, iPhone-checking students, talking phone calls and texting one another while I make my way through tens of twentieties of hundreds of journal issues from the 1920s. I do not mind. I know that if I need help with the door or carrying books, they will be there to help. And here, now, at the library, I have put my grey hair to work. I am doing research for my monograph on Russian notions of modernity, temporality and the domestic in early twentieth-century. There it is. That means days of library reading, shuffling through journals on communal housing in the early revolutionary era, ordering useful files at the Literature and Art Archive after painstakingly studying the catalog for hours, and basically reconnecting with a city I have not seen for four years, but which has been so essential to my research and sense of self for as long as I can remember.
Those are some thoughts.
What do you think?
Rebecca
*name changed for anonymity [and also because I forget]