Dear David,
thanks for including Leon Aron's "A Space Station's
Long Goodbye". I basically agree with the thrust of his argument, i.e.
the sooner Russia rids herself of the last material vestiges - and ambitions
- of a superpower, the better. But as I continued to read, the harrowing
pictures of Soviet misery in 1986 brought tears to my eyes: "35 percent
of Soviet hospitals did not have hot water and 30 percent lacked indoor
toilets. The country's infant mortality rate was higher than that of Barbados.
Half of Soviet schools had no central heating or running water. (...) In
Russian villages, World War II widows, many receiving a pension of four
rubles a month, worth about 40 cents, dug up potatoes with wooden shovels."
I happened to have been born, to have lived in that country, and to
have traveled across her heartbreaking landscapes in the 1980s. Mr.
Aron's masterful narrative has brought me 15 years back, and I am flooded
with memories... I have to say that his vivid depiction of late Soviet
decay is still too kind on us. Not just half, but almost all Soviet schools
had no central heating (save the chosen few for the children of nomenklatura)
– and this is in a country with 6-month-long winters! I remember long dark
days in school, where temperature in the classroom would often fall below
freezing, but our instructors would still make us chant Lenin's incantations
and study the parts of Kalashnikov machine gun, the only two subjects taught
at school. Many of my classmates froze to death, and were buried by black
babushkas, WWII widows, who became quite handy with their wooden shovels
in permafrost.
Next door, newly-born babies in the local hospital were washed in cold
water, and died of pneumonia in a matter of hours. As a Soviet joke had
it, maternity wards were called mortality wards. The air in the street
smelled of sarin, and sometimes the earth would tremble, as deep below
us, secret underground factories were producing uranium. High above us,
ballistic missiles disguised as space stations were orbiting the Earth,
piloted by kamikaze cosmonauts, ready to guide their lethal spacecraft
to American cities... Not just 70, but the entire 110 percent of Soviet
GDP were military-related! At night, after the shuddering run to the frozen
outdoor toilet, we would curl in our barracks, and secretly listen to the
Voice of America over the self-made radio, and dream of the day democracy
would condescend to us, and we would read about our miserable selves in
the New York Times...
The problem is not so much with the Times, nor with Mr. Aron, but with
the entire genre of a Russia-thriller. By now, even kids know that Russia
sucks, so why care about details? In this discourse, it does not really
matter whether we lost 10 or 50 million people in the GULAG, whether infant
mortality was 5 or 500 per 1000 births, whether average salary was 10 or
150 rubles... For a Westerner, Russia is a mythological space, ruled by
hyperbole, not by reason or statistics. Common sense does not apply. Let
babushkas bury their dead.
Once again, thanks for a good story, a good laugh, and a reason to speak.
Russia does not need Mir, and Mir (modern Russian for both "peace" and
"world") probably does not need Russia. But rest assured that wooden shovel
is only used for taking bread out of the oven and for putting away dry
snow. It is of no avail for digging hard clay soil of central Russia. The
USSR might have been an Evil Empire, but there has never been a shortage
of metal shovels in that part of the world.
Best,
Sergei
Medvedev,
Marshall Center, Garmisch, Germany