Blessings for Russia

[cepguu]

Dear friends, whether your are American, Indian, or Russian, whether you are in a good mood, or temporarily angry:

Thank you for giving me two or three minutes of your time by continuing to read.

I presume that this site is not just for native speakers of Russian who wish to argue and sort through their own differences while practising English. I presume that perhaps it is for people who, deep in their heart, whether or not it was related to birth, and whether or not they have switched their citizenships, care about and cherish Russia, as they have remembered or wished it to be.

And even when insults fly back and forth (of which I myself have been guilty) about how everyone despises everyone, doesn't this sentiment of bitterness ultimately always relates to frustration over something that we care about, something that we miss? Might it not be better to explain more patiently what is it that we really care about?

I am an immigrant in the United States. I do not have a drop of Russian blood in my veins.
Six years ago, as a result of a pure whim, or some magical play of fate, I found myself in Russia. Ever since then I have fallen deeply in love with this country. Various disappointments have also crept up, gradually, bit by bit, but this feeling has never changed, and never will. Now that I think about it, the whole business goes quite a bit further than "Moscow and Red Square and rusckie chicks, so cool, man!" So I venture here to share with you, my friends, even those of you who have lived all of their lives and shed all of their tears in Russia, why I, a complete foreigner, care so much about your country.

It is almost impossible to sum up and analyse a strong emotion of any kind. A thousand images and memories fly by, giving a word to any one of them does injustice to the other 999. However, since this is not the proper place for sentimental momoirs or self-psychoanalysis, I have no choice but to try my best to summarize and to communicate.

There is a Russian word called "missianstvo"
(meaning something like the 'missionary urge"? But I swear to God it is qualitatively different from the Sunday tele-evangelist variety). A different but similar way of putting it may be "Aschuschenia svoji prizvannosti" (calling of one's own mission in life). For me, personally, never have I found a clearer intuitive comprehension of these concepts, other than sitting by some railroad track, next to old ladies who sell tomatoes or potatoes, staring at the vast snow-covered landscape of Russia.

In Russian language the word "little stream" (rodnik), and people (narod), and motherland (rodina) all share the same root (rod).

There is an old Russian song that goes:

Brodjaga k Baikaly paxodit
Vjesjelnuju ladku bjerjot
I grustnuju pjesniu zavodit
pro rodinu schto-ta pojut

(Something about being exiled and wandering listlessly around the cold banks of Lake Baikal, raising one's sad voice to sing about the motherland. Incidentally, the lyric was once said to have been a favorite of good old Valdimir Ilych.)

I had attempted to express a similar concept perhaps a couple of months ago, and someone accused me of being an imposter Russian nationalist. The accusation is irritating but understandable, but here lies a different and profound problem.

The problem is this: the whole "missianstvo"
sentiment and all of the adjacent passions related to the Russian land and people had been closely related to and perhaps deeply incorporated into the violent bloodshed of 1917 and the subsequent regimes and their dogmas. Now that an unfortunate page in history has finally been turned, any allusion to the "missianstvo" concept seem to arouse only violently bitter mockery and profound suspicion from too many intelligent Russians.

In the previous centuries when transportation and communication was difficult, Russia could genuinely seem to her residents like the entirety of the universe. We often see, in the writings of some old Russian writers, the concept of "Russia's fate" and the "destiny of humanity" used interchangeably. In such a setup, it is not difficult to understand why the distinction between Russia's empire and Russia's faith often become blurred, innocently or not so innocently.

The days of the empires are no longer. Russia can never again exist to her own residents as though she was the only nation that mattered in this small world. But I presume here to state, even though I am not Russian and have not been there for more than a total of six months in my whole life, that the Russian "missianstvo" sentiment is not the same as the often aggressive Russian empire. It is about a uniquely broad-hearted sense of connection to the one's neighbours and the land, even to everything that breathes on this earth, it is about the ability, by sharing the sufferings of a friend, to transform profound suffering into a memory of sublime beauty, it is about a quiet voice saying to a man crawling and cursing himself in the mud: you may be without a home or motherland, you may be a drunk, a thief, and a merchant of child pornography, but you are not despised, and there is a side of serene dignity in your spirit that will one day shine through, in spite of all, and I will never abandon you.

A man cannot eat and drink and marry a spirit, of course. There is also the question of economics and apartments and salaries and metro and political elections and so forth. But I would like to say that just like a man's or a family's, the fortunes of a nation or an empire do rise and fall, often beyond its own control. And when a man faces the end of his days, he will remember most likely not the size of his house or car, but how he has or has not loved. So it is with a nation, it leaves to the world, primarily, not its borders or arsenals, crumbling or standing, but the beauty and wisdom of its spirit.

This is what Russia has been and will be for me. This side of Russia, I believe, is a treasure not just to Russians, but to everyone else living on this earth, whatever their race or nationality.

A few years ago, I had felt the anguish that may be typical to many immigrants. I saw this poem, and it brought me to tears:

Taska po rodinje, davno
razoblachenaya maroka
mnje sovjersheno vsje ravno
gjie sovjersheno adinokoi

bujitj, po kakim kamim damoi
bresti s kashorkoyu bazarnoi
v dom i nje znayushi schto, moi
kak hospital ili kazarma...

The writer of these lines met a very cruel fate. She eventually returned to Russia to find her husband shot, her daughter sentenced to long prison terms, and herself hanging by a rope on the doorsteps of some bleak kitchen. But she did return. Such was the strength of her longing for the motherland.

I feel obliged to lay out some basic personal information, so as to put to sleep any lingering suspicision of being an imposter. I will be a citizen of the U.S. soon. This result has come after a very, very, wrenching period of hesitation. This nation of largely cheerful people and big shopping malls have generously accepted me, even though I had cursed her no less viciously than Mr. Lex or Ms. Serbia06 on these boards, even though her suburban roads from city to monotonous city remind me so much of that sad poem. For that she deserves gratitude and a healthy dose of loyalty.

I had attempted return to my native country China, as I had also fantasized about re-immigrating to the new Russia. But in the final analysis, many years of living in America have molded me into a sufficiently simple-hearted and naive person, like an American, that I would not survive more than two months in those voraciously competitive new capitalist utopias.

I pray, I pray, that one day, not in the too distant future, enough people from the countries that are emerging from the communist failure, China, Russia, Yogoslavia, will gain enough strength, and genuine confidence about their own spiritual essence, that they can accept and forgive the past with detachment and with compassion, and that we shall hear a different kind of music from those lands, from people who truly respect themselves, whose hearts have grown out of the cycle of arrogance and inferiority-complexes, and become free.

[Straighterway]

oh...

u understand, don't u? a part of what's the "real Russia" all about...could a foreigner ever talk that way? but maybe u r not quite a foreigner...

i wonder...
u say u r Chinese. Maybe this explains it. i myself don't know much about China, but from what i do know, i got this feeling [hard to explain] that the Russian and the Chinese people have something in common... not like similar languages or traditions or religions...but a similar..errrrrrr..."spirit"?

...the depth of suffering and endurance, the glorious sadness and love to their country and each other no matter what, in spite of all the pain...it'll always stay that way otherwise the earth would be a very sad place.

what i've written above probably sounds funny to a person who has no idea what i'm talking about, but maybe u, dear friend, or someone who has experienced the same thing, can see my point.

luv, Evelyn.

[cepguu]

Evelyn, my dear friend:

Thank you so very much for your kind reply. It would make me so happy if this would turn out to be ture on a wide scale, I mean the spiritual affinity between our peoples, as you had suggested. Yet for now, having travelled quite a bit to both places, I have seen striking resemplances between the current atmospheres in our two countries mainly of a rather less noble order: rampant corruption in nearly all businesses and professions, brutal onslaught of economic desperation upon the old, the poor, and the less shrewd, a slimy cynical spirit that grips seemingly a majority of the populations, and a choking indifference to the countinuing bleeding away of the old spiritual traditions that had, respectively, once been the treasure of both of our peoples. Woes upon woes! Dear Evelyn, I see from your other letters a stubborn optimistic spirit emenating through you. Will you share some of that with me? So many, so many fine people from both our countries sacrificed their lives to the decades of tyrannies by the revolutionary parties. People helped and supported and comforted one another through the darkest sufferings. Surely this is not the freedom that many of them had hoped and prayed and given their lives for?! Yours Wang Zhao Yang