VICTORY OVER THE SUN?
Robbed Memories and Armata Tanks
When I was ten, I had to iron my triangle-shaped, blood-red young pioneer scarf especially well on May 9th.
True — my mom made me iron things every morning.
Every night I had to cut a white nylon collar and cuffs off my worn brown dress with dull scissors, wash them by hand in the sink with dog-smelling brown soap, dry them on the line over the night, and then iron and sew them back in the morning, before school, when it was still dark. I hated the smell of freshly ironed cloth and burned holes in the scarf. My fingertips hurt from the sleepy needle and often bled on the way to school, on the tram. I sucked on them and dreamed of flying. It was all grey and drab.
But — on 9 May the whole country ironed and sewn. It felt a bit fairer.
And — I also got to wear a puffy, lacey white apron with tiny wings. Holiday apron. Like a cloud or a cream cake. A treat compared to the everyday black apron — that one felt like it was made of black woolen wood, coarse, itchy, and stale.
And, there were red banners and balloons everywhere so it was so bright and joyful!
It was not just about the apron and balloons. I believed in goodness. Like most children, I had a craving for justice and the fairy tale victory of good over evil. At ten, things were crystal clear and just. It felt good.
Here is how it happened (I knew): Long, long ago, way before I was born, there were bad, bad men in Europe — evil men. The Nazis, the fascists, the Germans. I saw them on television. They screamed: “Handehoh! Shnel! Shnel!” and always had German shepherds with them.
They tried to kill all Russians. Russians were good because they were Russians and also Communists and not capitalists. They had open and handsome faces and kind eyes — on television and said, “Hitler kaput!” Brave and strong, they killed all the Germans. A lot of Russians died, though. That was awful and sad. I cried and wrote poems about them and drew pictures.
My grandmother’s mama, papa, and a young brother starved to death in Leningrad during the siege. My grandfather’s mama and papa were shot in Ukraine by the Nazis. (No one ever said that it was because they were Jewish but it didn’t matter.)
All my friends’ families also either starved or were shot. That felt normal. I was like everyone else.
Those who survived had medals.
Lots of medals. My grandfather — father’s father, from Odesa, Ukraine — had them. I still have them here, in America, in a pretty but broken box.
My other grandfather didn’t have medals.
Later he told me that he was captured by the Nazis but was miraculously saved by the Russian officer who had lied that my grandfather was Russian.
I didn't understand most of it. Who was he if he was neither Russian nor German? (I only had a vague yet distinct notion that we were Jewish and therefore different. We spoke Russian. There were no religions in the Soviet Union or in my head. We looked a bit different than most of my friends — bigger noses. Men didn't drink like in other families. And our names were just a bit different. It was not good because other people didn’t like Jews. Maybe it was because of the noses. Nazis were bad not because they hated Jews — how would it be different from anyone else? most people hated Jews, Russians, for example — but because they wanted to kill Russians. We never heard the word HOLOCAUST.)
Actually, it was all really confusing, but only if you started to think about it. At ten, I didn’t think much about it. I just felt about it, and I was sad. I liked things clear, and I didn’t like my nose. And I wanted my grandfather to have medals.
In the evenings, on 9 May, everyone in the streets drank a lot of vodka. Many drunks slept on the asphalt and in puddles or their own urine if it was warm.
Sometimes it was still snowing, and then men drank and sang songs inside. They had medals on their lapels, smelled like vodka, and looked like heroes to me.
Once in a while, someone would mention Stalin, but it was also confusing. Stalin was bad, but not as bad as Hitler, obviously, and then, Stalin won over Hitler.
(In the fairytalish Soviet mythology, things were simple: good vs. evil. There could be no evil vs. evil, right? So Stalin had to be somewhat good?)
It was getting more and more confusing.
When we say nostalgia, it is often about time and sometimes about the place.
The only nostalgia I can think of is the state of mind — however, it would be another lie in the kingdom of lies. Because I lied that things were clear.
Nothing EVER was clear.
Even as a small child, I always felt the tear and the split in the porous fabric of Soviet history, with all its black holes and blind spots and loose ends and sudden silences in the kitchen when you walk in to drink rusty warm water, and papa suddenly switches off the radio that speaks in a foreign — German? Hitler kaput? — language and looks into the window at the dark snow.
Children sense adults’ silence. They make it their own.
And so it happened — and not just to me. The whole nation grew up with numb places in their collective psyche. Like a Japanese geisha in training, feet tied up tight to prevent growth. Like Plato’s cave people.
Then, after the Soviet Union collapsed, more confusion arrived. “Good” turned out to be “bad.” Stalin, definitely, bad. Worse than Hitler. Killed fifteen million people — or more. But my grandfather’s medals had Stalin on them… Didn't my grandfather know that Stalin — ?
By the time I was ready to ask questions, those to be questioned were dead. Again, I faced silence. I had questions for the dead. I felt cheated. Angry. Robbed of my memories. Robbed of my truth.
I left.
It was too confusing, and people didn’t like my nose, and I got tired of the puddles of urine in the streets. Many things changed but not the drunk stupor on May 9th. No one ever argued about it — of course, the veterans deserved to be drinking so hard. It was Victory. Victories are to be celebrated.
For twenty years after my departure, the reality-or-history was hard at work.
The meat grinder of time kept churning people, facts, and fates without me — as it always did and always will.
Suddenly, Stalin was good again. Or, was he?
And, there was — is — Putin. Handehoh.
Hitler, thankfully, was still bad.
And, lo and behold, the 70th anniversary of the Great Victory has arrived. In the best tradition of the Russian futurists and absurdists, history has arrived in the shape of a new Armada tank grazing its way across the Red Square like the iron from my childhood nightmares.
This could be easily the new scandalous futurist opera…
And in my own little theater in my head, I can see it — along with tanks — a small oblong iron object, my torture tool from childhood. It is there. It is probably still reigning supreme in the dark, soap-smelling apartments of the country I did not choose, invincible, glorious. For the young pioneer, scarves are gone, but ribbons are now in — St. George ribbons, also called Colorado beetle ribbons, for the color scheme.
They are the symbol of a new Russia. Good, strong Russia. And they are everywhere. On vodka bottles. On cars. On cats.
And as it often is the case, with one minuscule loop of obnoxious color, everything just falls into its place — the medals with Stalin, long gone tulips, Armada tanks, German shepherds, dictators with a thick mustache, thin mustache, no mustache…
There is so much vulgarity in it. There is a word in Russian for this kind of vulgarity that does not have an equivalent in English. Just like Russians don’t have a word for privacy but Japanese have many words for suicide and Eskimo — for snow. Each language develops those semantic growths to accommodate its people’s minds.
Poshlost — a vulgarity banal, flat, sleazy like a smile of a used cars salesman and a motivational speaker cliche. Salinger once wrote that kitch is not a kitten; it is an image of a kitten with pink ribbon in a movie. Because God did not create kittens this way. (Well, this might be the only context where I refer to God but Salinger nailed it.)
Poshlost and propaganda always go hand in hand and always oppose high art. Both use ready-made images and signals to solicit a predictable, programmed emotional response — always plain, one-dimensional, and devoid of any human complexity.
The cluster of hot, pulsating, painfully sweet aliveness, which is poetry and art are their main enemy. Such mysterious, dark, dangerous luxury needs to be surgically removed as it is a plague that can spread. Instead, propaganda, with its poshlost offers simple, bright, easily digestible, pureed and recognizable, and therefore comfortable, simulacra. Colored ribbons, blingy clinking medals with heroic man’s profiles, symbols, and paraphernalia that like a Pavlovian bell never fail to provoke packaged feelings in the well-conditioned population.
Love your puppy. Love your mother. Love your motherland. Love your president. Hate your enemy. Kill your enemy. God save you! God save Russia!
Dark sweet paroxysms of Dionysian intoxication or Apollonian geometric cold sunshine of gold — both are packaged in plastic, sealed, air and waterproof, and preserved for the consumers conveniently.
And, like a shadow of a giant iron, an Armada tank crawls from the collective psyche and over the bloodstained cobblestones of the Red, red square of the world, garish yellow and black ribbon pinned to its side playfully and sliding off obliquely and terrifyingly — like a fake yellow rose off a torn corsage of a drunk child prostitute — a steel caterpillar ready to devour me, you, anything on its victorious way — where?
And I am sad, again. I am not sad for myself. In America, they really like my nose. They even like my poems and stories, occasionally. I got a new home and a new language. But today, I am sad for my grandparents and their parents and all those who did starve and get shot during that terrible, real war — the war buried underneath the bling, ribbons, and new dictators’ portraits… Even their memories — robbed.
