DECEMBER 16, 2020 – Even as a kid, I was fascinated by Russia. I’m not sure what was to account for that early interest.
Perhaps it was the slide show during our family’s annual get-together with the Ibeles a few days before Christmas in 1961. Warren Ibele, the dad, was Dean of the School of Engineering at the U of MN, and earlier that year he’d visited Russia on an academic exchange. I was mesmerized by his photos of Red Square, the onion domes of St. Basil’s, and the grounds of Petrovorets outside Leningrad and by Mr. Ibele’s running narrative of a memorable sojourn.
Or maybe my curiosity was piqued by the vastness of the country as it appeared on the world map on my bedroom wall. To counter boredom on rainy, lazy summer days, I’d lie on my bed, fingers interlocked behind my head, and survey the endless border of a country that stretched from the Baltic to the Pacific; from the Arctic Ocean to the Caspian Sea. I knew how big America was, and I knew how much bigger Russia was.
For a college history class I wrote a paper about Peter the Great. The question was whether Peter deserved his moniker. (Fancy a 20th century American undergraduate grappling with that!) The exercise drew me further into the mystery that is Russia. I experienced the classic paradox of learning: the deeper you delve into a subject, the deeper the subject becomes.
Of course, during my entire youth, the Cold War rendered Russia a forbidden place and therefore, an exotic one.
At age 26 I thought with spectacular naivete that I could satisfy my curiosity by traveling across Russia, end-to-end. And so I journeyed—for a month. I absorbed much about the country, but rather than satiate curiosity, I compounded it exponentially. I bought a serious set of Russian language tapes, dove deep into Russian history and literature. I co-authored an article about our trade with Russia—published in an edition of Newsday. I invested in a start-up trying to peddle a CD containing an English translation of Russian commercial law. (A few American libraries bought the darned thing before we folded.) For a time, I considered going to graduate school in Russian studies, getting a PhD and . . . “And then what?” My parents asked. So I didn’t.
I got a job instead, then got married, then had kids, and by then left Russia in the rearview mirror of life. It’s just as well. Had I “stuck with Russia,” I could well have wound up at the Russia desk of the State Department, to be marginalized and demoralized at the very end of my career by the Trumpian water-carrier, Michael Pompeo. Dodged that bullet!
But occasionally I’ll encounter a reminder of my long-lasting “Russian affair.” I’ll even stop and re-establish contact, as I’ve done lately with The Icon and the Axe (see 11/13/20 blog post) and the superb Russian TV series, Zhukov.
Now there’s some TV you’ve got to watch! (Stay tuned.)
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
