By Elena Volkova, Moscow State University

Being Russian

University Fatherland

By Elena Volkova, Moscow State University

 

I was born on the day the University paid out salaries. That is why the morning of my birthday I usually spent at the Department of Comparative Literature where my Father - Ivan Volkov - worked. I ate chocolate, that the kind secretary Nina Petrovna gave me, while my Father stood in a line to get his salary. Then we went to the huge “Children’s World” store to buy a birthday gift; to the confectioner’s – to buy a birthday cake; and to Eliseevsky grocery store – to get a pineapple! In my childhood the University seemed to be a Wonderland, and the secretaries were Fairies who ruled the Kingdom. One day, walking along the corridor of the Philological Faculty, I saw an angry secretary driving gray-haired professors out of the office. “There are too many of you here inside!” she shouted at them. “My plants don’t grow well because of you!” I was sorry for the poor professors and wanted to share my chocolate with them.

We used to live in a small town near Moscow. My family was the first in the town to move into our own flat, where the kitchen was given to my father for his studies. It meant that we cooked meals on a kerosene-stove in the dark bathroom. Maybe it was because the kitchen was turned into a study that formed some epicurism towards reading in me: since then I have been treating books as meals! I want either to taste them, or to chew slowly, to savour, or to swallow as quickly as I can. When I was a schoolgirl I felt shy to say that my Father was a University professor. Filling forms, I wrote that the occupation of my Father was “teacher”, because there certainly were teachers in the town but there were no any professors except for him. Several days a week, my Father went to some mysterious world, the name of which – University – not many of my friends were able to even pronounce properly.

My Father taught Literature to prepare me for University entrance exams. Every Sunday during my last year in school, exactly at 10 AM, he solemnly put a sheet of paper on the table with three topics in Russian Literature for which I was to write an essay in four hours. He set the time and left the door of my room open so I could not take any book from the book-shelves around. The best mark he had ever given to me was “two” – unsatisfactory. All the letters that I had ever sent to him came back – with all my mistakes corrected with red pencil. However, his own replies were kind and full of sparkling humour.

The Philological faculty

I was the best pupil in secondary school and, probably, one of the worst students in my first year at the University. I experienced a great cultural shock. Frankly speaking, I hardly understood Professor Rozhdestvensky’s course in “The Introduction into Specialization”. I was very glad when some boy asked him a question, which I certainly shared: “Why do I feel that I am a fool at your lectures?” The Professor replied, “This is a good feeling to have in the face of the Humanities. I wish you to keep it as long as you can, my young friend”.

 

The lectures of Prof. Takho-Godi in Classical Literature struck me dumb with the abundance of names, titles and characters. I was a Lilliputian in the world of giants, whom I wanted to reach, to climb up to, so as to understand the strange language they spoke.

The most difficult and the “coldest” Department was that of English. They taught us to pronounce English sounds properly the way, perhaps, animals are tamed in the circus. We practiced each vowel for long hours, and repeated one standard text for the whole school year, every day, from morning till night, as if it were a prayer: “The weather in England can change very quickly. One day last week I went for a walk in the country. When I started the weather was beautiful: the sun was shining and there were no clouds in the sky…” We studied English as a dead language: we didn’t hear any native speaker, except on audio tapes, where, again, it was not any natural speech, but professional acting for us to imitate the way actors spoke on the stage. The life of the English Department itself was quite theatrical: in the centre of the “stage” Prof. Akhmanova stood, surrounded by her “royal court”, who smiled only to her, and almost never – to us, poor students. The English and the linguistics she developed for us to study was called “akhmanism”, and as I learned later, had very little to do with the language spoken in Great Britain. Anyway, the English Department was a good school of pronunciation and a hard school of life, compared to which, the rest of my professional experience was as sunny as the morning when “I went for a walk in the country” promised to be.

It happened when I was a third year student and it was truly a miracle: an English professor entered the room smiling, her face was friendly, she had very warm manners and spoke fluent “human” English. She introduced herself: Svetlana Grigorievna Ter-Minasova. In several minutes she filled the class with the spirit of confidence, creativity and freedom. It was the first professor of English whom I accepted with all my heart. The first home assignment she gave us was not to read “The Forsythe Saga” (we had been chewing for two years and were sick of by that time) but to make our own Lesson of English and to be ready to give it to the group. I still remember the first English lesson I gave in the University. It was so exciting to feel that you were not a trained being, but a creative one. Prof. Ter-Minasova inspired us to think, analyze the language and to create the text of your own. Unfortunately, she taught us for only about two or three months, but I still live on the memories of them.

In the third year, I took a special course in American Literature which I liked very much for that desired spirit of freedom I needed so much at that time. Prof. Andrey Gorbunov became my life-long supervisor, and later – my godfather, for it was he who opened up my spiritual life. His lectures and his faith brought some deep sense into my life. The words of the Christian matins “The light of Christ enlightens everyone”, that used to be inscribed at the entrance of Moscow University before the Revolution (and are back now), became close and clear to me. Later I met many University people in Church, who were seeking for truth. In Church I understood the reason for that coldness, snobbism and arrogance which upset me in the University. The rational mind consumes the human heart. Talent, unfortunately, causes pride and vanity, envy and intrigue. To my mind, these are the main weaknesses of the University community.

My Father died in 1995. Students of Philology called him the “Merry Dean” (the nickname he was proud of), because of his humour and joyful laughter. When the requiem service was going on in St. Michael’s Church in Moscow, his face suddenly relaxed. May God grant eternal peace to him and many years to the faculty he devoted his life to.

Faculty of Journalism

 

I was a postgraduate student of the faculty for three years in 1984-1987 and then taught Comparative Literature there till 1995. The head of the faculty was “the longest dean” of the University – Yasen Zasursky, a civil courteous man, who even under communism was able to create the atmosphere of democratic freedom and respect in the University. I was always absolutely free to choose writers and books for my lectures. I took it for granted until some day my friend from another university called and said: “Please, come to teach literature to my department. We shall struggle together against the division of Romantic Literature into revolutionary and reactionary trends!” It was in 1990 when freedom seemed to become the norm of the new life in Russia.

I was happy to work at the Faculty of Journalism in the age of perestroika, when mass media got a golden key able to open all the locked doors and raise all recently forbidden problems; sometimes a journalist, as if he had a magic ward, was able to help the poor and the persecuted. The Faculty was full of enthusiasm, but the ideological courses, like the History of the Communist Party, the Philosophy of Communism etc., were still compulsory and students were glad to take courses in Literature that became the area of free thought and analytical writing. In 1984 I taught Literature to the two groups (of radio and TV journalism), which I fell in love with. They were brilliant, loved reading, easily caught ideas, were active in discussions – I enjoyed every minute spent in class with them. Now I am happy to see them on TV, to listen to their radio programmes, to review their doctoral theses, and to believe them to be my University children.

Russian Gulliver in America

In 1993 I and my 11 years old daughter Maria went to America to spend a most wonderful year in the cow state of Wisconsin. Four little towns raised money to invite a Russian specialist in American Literature to see the country she had only read about before. It was the initiative of Peggy Riemer, a mother of four lovely children, who read my letter to a local school superintendent and decided that her children needed some “Russian education experience” in the middle of America. We made good friends and since then she and her husband Bill consider us their Russian family. They really became very close and dear to both of us. I hope to see them in Moscow some day.

During the school year I gave more than a thousand classes, lectures and speeches in 28 schools, three universities, great number of other places to all sorts of people: from kindergarten up to Lion clubs. Americans welcomed us as loving parents would treat their adopted children: they brought clothes and furniture, taught me to drive, showed the country to us. Almost all the businesses and clubs donated some amount of money to the Russian Bear committee that organized our visit, and, as a result, everybody wanted to see the two “Russian bears” and to learn something about the mysterious Russia they have never seen and knew very little about. I worked in two shifts: 5-6 classes in school from 8 am till 3 pm, a break, and an evening speech in clubs, churches or houses. And every time I entered the room there mostly were people who saw a Russian for the first time in their life. My ultimate task was to touch their hearts, to make them love Russia, to melt the ice of the cold war, to erase the fear they used to live in. Since then I roughly divide all the foreigners into two groups: those who are able to feel compassion towards Russia or to love her and those whose hearts are indifferent. But even those cold-hearted would embrace me in tears and call me a sister in Christ.

The funniest part of my work was answering questions at the end of the speech:

- How much vodka do you drink every day?

- How much does the clothes on you cost?

- What is the colour of Russian people?

- Were you afraid of us as we were of you?

- How many of you live in one room?

- Do you have any religion in Russia?

I remember the school where I was asked to give five classes in

Russian culture. I planned to speak on Architecture, Art, Music, History, Language, and Literature. My slides with Russian golden domes impressed children greatly. “Is that real gold? How much does it cost?” – a boy asked in silence. After my first class, the teacher came up:

- What are you doing? We asked you to tell us about Russian culture, not of Art!

- What do you mean by culture then?

- Well, what you eat, wear, what kind of cars you drive, what teen-agers do in their leisure time.

It was the year of 1994. The only thing I was able to say that there

was nothing interesting about what we ate, wore and drove. It was great Russian art which we called culture and were proud of. In 1992-1993, my university salary was $7 per month, and when I passed through beautiful flowers and books in Moscow subway I dreamed I could live eating books and drinking the fragrance of flowers.

In the University of Milwaukee I heard some scholar praised

for being able “to understand great Russians – Dostoevsky and Tolstoy”. In American Orthodox churches “Russian Enlighteners of America” – St Innocent, St Herman and St Tikhon – are mentioned at the end of every Liturgy. Russian orthodox visitors find very warm reception in American Orthodox communities were we are treated as missionaries from Holy Russia.

Americans are child-like in many respects. Hundreds of faces passed by, I best remember elderly people with the faces of innocent children: a 92 year old woman collecting dolls and her husband who turned his basement into a children’s railroad… My tragic Russian experience made me feel an old woman among untroubled children.

Having come back to Russia I often asked a question to God: “What was Thy plan when Thee put those two different civilizations on the opposite sides of the Earth?” It was a kind of reply when I was invited to the Department of Comparative Literature and Culture at the Faculty of Foreign Languages.

Faculty of Foreign Languages

I was delighted to learn that the Dean of the faculty was my favourite professor of English – Svetlana Ter-Minasova. She had filled the faculty with that wonderful spirit of family, confidence and creativity which I appreciated so much being her student back in the 1970-s. The Faculty was young, full of energy and was growing fast into a mature expert in intercultural communication. I soon realized that I finally found my Fatherland, my own island of Ithaka to work on.

Prof. Ter-Minasova confessed some day that she didn’t want the faculty to become a corridor to the West, because saw her mission in training good specialists for Russia. To fill students’ hearts with love towards this country Prof. Ter-Minasova motivated professors to start various courses in Russian culture. The Head of my Department Prof. Valentin Fatuschenko prepared the basic course in Russian Studies called Russian World and World Civilizations. My seminars for the course I divided into three sessions: Russian Orthodox Tradition, Russian Literature and Russian Idea. I have enjoyed teaching it very much, because I believe that the ultimate task of the faculty is to train specialists who would be able to present their own culture to the West, especially to bring high Russian culture, because when the iron curtain fell “bad things flew fast” - Russia and the West mostly exchanged the worst things they had. To improve the intercultural situation we should show the best sides of both civilizations trying to lift the level of communication, to melt the ice of negative stereotypes so many people still share here and in the West.

Once in Norfolk, Virginia I was going to give a public lecture in Comparative Russian-American Studies. I took the floor, put a red babushka on my head, said that Russian grannies still told fairy-tales to theirs grandchildren and told the one I had made about Russia and America:

“Once upon a time there lived Mother Land and Father Heaven. They had a lot of children, boys and girls, and all of them were very talented. When the children grew up Mother Land gave each of them a piece of Land, which She called the Country and Father Heaven gave a piece of Heaven which He called the Church. Mother taught children to love their land and every leaf on it, Father taught them to love one another and their neighbors. The two sisters were born very big, grew up very fast and had very strong characters, so the parents gave them the biggest pieces of the Land and the Heaven. The elder one was often sad, in tears and deep in her thoughts, the younger one was active and happy. So they were called Russia which means Crying and America which means Smiling. Russia was talented in Literature and Art: she built beautiful churches, painted icons and wrote big novels. She liked praying and reading for long hours and didn’t care much about her Land. Father Heaven liked Russia very much but Mother Land was often angry with her. America was talented in Technology and Agriculture, she liked working on Land and inventing new Machines. She was a happy child and loved to draw smiling faces everywhere: on cups and plates, on walls and doors. She was a fun girl: she believed that life is given for nothing but having fun. America was an apple of her Mother’s eye and often criticized by her Father. Both daughters adored their parents, loved and helped each other, but Russia could never understand why America was always happy when the life was so sad and America couldn’t understand why Russia didn’t work as much as she did. Mother and Father often quarreled about their two daughters and soon got divorced. The happy life of the family came to its end. The Cold War started, which made sisters enemies and placed their countries on the opposite sides of the globe. Since then we have two sister-countries opposed to each other, with a long history of the family love and hatred behind them. Once in a while they try to melt the ice of the Great Divorce, visit each other and then live long years on the warm memories of the brief homecoming party. But they cannot be good sisters forever because for those who have different talents and divorced parents it is very hard to understand each other». Our Faculty is to help them…

When I shared the smiling/crying idea with my students, they said: “Do you believe in the American smile? It’s theatrical! There is no love in it! Look at their eyes: they are cold!”

I quoted Peter Davidson in reply:

But icy eyes and tightness around the smile

Are marks enough to know your brothers by...

And then I paraphrased Murphy’s words from “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest”: “ At least they try! Try to smile, try to be friendly when we don’t even do that!”

I myself have been trying hard to make my own classes as smiling and serious as I could. I think that Smiling Seriousness, or the Smiling Sublime, might be the right melody of the Russian educational tradition, while the Faculty of the Family Spirit could be the right place where Russia and the West may meet in peace.