lesser expectations

In the weeks preceding my previous (and first) trip to Russia, I believe I was writing about the poetry of Russian folk music, the spirit of the Russian language, and, embarrassingly enough, the Russian soul. Last night someone told a story about a Middlebury student who is about to go abroad to Yaroslavl’ for the first time. Apparently when asked about his expectations, he answered that he hoped Russia would make him a better person. My friends, Russians, and a former Russian professor, laughed hysterically. He will return home cynical, or injured, but in no way a better person, they are sure.

My sense of Russia fluctuates greatly with my mood, as it used to. But it no longer fluctuates between a dark obsession and a giant land of poetry. Now, in my worst moods, I picture Russia as simply forever foreign, and in my best moods I imagine the land and the people being accessible to me. My expectations are more rational, if not more mature. And as I write about Russia now, and think about it, I do not have the urge to wax lyrical. But I am not dissappointed that my impressions have changed. This will not be a year abroad in an unknown city with new friends and a Russian family. This year will be connected to my life at home, and I hope to be in more control, not simply letting Russian life live me.

The evolution of my feelings about Russia strangely mirrors Russia’s feelings about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who died this summer. Exiled in Vermont for twenty years, the Russian writer who first presented the world with a thorough portrayal of the Soviet gulag system thought of himself as a prophet who would, after the fall of the Soviet Union, return to Russia and guide the country towards its former greatness. I believe that for many years Russians themselves regarded him as a symbol of the depth of Russian culture and, dare I say, the Russian soul. But, by the time he returned back to Russia in 1994 with his Tolstoyan beard and authorial prophecies, he was waved off as a fool whose severed roots left him ignorant of contemporary Russia. He further damaged his reputation with the form of his return: Solzhenitsyn did not fly through Europe into Moscow. Instead, he flew across the pacific to far eastern Russia where he boarded a train, and, in a regal processional, slowly made his way west to Moscow. David Remnick, in his book Resurrection, quotes an article from Russia’s Nezavisimaya Gazeta: “Until now only the sun has dawned over Russia from the east. Everything else has come from the west. Now there is a second: the sun and Solzhenitsyn.”

Perhaps the Russians, like me, are tired of depth and romance. Maybe they crave a more rational, if prosaic, form of life. Or maybe they don’t care to inspire poetry in American students, in students who revere the Russian soul, or who believe that Russia will make them better people.