Keith Gessen - A Terrible Country

Something about Fishman making fun of the Lenin Library really irked me. Or maybe it was this beautiful girl sitting next to him that irked me. And of course there was the not irrelevant matter of his sleeping with my ex-girlfriend. And maybe too, on top of all that, there was my frustration at this beautiful apartment that Simon lived in all by himself, and at Simon’s wonderful career prospects studying Russian-Czech cultural exchange, becoming himself an avatar of cultural exchange—a speaker of both Russian and Czech who lived in a Czech apartment in Moscow, while I lived with my grandmother, in a room still partly filled with Dima’s boxes, and no one even responded to the résumés and cover letters I sent anymore, and I no longer expected them to.

Anyway, I returned to the table with my beers. Fishman was now expatiating on his theory of Putin’s Russia. “I was just saying to my colleague Richard Sutherland that really the pedagogy around Russia should be focused around totalitarianism. We need to understand totalitarianism. Because the Putin regime is just totalitarianism in a postmodern guise. He’s turning the whole country into a Gulag.”

Ahh, people said. That’s so true.

I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Fishman,” I said, before I could decide not to, “do you even listen to yourself?”

“What?” said Fishman. He looked at me like he’d forgotten I was there.

“‘The people at the Leninka are barbarians. I’m at Princeton. Putin is totalitarian.’ Do you listen to yourself?”

“As much as anyone else does,” said Fishman, looking directly at me. “I’m my own worst critic, in fact.” He was being very cool, whereas I was practically hyperventilating. “But tell me, what is the matter with what I’ve said?”

“You run down Russia so much! You complain about it and make jokes about it all the time . And yet you also profit from it. It’s your job to study Russia and yet you seem to have nothing but contempt for it.”

“Criticism is not the same as contempt. Criticism is part of a dialogue.”

At this point I could still have backed off. I could have let it go. But I had lost my temper. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR RUSSIA?!” I yelled. I don’t know exactly what I meant by this, but what my statement lacked in clarity it made up for in volume. “What have you ever done for Russia, Fishman?”

Fishman looked like he thought I might jump across the table and grab him by the throat. It wouldn’t have been the first time Fishman was physically assaulted by someone in our department. I looked down at my hands. They were gripping the edge of the table—including my left hand, which until now had been holding on to the beer in my pocket to make sure it didn’t fall out.

“I’m not a social worker, if that’s what you mean,” Fishman said, regaining his cool. “But I like to think that people aware of my criticism find it tonic. But tell me, what have you done for Russia?”

“I don’t know,” I said. It was a fair question. “Maybe nothing. But I would like to.”

“Terrific,” said Fishman. “Good luck.”

There was a moment of silence. I looked around the table to see where people were at; I half hoped to find everyone staring at Fishman with the disgust that he deserved. They were not. In fact some people were staring at me instead. Yulia was looking at me with what I can only describe as an inscrutable expression, and others were staring at their plates in embarrassment. But their embarrassment, I couldn’t help but notice, was not for Fishman. It was for me—a guy who couldn’t get a job and came to dinner parties and yelled with little or no provocation at former classmates who had become more successful than he was. And it was hard to disagree with them. I was embarrassed for me too.

I got up to leave. As I did so the Budweiser can finally tipped out of my pocket and onto the floor. We all watched it roll toward the wall and then come to a stop. For a moment I considered pretending that it wasn’t mine, but this was impossible. Fishman was laughing. “Why do you have a beer in your pocket, Kaplan?”

I ignored Fishman’s question. With what dignity I could muster, I bent over and picked up the can. “Russia is sick,” I said, straightening up again. “When someone is sick, they do not need criticism. They need help.”

As I said it, I knew that I was quoting someone. But who? Was it Shalamov? Was it Dostoevsky’s speech about Pushkin, which we’d read over the Thanksgiving break? I couldn’t quite place it.

It was Fishman who figured it out. “‘Russia is sick,’” he mimicked me. Then, bursting into a grin: “Wait, Putin says that. You’re saying what Putin said!”

“Enough with your Putin!” I yelled. He was right, I realized; the words had sort of bubbled up out of me. But also he was wrong. I said, “Just because Putin said it doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

“Hmm,” said Fishman, smiling. Yulia, next to him, continued to look at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read.

Anyway, it was time to go. “I’m sorry to disrupt your dinner,” I said to Simon, who gave a small cry of acknowledgment. He clearly wished for me to leave.

In the hallway it took me a long time to put on my shoes, and as I did so no one back at the dinner table said a word. I finally hopped out into the hallway with one shoe half on; only in the elevator did I get it on entirely. I had held on to the beer I’d picked up, and in the elevator I opened it. Fizz sprayed out violently and all over the sleeve of my telogreyka. I must have lost a quarter of the can. But the rest of it I drank as I walked home from Simon’s in the cold.

What had I done for Russia? I hadn’t done much. I had read many books written in Russian and I had for years taught Russian literature to students—I suppose that was something. But I hadn’t really changed anyone’s mind about Russia. I had not discovered anything new about Russia. To really do something for Russia, as an academic, would mean coming up with a new interpretation, a new way of seeing, that would change the way people talked about Russia and thought about Russia, and that would change Russia itself. This wasn’t impossible. But it wasn’t easy and I hadn’t yet done anything close.

I spent a miserable night in my room and most of the next day, a Sunday, with my grandmother, trying to forget the whole embarrassing incident. That night I played hockey at the weird rink next to the elevated gas line. On Monday, I received an email from YuSemenova @yandex.ru—Yulia Semenova—Yulia from Saturday night. She had pulled my address from Simon’s initial invitation, she said. She was sorry for the imposition, but she was organizing a small discussion of neoliberalism in higher education at the Falanster bookstore in a few weeks, just after the New Year, and if I had time to come she’d be delighted if I could say a few words about the American system. The event was scheduled for 7:00 P.M.; she hoped there’d be a nice crowd.

I was perplexed. What had I said or done to make her think that I would be a good person to address the state of neoliberalism in higher education? Was it that I had caused a ruckus and stolen a beer at Simon’s dinner, and she wanted me to cause a ruckus and steal a beer at her discussion? That didn’t make any sense. Perhaps she had seen, through the noise of my craziness, a good and loyal heart? It seemed unlikely. But there was only one way to find out. I said I’d be happy to go.

ISPENT New Year’s Eve at home, but it was not uneventful.

First, we received in the mail a New Year’s greeting from Prime Minister Putin. It was addressed directly to my grandmother. “Dear Seva Efraimovna!” it read. “May you have a wonderful New Year. Our country is grateful for your sacrifices. We will not forget and we will not forgive!”