You had to be in Russia in the '70s to believe it, and if you were there, this happened to you too - forming deeper friendships in less time than you would have ever believed possible. In Jewish Luck, I alluded to "the other friends," the group that Vera deemed unsavory. Here is the story, the prequel to meeting Vera.
On my second day in Leningrad, I dragged my friend, Robyn off to the "Museum of Atheism and Religion", housed in the beautiful semicircular Kazanski' Sobor, an Orthodox church in a previous life. Behind us stood two Scandinavian-looking men - one had twinkling blue eyes, long blond hair and a bushy blond beard. Except for his blue jean jacket and the warmth of his smile, he could have stepped out of the pages of a Tolstoy novel. The other appeared more ragged and seemed more likely to have stepped out of an opium den. Pasha, the Tolstoyan character began asking me where I was from in America since it was obvious that Robyn and I were from the US by, well, everything - our expression, posture, clothes, haircuts, glasses. He was most interested in the music I liked. Pasha handed me an aerogram from a female friend in Boston. I liked him immediately. Zhura was a bit sketchier, perhaps it was his stringy hair and missing teeth. Americans are fussy about that. When it was our turn to enter, the young men guided us through the museum which they knew so well, enjoying our outrage at the dioramas depicting a time when the world's major religions were practiced by quaint and superstitious people. It was chilling. Everything was presented as though religions had died centuries ago, about the time of the Ming Dynasty perhaps.
Group spirit was high by the time the informal tour was over, and we agreed to accompany Pasha and Zhura on the metro to the suburbs where all buildings looked exactly the same. The wonderful Soviet film The Irony of Fate is based on the premise that over a drunken New Year spree, a man winds up in a different city at his own address in an identically decorated apartment and thinks he is at home. We entered Pasha's room, a 9'x11' studio, where he cooked dinner and regaled us with stories and jokes. "You have to have a sense of humor to stay sane," he said. We drank to Kissinger, to friendship, to the beginning of our classes. Pasha then suggested that tomorrow I bring some more friends.
The next night I complied with Pasha's request, and with a few of my friends, met more of Pasha's group, including Volodya, a handsome, slender Jewish man with just the right tortured spirt to appeal to me at that time. Our fine quality of being American gave us movie-star status. Pasha served as my host, entertainer, cook, but also as my interpreter, etiquette coach and philosopher. He let me know when my questions crossed the line - World War II and Stalin. "Not everyone here is trustworthy." he said. There were many threats to friendship here - the major ones being jealousy and greed. In those early days I attached myself to Pasha like a mute golden retriever, following him around and listening as best I could to decipher the colloquial Russian and mat' (see previous blog). Conversations moved quickly from joking to serious inquiry depending on the amount of alcohol. The more alcohol ingested, the more sobering the topic.
I was lucky to have such generous friends. Of course there were perks for them. If a restaurant refused us entrance as they invariably did, I could pull the foreigner card and they might begrudgingly serve us. I could supply treasured Western cigarettes, cognac, and other prized products from the foreign currency store, which would not admit Russians. However, that's not what my friends wanted. They wanted knowledge of the US, the true story of daily life, of education, crime, politics, economics. Most sacred was Western music. It spoke to them. Our feelings of rebellion against the Vietnam War and Watergate era politics were nothing compared to the deep dissatisfaction and bitterness they held toward their own leaders.
There was such scarcity that whatever one obtained was precious and emblematic. Zhura showed me his frisbee which he tended with care, dusting it and hanging it in a prominent place. His other treasures included books published during the thaw under Khrushchev - a biography of the popular head of Leningrad's Communist Party, Kirov, who was killed in 1944, no doubt by Stalin's order. Another book contained biographies of major artists murdered by Stalin, whom each of my Russian friends could name. Scratch the surface in any family, and you'll find the story of their relatives taken away by Stalin.
Though Pasha and his friends daily took risks that could land them in jail, such as fraternizing with us, they refused to be fearful. It was their personal dissidence, their personal freedom. Beneath the humor and the bonhomie was tension. I asked Pasha when I thought he was overspending "Do you think you're a rich man?" He answered, "I am when I have money." There was no sense of saving or having a plan for the future.
Pasha did marry his American friend in Boston. Zhura immigrated to Israel. The following summer, I offered Volodya the chance to escape, but he opted to stay. Thirty-seven years later, I saw him again. As we rode in his imported BMW on the way to the outskirts I was reminded of the buildings that looked so similar. The difference is that he lived in the penthouse of an apartment house constructed by his own company. The apartment was decorated uniquely to fit the personalities of his family members including their Maine Coon cat. Modest as always, Volodya said "Because of so much contact with our American friends and US culture, we were prepared for life here when communism fell apart." The Irony of Fate or Jewish Luck?
