more from russia: museums and memories

Taking a break from conferencing, I spent Saturday morning at the Museum of the Great Patriotic War in Pobedy (Victory) Park.   It was rather different than an American war museum, rather as if the war had ended, say, last Thursday afternoon.   There were streams of kids in one kind of another of scout uniform listening to speeches that had words like pobedy (victory), narod (nation/people), and so forth sprinkled through them.   You could buy models of every conceivable Russian and even German tank, plane, or ship at the store downstairs.   There's even an Orthodox Church, added later, on the way in and supposedly a synagogue down the hill, although it wasn't too easy to find.

It's odd, but the museum reminded me less of the Mall in Washington and more of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, complete with a large memory hall, books with the names of the dead, and a large tower overlooking the building.   The themes are somewhat inverse--it's the hall of Remembrance and Sorrow, i.e., victory then lamentation, whereas Yad Vashem puts the Shoah before the Ge'vurah, although that too is occasionally reversed.    But the sense of immediacy is there, as if it could all happen with insufficient vigilance tomorrow, as if no one is quite complete without going there.

Not that there isn't another side to things.   For everyone raising money for Donbass there are twenty people sitting in cafes listening to American music and playing with their iPhones.  (I've seen the same video about Los Angeles seven times.)   Restaurant entrees have English-sounding names and McDonald's, rather more upscale than at home, does a brisk business.   And even a sense of humor about history: several different pairs of people, one dressed as Lenin and the other as Stalin, meander through Red Square posing for photographs which they don't usually bother to charge you for.

It's hard to get out of your own culture and sometimes you shouldn't try.   When I see celebrations of Putin or when conference speakers talk about the need to protect Russian "sovereignty" and administrative discretion I inevitably wince.   I suppose many foreigners felt that way about Reagan, Bush, and so forth.   But I do think it's possible to maintain  your values without necessarily feeling superior to others or thinking you're necessarily smarter than they are.   Certainly the art, music, and architecture here, especially in the older areas not rebuilt in the '30s and '40s, are second to none.

The other night I attended a Passover Seder in an outlying area near the Jewish Museum.  It was mostly expatriates--the rabbi was from New York--but still had something of a Russian flavor.   Afterward I staggered out into the snow and marveled at the randomness of things.   With a couple of different moves couldn't I be living in Moscow, my father a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, and myself  going to websites where Stalin was Roosevelt, Putin was Reagan, and Gorbachev was a Russian Jimmy Carter?   It's an interesting thought.