The Impermanence of Identity

By Kelly Raftery
 
I lived in Russia for most of my early twenties. I studied at Leningrad State University, worked in St. Petersburg and Moscow and, visited countless other cities and towns as well. I have never stopped being completely enchanted by White Nights in St. Petersburg and never tired of exploring Moscow’s hidden treasures. The cupolas of the Assumption Cathedral in Sergiev Possad, painted a deep cobalt blue with a scattering of golden stars, always leave me deeply awed. 

White Nights in St. Petersburg,
one of the sights I would like to
show my husband, but can't.
Photo by Victor Griagas

I would love to show my son and husband the places that I lived in, places that I grew to love so deeply when I lived there. But, I can’t, I won’t. You see, my husband is not Russian, he is Kyrgyz. To most readers, this means precisely nothing. To people from this area of the world, no further explanations are needed.

Russia is and always has been a multi-ethnic nation. Today, there are almost 200 different ethnic groups living in Russia from Abkhazians to Yakuts. Some people in Russia are white skinned and European looking, including Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians. Others such as Armenians, Azeris, Georgians, and Chechens more closely resemble Mediterranean peoples like Italians or Greeks. Still further east are the peoples of Central Asia and the tribes of Siberia, who are Asian looking, more resembling Mongolians. The tribes of Russia’s Far North are most similar to their cousins across the Bering Strait, Alaskan Eskimos. You can read more about Russia’s ethnic mix in two earlier posts that I wrote here and here.

Jewish victims of Russian Pogroms.

It was not until I lived in Russia full time that I began to understand and grasp the full range of ethnic stereotypes and how these ideas impact on Russian and post-Soviet society. This complex interplay between nationalities and nations is a constant undercurrent that is ignored at one’s own peril. Ethnic hatred and directed violence are certainly nothing new to Russia. My mother’s grandparents fled Tsarist Russia during anti-Semitic pogroms over a hundred years ago. I was always cautious when I lived there, not telling anyone that I was Jewish by heritage.  But I had the freedom to cloak my background and if anyone probed beyond “American,” I could always hide behind my very Irish name.

  
My husband (and millions of others like him) is not as fortunate, as his ethnicity is written in the color of his hair, the shape of his eyes, and the hue of his skin. Soccer fans in St. Petersburg have taunted minority players with bananas and last year demanded that Russian National Champion team, Zenit, “preserve the traditional identity” of the team by not signing dark-skinned or gay athletes. In polling citied by an extensive article on Russian xenophobia, “One in five Russians strongly agrees with the slogan ‘Russia for Russians,’ while 43 percent believe that any measure taken to protect “my people” is good, according to research by Higher School of Economy professor Mark Ustinov. Nearly 70 percent of Russians have negative feelings toward people of another ethnicity, Ustinov’s research found.” 
 
When I talk about my concerns about traveling with my husband to Russian friends, they look at me in surprise and protest, “But, your husband is not like those people!  He is a professional!”  In my mind I often respond that I don't think a racial attack starts with a resume review.


One memorable evening a number of years ago, a Russian friend started ranting about the “darkies” who were despoiling the purity of Russia and continued on in a similar vein for twenty minutes. Once he had wound down, my husband looked him in the eyes and said in a quiet voice, “You do realize I am one of those dark people you hate so much, right?”  Our friend looked at him in complete shock, denied that my husband was “one of them” 
and in all honesty made no connection between my Central Asian husband and the Central Asian migrant workers he despised for ruining Russia.

Imagine my surprise when we were at a company picnic in Las Vegas a few years ago and one of my husband’s co-workers blithely informed me that he was “not a real Asian.”  My husband’s office was made up primarily of Chinese and Chinese-American technology workers and I was shocked to realize that none of them considered him Asian. In fact, they considered him Caucasian. Recently, I was discussing mixed race (Asian/Caucasian) marriages and specifically the phenomenon of white men actively seeking out Asian women to marry, or what my friend called “Yellow Fever.”  My friend is American, of Chinese heritage, and when I asked her if she considered my dark skinned, dark haired husband Asian, she promptly answered, “no.” When I probed a bit deeper, she told me that maybe it was because he speaks Russian that she doesn’t consider him Asian, but she really wasn’t sure. Another friend of Japanese and African-American heritage, who proudly considers herself a “person of color” told me that she doesn’t consider my husband Asian because he is light-skinned.

Imagine the irony – in Russia, my husband could be the target of vicious taunts and possible violence by merit of the color of his skin, the shape of his eyes. Many Russians would not hesitate to point out that my husband’s “kind” was not wanted in Russia. Yet, here in America, he is not even considered a “real Asian” by a considerable swath of the Asian community. Even white friends don’t necessarily consider my husband Asian, which I also find fascinating. Each person’s perception of my husband seemingly throws up a reflected image of the world in which that person lives.
 

Balsam—Curing Russians since Catherine the Great

By Kelly Raftery

It was mid-October 1992 and a group of grad students were going to see the Presidential candidate speaking outside that cold Michigan night. We were all bundled up with scarves, gloves and hats to stand in the cold and as we headed out the door, one of my Latvian classmates showed us all a flask, which she slipped into coat pocket, informing us that it was “balsam, it is like a mitten for your tummy.”  And, as the evening went on the flask was emptied and indeed, we all stayed quite warm.   

Balsam is good for what ails you—no matter what that might be. Cold, flu, low blood pressure, digestive ailments,

Catherine the Great, cured by balsam.

all cured with a hearty dose of balsam. Bottled into ceramic flasks since the 1700s, balsam is rumored to have gained its reputation as a healing elixir from a visit that Catherine the Great made to Latvia. The Empress fell ill with stomach complaints and was given balsam, brewed by a local pharmacist named Abraham Kunze. Catherine’s illness subsided, she was saved (supposedly) from death and balsam became known as an effective remedy.

The recipe for balsam has been and is a closely held secret. Once you open the special ceramic bottle and pour a dram, you will see that it is a thick, black liquid that pours more like molasses than vodka. Balsam is 90 proof alcohol with anywhere from 17 to 23 other natural ingredients mixed in. Among the botanicals that can make up a balsam are grasses, herbs, roots, berries and other fruits. The actual mix is proprietary and varies from brand to brand, but can include linden blossom, mint, ginseng, black peppercorn, birch bud, bilberry, valerian, raspberry, and honey. The taste is bitter and sweet all at the same time, somewhat like drinking cough syrup. Regardless, balsam is on the menu in many a Latvian restaurant, served over ice cream, in cola, or as shots. Apparently, it is a “must do” for the brave and hearty tourist seeking to experience the “real Latvia.”

Riga Black Balzam
photo by Fanny Schertzer

The most popular (and most frequently exported) brand of balsam is Riga Black Balsam that can be found in many well-stocked liquor stores, particularly those in Russian speaking enclaves such as Brighton Beach in New York.

A number of years ago I suffered from digestive issues that took me from doctor to doctor seeking relief. In frustration, I finally consulted a Chinese traditional medicine practitioner, who began my treatment by poking me with needles and then handing me a tiny bottle of medicine that she sold off the shelf of her office. Always a skeptic, I took the bottle home, where it laid in a drawer for a while, until I finally talked myself into measuring out the required droppers of liquid into some water. I lifted the cup to my nose, sniffed delicately, breathed out and then took all the brackish brown liquid in to my mouth and downed it with a quick swallow. I stood in my kitchen dumbstruck and then called out to my husband, “Hey, you know what this stuff is?  It’s balsam!”  It did not have the alcohol content of the balsam that I knew, but it certainly was a similar combination of botanicals.

My stomach issues eventually resolved and that tiny bottle of plants and herbs marked a turning point, a start on the road towards healing for me. I don’t know if it was the healing properties of the herbs and roots or the fact that the taste reminded me of all the times I had drunk balsam over the years. I seem to recall drinking balsam at my wedding in Kyrgyzstan, a local brew made from wild herbs picked in the mountains. With each sip of that medicine, I was reminded of a different time in my life, from that cold night watching candidate Bill Clinton introduce Hillary to my Kyrgyz wedding surrounded by my new family. I have this cough I can’t shake; I wonder where I can buy a bottle of balsam?

Shooting the Moon - Yuri Gagarin, First Earthling in Space

By Kelly Raftery 

Soviet heroes, including Yuri Gagarin were interned in the red brick walls
(denoted by the black plaques) of the Kremlin near Red Square.
Photo by Bern Rostad.

In Moscow, a visit to Red Square is a must. When you are there, you will see the worldwide symbol of Russia, St. Basil’s Cathedral’s colorful domes, stand at the spot where Ivan the Terrible beheaded his loyal guard, gawk at the expansive commercialism of the central department store, GUM, and just across the square, you will see a squat little red granite building that has the name Ленин emblazoned across the top. It has been many years since I was a tourist in Moscow, but in my day, the official guide led the group into the cool dimness of Lenin’s Tomb, past the preserved leader (wax, not wax –the debate continues), and back outside again. A long pathway takes one back to the main square. To one side is a deep red wall with black plaques denoting the burial or internment spots of Soviet notables, on the other side are graves, including those of Stalin, Brezhnev and Chernenko.

Internment or burial under, near, or in the actual historic red wall of the fortress was a place of great honor granted to very few individuals. One of those is perhaps one of history’s greatest travelers—Yuri Gagarin. 

Yuri Gagarin,
first person in space.

Without the bravery of Yuri Gagarin, there would have been no Neil Armstrong, no “Houston, we have a problem” and no International Space Station. Gagarin was the first man to be strapped to a rocket and catapulted into space. Yes, as much as we celebrate our own moon landing, the simple fact is that the Soviets beat us into space initially. Not many Americans know that fact or anything about the man who is a Soviet hero. Today, the crew of the international space station still leaves earth from the same place Yuri Gagarin did in 1961. Americans would not visit the moon until years after this accomplishment. 

The Russian archive entry on Gagarin states, “he was the first man to see that the earth was indeed round, indeed mostly water, and indeed magnificent.” What an incredible journey that must have been for a child of a rural Russian village who spent years of his youth in a 3x3 meter mud dugout after the Nazis confiscated the family home and sent his elder siblings to Germany as slave labor. Yuri Gagarin’s father was a bricklayer, his mother a milk maid on a collective farm in southern Russia. 

Having left home to continue his education, Yuri Gagarin learned to fly biplanes as a teen-ager; he was later drafted into the Soviet military, which taught him to fly a MiG. At the time Gagarin was serving, the Soviets had begun their search for pilots for their space program. The diminutive Gagarin (five feet two inches tall) was among around twenty pilots chosen for the initial training who went through extensive physical and psychological testing before being narrowed down to just two men—Yuri Gagarin and German Titov, both short men who were better able to fit into the Vostok capsule. Gagarin would go on to make history.

 

The Vostok-1 Capsule.

On April 12, 1961, the Soviets launched Vostok-1 into space, with 27 year-old Yuri Gagarin on board. The Vostok capsule was hurled into space at a speed of about 5 miles per second. Gagarin orbited the earth one time, his entire flight lasting a mere 108 minutes from beginning to end. He described seeing rivers and geographic terrain from space and commented on the odd feeling of weightlessness. The capsule had been packed with supplies in case Gagarin landed somewhere far away from civilization and had to walk back.   

The Space Race had begun. Yuri Gagarin returned to earth a national hero deemed too valuable to the Soviet Union to be risked on any further flights. Gagarin traveled the world and graciously accepted the cheers of adoring crowds. Always a social drinker, Gagarin at some point developed a problem with alcohol, drinking heavily, even by Russian standards. In 1968, Yuri Gagarin was killed during a training flight, an incident that has become the focus of speculation and conspiracy theories. Gagarin left an incredible legacy behind, including a pre-flight tradition that continues on to this day. 

At the last minute, Gagarin hopped off the transport on the way to the capsule, wanting to relieve himself one more time before leaving earth. To this day, departing (only male) space explorers (of all nationalities) get off the bus and take a quick moment to grace the back tire of the vehicle with urine before continuing on to the launch pad. If you don’t believe me, you can see a photo of this tradition. 

Yuri Gagarin is among the great travelers of history, the very first earthling to have seen our big blue marble from the perspective of space.

Meet the Muscovites: A Review of “My Perestroika”

By Kelly Raftery

In my lifetime there have been enormous sweeps of history, most notably the Collapse of the Soviet Union, which I wrote about in a previous post. A number of years ago, I used to torture my undergraduate students by pretending that all the work they had done in class was being thrown out and a new teacher would be arriving with an entirely new syllabus and would be assigning them new grades based on completely different material. Once we got through the shouts of “No fair!” and “We will protest!” I asked them to write how that exercise made them feel. Then we started our unit on the end of the Soviet Union. 

How I wish I could have shown them “My Perestroika,” a documentary film about five classmates from Moscow School Number 57, who came of age in the waning days of the Soviet Union. Intimate interviews of each of the film’s subjects trace their histories from idyllic young childhoods to adulthoods in a nation on the cusp of change and to their lives today, over twenty years after the Soviet Union ceased to exist. The film is, at its essence, the sweep of history told through the lives of five people who were childhood friends.

Mikhail Gorbachev, last leader
of the Soviet Union

We are first introduced to Lyudmila (Lyuba) and Boris (Borya) Meyerson and their young son, Mark, in the small Soviet-style apartment where Boris was raised. The Meyersons are both history teachers at the school they attended as children and are thoughtful and philosophical about their own histories in relation to the political change that their country has seen. What is most striking at the start of the film is Lyudmila saying that as child she would watch the news from America, see the shootings, the violence and think to herself, “Oh my God, I am so lucky I live in the Soviet Union!”  You know at this moment that this film is going to make you see the other side in a very real way. 

Boris Yeltsin in an iconic photo during the Moscow Coup.
image by www.kremlin.ru

Boris’s best friend Ruslan was anti-establishment as a young man, forming a punk band, and today is a bohemian musician who lives outside the system, teaching and playing music for cash. Olga, the “prettiest girl in school” had her life turned upside down when the banker she was supposed to marry was killed via car bomb. Olga was left with her young child homeless, jobless, and with no resources. Today she lives with her sister in their childhood home and services automatic vending machine style pool tables for a living. Andrei was the true believer as a child, wanting to be a border guard when he grew up, until he was refused membership in the Community Party (the only way to gain success under the old system) on the grounds that he “might commit a crime” after they admitted him, and that would be bad. It was at that moment that he understood how corrupt and ridiculous the system was. Today, Andrei is the owner of a chain of prestigious clothing shops that sell imported shirts and ties from France. 

While the portraits of the lives lived against a backdrop of dramatic historic events are fascinating, what is more compelling about the film are the home movies and archival footage from the Soviet era that are constantly juxtaposed against the footage of Russia today. The end of the film features modern footage of young Mark Meyerson playing badminton alongside home movies of his father doing the same. The images cut back and forth as the birdie sails across the net in different eras, a game seemingly being played between father and son.

The Soviet footage shows a Moscow devoid of advertising, with limited traffic, whereas Moscow today is awash in billboards and neon, and Olga opines that her dream is to have someone else do the driving for her. Whereas all the children started from essentially the same equally Soviet place, the economic divide of today’s Russia is evident in the apartments shown in the film, from Andrei’s spacious, modern Western-style apartment to the Meyersons’ small but comfortable living room, which also doubles as a bedroom. 

There is so much for Americans to learn from this single simple understated film about the last twenty years in Russia that I cannot recommend it highly enough. Take the time to sit down and watch the fascinating stories of these five people who lived through some of the most dramatic moments of history of the 20^th century, you won’t regret it. 

Watch “My Perestroika” on Netflix, or visit the website at www.myperestroika.com to find out if there will be a screening near you soon.

In a Bind

By Alli Sinclair

Billions of dollars, perhaps trillions, are spent every year on hair products and styling. It’s a lucrative industry and is a classic example of us humans obsessing over our noggins. This fascination isn’t new. In fact, the ancient world took this one step further—by altering their skulls.

Head binding, also known as artificial cranial deformation, dates back to 45,000 BC. The ancient Egyptians, Syrians, Maltese, Russians, Germans, and Australian Aborigines have all undertaken various forms of skull “enhancement” by binding their skull or placing cradleboards around a baby’s head to change the shape of their head.

Zip over to the Americas, and you’ll find the Mayans, Incas, and the tribes of the Chinookan and Choctaw people in North America also undertook the custom of deforming skulls as part of their culture. The Choctaw, Chehalis, and Nooksack Indians practised head flattening and on the coastal of Peru, not far from Lima, the Paracas culture had an array of altered head shapes.

Scientists have discovered at least five different shapes of elongated skulls in different cemeteries in the Paracas region. The most remarkable being a site called Chongos, not far from the quaint town of Pisco where the famous cone-shaped skulls were discovered.

Archaeologists specialising in the Mayans have discovered how altered skulls vary, depending on their geography. Skulls found in the lowlands had a slanted appearance, while skulls discovered in the highlands had an erect shape. They’ve even unearthed skulls that have a division down the middle and two distinct holes. The Mayans believed that every object has an essence, including the elements. While the mother was giving birth, the Mayans ensured the house was closed so the evil wind couldn’t harm the baby and as the baby’s soul was no yet tethered to the baby, the infants were even more vulnerable. Binding the baby’s head was akin to creating a roof over one’s head, and therefore a form of protection for the young child that would stay with it forever.

Some archaeologists believe the act of altering one’s skull was to create a “desirable” shape to make the person more aesthetically pleasing and on Tomman Island in Vanuatu, where it is still practised today, elongating the skull signifies intelligence and being closer to spirits. Whether it was for social status, such as an Incan nobleman, or for an affiliation with a tribe, the act of altering one’s skull causes great controversy in the archaeological world and certainly makes for some interesting discussions. Whatever the reasons, humans have always taken great care to alter their bodies, including their hair and head. So next time you go to the hairdresser, be careful what you ask for!

A Chechen in Kyrgyzstan is not Kyrgyz

By Kelly Raftery

First off, let me say I mourn deeply for the victims of the Boston tragedy. One of the three fatalities was a little boy exactly the same age as my son. His sister, who has been gravely wounded, danced the same steps as my child. That family could have been mine standing on the street, any one of the victims could have been you or me.

Listening to the media coverage today, I can’t help but cringe at the errors that are being presented as fact about the former Soviet Union, its peoples and cultures. Let’s start with geography. From 1917-1991 there was the Soviet Union, or USSR. The USSR was made up of fifteen Republics, which included the Kyrgyz Republic, the Kazakh Republic, and the Russian Republic among others.  The Soviet Union was one of the world’s most ethnically diverse countries, home to over 100 distinct peoples, who were “encouraged” to adopt Russian over their native tongues, renounce their religions in favor of official atheism and live an appropriately Soviet life. 

A map below outlines the various countries that make up the former Soviet Union today. As you can see, fifteen countries emerged from the Collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. 

The fifteen Republics operated somewhat independently and when things began to fall apart in the early 90s, it was easy to divide up the Soviet Union into its constituent parts, despite the fact that there were many other ethnicities that also wanted their own sovereign states. In fact, an initial treaty drafted under Gorbachev allowed for eighty separate states to be formed out of the Soviet Union, but this document was set aside during Yeltsin’s August Coup. Among those embryonic nation states never to be formed was the Chechen-Ingush Republic. But, dreams of an independent Chechnya would not die easily and a separatist movement was formed with the goal of an independent state for Chechens. 

Now, let’s look at the map below – of southern Russia and the Caucasus and talk about some of the geopolitical and economic aspects of this area.  First off is a geographic map of the region, showing the three nations that emerged in 1991, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. The map also shows southern Russia, including Sochi, host of the 2014 Winter Olympics and Chechnya, right next door. The second (color) map I am attaching shows oil and gas pipelines that run between the rich oil and gas deposits of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan and the markets of Europe. Please note that one major pipeline runs right through Southern Russia, jogging around to avoid most of Chechnya. The Russians were not and are not willing to let that extremely important piece of land between the two seas be anything other than part of Russia. The fierce and bloody war over this land has dragged on for decades between the Chechens and the Russians and President Putin was elected the first time on the promise that he would never, ever allow the Chechens to gain independence.

The other area of the world that has been much talked about is Central Asia. I have heard today the accused bombers being described as “Chechen” and “from Kyrgyzstan.”  I have seen people on social media claiming that these men are, therefore, Kyrgyz, having been born in Kyrgyzstan. Please look at the map at the top of this post again and note the distance between the two countries. It is 2,500 miles between Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan and Grozny, Chechnya, about as far as Boston to Salt Lake City, with an inland sea or two and some mountain ranges thrown in for good measure. Chechens have a completely different ethnic heritage than the Kyrgyz. Quite simply, Chechens are to Kyrgyz like Brits are to Greeks.  Different languages, different beliefs, different cultures and perspectives on life.  And yes, Kyrgyz and Chechens all practice Islam, but the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland are all Christians, right?

Which brings us to our history point – why were these Chechens in Kyrgyzstan?   Our story starts with Stalin who ruled the USSR from 1924-1953, and was one of the people who actually drew lines on the map creating the borders for the Soviet Republics. The story goes that Stalin saw ethnic identity as a possible rallying point in Central Asia – as well he should, the Basmachi resistance movement in the area did not die until almost a decade after the Socialist Revolution – and so, when drafting the borders of the Central Asian Republics, Stalin was careful to include considerable ethnic minorities in the various Republics. What this means in real terms is that there is a sizable ethnic minority of Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan, a Tajik community in Uzbekistan, etc. The theory was that if any one group got organized to resist Soviet power, the leadership could take advantage of traditional ethnic tensions and create local unrest, thus taking the focus away from a revolt against Moscow. 

Stalin threw a few more ingredients into this cauldron of potential ethnic strife when, during World War II, he began to deport entire nationalities to Central Asia. The Chechen and Ingush peoples were accused of collaborating with the Nazis and deported to Siberia and Central Asia en masse. In February, 1944, villages were sealed off and people sorted into categories. The infants, very old or sick were deemed “unsuitable for relocation” and massacred immediately, the rest were forced into trains and sent to Siberia, the Kazakh Republic or the Kyrgyz Republic. Between thirty and fifty percent of the Chechen and Ingush populations perished in the first years of the deportation. After Stalin’s death in 1953, Khrushchev “rehabilitated” the Chechen and Ingush and they were allowed to return to their home region, but they had been disenfranchised to such a degree that it was not a terribly attractive proposal for many. Additionally, people had already built new lives in Central Asia and chose to stay in their adopted homelands, which is why Tokmok, a small village outside of Bishkek, still has a  Chechen population today. It was this village in which the Boston Marathon accused bombers were born and spent part of their childhoods. Perhaps their family just stayed after Stalin’s deportation, perhaps when the war in Chechnya between the Separatists and Russia’s forces in the 1990s became intolerable the family went to other relatives or friends still living there, perhaps they made a conscious choice to relocate to Kyrgyzstan after it became an independent nation.  I don’t know.* 

When I lived in Kyrgyzstan I always posed the same question to the locals if they were not ethnically Kyrgyz, “So, who sent your family here, Tsars or Soviets?”  Never did I get the answer that an ancestor had just decided to relocate to Kyrgyzstan on a personal whim; it was always exile of some sort.

So, the Kyrgyz have played host to any number of peoples who did not want to be there, but who were sent there:  Russians, Dungans, Chinese, Volga Germans, Tatars, Uighers, and others. It is not unusual for an ethnic Uzbek or Korean to have a passport from Kyrgyzstan in modern times, but that does not make him Kyrgyz, either. So, while these young men were “from Kyrgyzstan” they were likely born there because Stalin committed atrocities against their people almost seventy years ago.  What complicated webs history weaves for us; her strands connecting the sins of long ago to the tragedies of today.

*  According to this article, the Tsarnaevs were in Kyrgyzstan as a result of Stalin's deportations, left after the 1991 Collapse of the Soviet Union, then sought refuge from the war in Chechnya and returned to Kyrgyzstan in 1994.