Russia A Land For Lovers of Literature By Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Russia is in the news. And it isn't good. But I hope Susan's First Chapter Plus’s peeps will give me a minute to share my memories of it in perhaps its singular moment of glory aside from moments when its historical stars of literature and music were allowed to shine, the times of Tchaikovsky and Pushkin and a panoply of others (Keep reading!). I was lucky enough to be studying in St. Peterburg in that glorious time when "Bush the Younger" was president of the US, Russia had begun to be a democracy, and the people were in the streets eager to talk to us students because— as one of them said in fluent English—"it has been a very long time since we've been able to know what is happening in the rest of the world." So we had our post-Soviet era chat over a bowl of her homemade borscht without fear.
I journaled about this brief visit unaware that things would not go as well as we had hoped that lovely night dining near a window overlooking the Neva. I share it with you today hoping people from every country can begin to think of Russia (and other countries) as a smorgasbord of peoples with an emphasis on the best of their achievements even as we become critical of their politics. "Yesterday I returned from literary neverland. Or was it the day before? Time- and-energy-lagged, I cannot be sure. Still, I needed to share...in spite of a time-lapsed brain, in spite of memories that feel as if they are drifting through a sieve. The place is St. Petersburg, Russia (though St. Petersburg is a place quite unlike the rest of Russia—not old Muscovy, but a vigorous and tender European city). I am absolutely sure that the occasion was a giant St. Petersburg party for writers called Summer Literary Seminars run by Mikhail Iossel, a native of Peter the Great's western-like city. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1986 (and now lives in Canada). The rest, however, is hazy. The city is so full, our writers' program so jammed that I couldn't possibly consume even a fraction of the literary cuisine this city had available.
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