I
As I follow the absurd events in Crimea, I cannot help but think (as I did at the beginning of this post-Cold War of crisis) of the great Russian writer Aksyonov's "The Island of Crimea."
Were he alive, Aksyonov (he and Vonnegut, as well as another, perhaps greater, author, the Ukrainian-born Gogol, had much in common, I'd suggest, in their sense of the absurdity of life, specifically politics) would be the best correspondent to report on the Crimean situation, far better informed (and wise) than parachuted western correspondents in that part of the world, naive journalists (there are exceptions, of course) with their ad-infested pop news sounding so seemingly urgent and solemn with their microphones pushed against their mouths, peddling their so-called "on the ground" reports.
When I see these oh-so-uptight reporters on Tee-Vee or Sado-Masochism -- also known as the SM (social media), I can't help but think what goes through their caffeine minds and jet-lagged bodies: "If it's (name the day of the week), it must be ... yeah, Ukraine."
So, in the spirit of Aksyonov (and I am not worthy of invoking his name), let me ramble on, free of "shut your mouth and get-to-the point quickly" op-ed style, to ramble on the following.
Aksyonov's dispatches from Crimea (if the impossible were possible, or the dead resurrected) would, of course, far surpass the risible Russian government-controlled media on what's happening in Ukraine.
In a weird way, I find Russian gov-prop more intellectually digestible than "Western" pop-news. As vulgar as a U.S "Wheel of Fortune" show, but far more entertaining that PBS, the often unbearable RT (the Kremlin-funded media outlet once known as the artist "Russia Today") TV program (addressed to foreign audiences, including American), is never "honestly" interrupted by "propaganda" (in Western parlance, "time for a break from your sponsor") -- given that RT leaves little doubt, except to idiots, that it is propaganda that needs no interruption to declare that it is propaganda.
I KNOW, YOU'VE "READ" ENOUGH ... GO BACK TO YOUR I PHONES. ENJOY! BEST, JOHN
Good ol 'Putin friend (facebook friend -- ha ha) dyadya (uncle), of course, owns real estate in Manhattan, thanks to his connections in the Kremlin, and he'll take good care of his family (but we need that green card, and bribes won't do the trick). His granddaughter has a job on RT! Then Madison Avenue will call her! Then she'll appear on USA TV ads! Then she'll star in a movie on the gorgeous Russian spy who didn't love me because Volodya invaded Crimea! (Dear departed Aksyonov, I need your help: I am running out of imagination).
Meanwhile (pardon my imagination going out control) the Russian jeunesse dorée [JD] (but by now, years after Papa worked in the Soviet diplomatic service), getting on in years, knows exactly, and cynically, what it (the former jeunesse) is peddling on its RT: propaganda.
Does this JD elite believe its own propaganda? Of course not. That's why it's quite effective at peddling it. After all, the least "effective" propagandists are those who are convinced their propaganda is the Truth.
As for the Russian "masses," tuning in to their homeland programs on TV, they are far more clever -- khitrii, a wonderful Russian word -- than the Putin regime thinks they are. They know their "news" is the latest gov fabrication, but I'd venture to say they soporifically welcome their state's propaganda, as it spares them, perhaps even better than Hollywood movies, of their awful reality -- the kind of failed, post-totalitarian state they are living in, bankrupt Detroit USA writ large. Cheaper than vodka or the drug krododil.
Tsar-worshiping may be a historical factor as well. But didn't we all love, in the USA "homeland," George W.Bush when he invaded Iraq? (Remember the joke, worthy of a Soviet anekdot: "How is George Dubya Bush going to get rid of bird flu?" Bush -- with a faux Texas accent -- "I'm goneuh bomb the Canary Islands).
Moreover, in the USA, can you imagine our dear mainstream media -- e.g., NBC (that brought you that eerie, vulgar Putin-spectacle, the Sochi Olympics, for which whoever owns NBC hoped to make a bundle, may I speculate) -- can you imagine the mainstream media acknowledging that their "objective information" is -- bottom line -- no more than a vehicle for advertising?
Hey, when will these ever-so-sanctinomious USA-corporate media get real and tell us like it is -- that they are working for "The Media Man." Brian, our much beloved NBC "anchor" (to a sinking ship?), I love your jaw and tailor, but plssss give us real news!
NBC's inclined-headed Brian and his company's reports ("and that's the way it is" -- remember Walter Cronkite?) is basically a vehicle to "reach out" (how I hate that euphemism) to consumers and entice them (is brainwash a better word?) to buy, buy, buy, -- crap, crap, crap. So that the stock market can go up (Full disclosure: I own stocks; if I did not, no way I could get by on my Foreign Service pension).
Sometimes I think the USA MSM, with their endless ads aiming to seduce elderly couples (sorry, I meant tired old males) with pills promising instant erections and eternal sexual bliss, is as much a dinosaur as Russian gov media with its "euphoric" visions of a restored Russian empire.
But I digress.
II
On a more serious note, let us hope that the senseless struggle for great power domination in Crimea, that ecologically delicate and fragile jewel of human civilization (with, as people call it in that part of the world, its rare "mikroklimat"), a civilization created out of centuries of cruel and bloody struggles (such is the irony of history), does (the struggle), in fact, belong, in the words of our elegant Secretary of State, in some ways to the 19th century (I suppose Kerry was referring to the Crimean War).
My take, for what it's worth: At this stage the Crimean/Ukrainian "crisis" (let's hope it ends soon, but I doubt it will), is strictly beyond diplomatic (supposedly "rational") control, but that doesn't mean the end of the world or WWIII.
If, speriamo, speriamo (why is Italian for "we hope" so comforting in times of trouble in Europe?), that the shooting by fanatics, on both sides of the Ukrainian political divide, doesn't start.
Unless the situation takes a drastic turn and morphs, tragically, into a senseless civil war (which Putin has no interest in having, right next to his borders -- think of feeding the refugees), the Ukrainian mess will muddle along, with no clear resolution unless -- let me throw this out -- a key question is addressed:
Should Ukraine be partitioned?
But this question, of course, is too "drastic" for cautious dips to consider with any career-threatening seriousness. Will "they," Hillary among them, think I'm Chamberlain and the Suddenland?
Nobody likes a surgeon, understandably so. So, OK, geopolitical gals/guys, how about considering a dentist? Do you want a dental implant? "$5,200 per tooth." That's what I paid, exhausting a large part of my savings. It took me months to decide if I wanted such an outrageously expensive "intervention" (or, as Wall Street would call it, "correction.")
Meanwhile, I no longer have a horrible toothache. Toothless food for thought; so am quite glad (as of now) I chose the implant.
Nearly ten years ago, I suggested that the peaceful partition ("extraction"?) of Ukraine should be on the diplomatic table, and not be dismissed as a geopolitical atrocity/impossibility, in a 2005 article, largely (perhaps rightly) ignored. A far wiser person than I, an accomplished scholar, David C. Hendrickson, recently put it this way:
Nearly all leaders and commentators, realists included, reject the idea of partition. They do so on the assumption that partition would be equivalent to civil war. When America confronted its own secession crisis, Daniel Webster observed that there were not five men in the country who could agree on the borders that would separate the states, and perhaps that would be the case here as well. The West’s policy, however, should not be that partition is entirely off the table. It would clearly be acceptable were the parties themselves to agree to it, as in the Velvet Divorce dividing the Czech Republic from Slovakia.Do think, after all, of U.S. approved partitions -- Germany, Bosnia, Sudan. Not to speak of the "Free World" and the rest of our small planet, which the USA partitioned for half a century (ok, I'm stretching things) between the American God and the Commie atheists.
Please, partition is only an option -- not a solution. Or, how about an inoffensive "thought experiment"?
In the tragic case of Ukraine, "policy-makers" have to think "beyond the boss/box." Beyond, in other words, technical legalities which neither side takes seriously, except as a propaganda device (or, as Americans love to it put it, "truth" and "international law commitments.")
Don't get me wrong, I love (or should I say, to be politically correct, with well-meaning international organizations) "international law." But who's kidding whom? Bush invading Iraq, as an example of "international law"? Give me a break.
USA dips go on and off airplanes pretending to the media that movement is resolution. Meanwhile, grossly overpaid U.S. academics/pundits/ex-ambassadors (the distinction is increasingly blurred, with some rare exceptions) are arguing (think Cohen vs. Snyder) about what Ukraine is all about, as if their learned ivory-tower opinion really mattered/had an influence on the long-suffering and immensely talented and resourceful people living in that so-hard-to-define geographical space.
U.S. "aid" agencies can't wait to get "into the Ukrainian act" given that their budgets are down due to U.S. global repositioning. (Sorry, I don't have the exact budgetary "numbers," so often just another form of USG fiction.) Promotion-obsessed bureaucrats will use the "Crimea" card to get more funding --money which, all too often, never leaves the "inside the beltway" world of greedy contractors.
Meanwhile, politicians -- as ignorant, in the case of Ukraine, as they people they represent -- will exploit the situation in that former Soviet republic -- a part of the world most Americans know nothing about -- to improve their own political fortunes. (Save 'em Ukrainians! Time to get tough on the russkies! And, of course, up, up, up go the "defense" industry stocks).
III
I had the unique privilege to serve in Ukraine in 93-95 as a U.S. Foreign Service officer, thanks to the often-forgotten U.S. taxpayer. As a "field guy," by no means a geopolitical "thinker," I played a modest role in opening, in the Newly Independent States, the only "American House" in that former Soviet republic, Ukraine, despite well-intentioned headquarters plans to have 'em (the American Houses, a la post WWII model in Germany) all over the former USSR.
Surprise, surprise! The center was subsequently (and quickly) shut down by the USG due to "lack of funds." Such is the consistency of American "foreign policy" and our commitment to Ukraine as a "sovereign state."
I'll never forget what Ukrainian persons from all walks of life I was privileged to meet -- with their Gogolian sense of humor -- told me (if my memory serves me right) about Western aid-supported economy "shock therapy" in the early 90s:
One of the things I best remember from my two years (93-95) in that "bridge between East and West" (as some describe Ukraine, seeking a way to define it properly) when it -- Ukraine -- endured a very severe winter, was a visit to the marvelous city of Odessa, a city I love, and so cosmopolitan that it cannot be reduced to being Russian, Ukrainian, Jewish, or whatever.In Ukraine, we got shock but not therapy.
It was so cold in Odessa, in my two-bed hotel bedroom, that I used the mattress on the other bed (if only it had been a charming back-in-the USSR girl; but was ( essentially unmarried then) as a cover to keep me warm. I made it through the night, not fantasizing about Catherine the Great, who a la Merkel, founded this remarkably civilized town by decree in 1794.
Meanwhile, as a non-economist, I cannot imagine how a pittance from a global perspective -- a pathetic 16 billion bucks, the planned EU/U.S. contribution to Ukraine's welfare -- will ever work on behalf of the admirable persons, of whatever nationality/linguistic group, living, tough in all their suffering, in that troubled, disunited geographical expression on our small planet.
BTW, let's not forget the results of a recent CNN poll, which appeared on March 10: By a 52%-46% margin, Americans are against economic aid to Ukraine.
December 8, 1983
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
By Walter Goodman
THE ISLAND OF CRIMEA. By Vassily Aksyonov. Translated by Michael Henry Heim. 369 pages. Random House. $16.95.
THE fictional Island of Crimea - as distinct from the actual Crimean peninsula - and the title place of Vassily Aksyonov's inventive novel, is a sort of Hong Kong, a piece of land saved from the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution. It has since developed into an outpost of the West, the shops filled with goods, the air with freedom. But no one is willing to let well enough alone. Especially not the novel's hero, Andrei Arsenievich Luchnikov - ''Looch the basketball star, Looch the racing star; Looch the youth leader of the fifties, jet-set leader of the sixties, political leader of the seventies'' - who dreams of reunion with the Soviet Motherland.
Luchnikov, editor of the most important newspaper in Crimea, has no illusions about the nature of Soviet society. He reflects: ''Who was the true hero of today's Russia, who was braver - the cosmonaut or the dissident?'' Yet from some mixture of guilt over the desertion of the Motherland by his father's generation, religious faith in the Russian spirit and its redemptive powers and a craving for intrigue and derring-do, he carries forward his reunification scheme to its predictably bitter end.
What Luchnikov observes about his own plot - ''Things get out of control, you know what I mean?'' - applies, too, to the plot of this book. The story veers every which way as this accomplished satirist plays with the mutual attractions and revulsions of a wide- open society that seems to be inviting chaos (there's more than a touch of the United States in Crimea) and a closed society that is engineered to quash every spontaneous impulse.
Mr. Aksyonov - the son of Eugenia Ginzburg, whose own books are classics of Gulag literature - was a popular writer in his country before he was forced out in 1980 after his novel ''Burn,'' about Moscow in the Khruschev era, was published in Italy. He now lives in Washington and this is his first novel to appear in English, in a vigorous translation by Michael Henry Heim. Mr. Aksyonov's imaginary Crimea contains every political element of the 20th century, from Red Guards to vicious reactionaries.
This conglomeration provides the author with plenty of material for gags. While Soviet troops are invading Crimea, the Moscow evening news, which has already been likened to a daily lobotomy, reports on ''the spring sowing campaign, the speech given by the temporary charge d'affaires of the Republic of Mozambique on the occasion of his country's national holiday, and a presentation of awards to veterans of the coal industry.'' Several passages could be skits from a dissident coffee house, such as the sendup of a session of UNESCO, where the emissaries speak in formulas and avoid reality, and a romp in a steam bath where upper-echelon Soviet bureaucrats are portrayed as a Soviet Mafia.
Most of Mr. Aksyonov's shafts are directed at Communism, but capitalism comes in for a few. Now and then he downs both with a single shot. Luchnikov's beauteous wife Tanya, a star of Soviet television, reflects while enjoying the luxuries of Crimea: ''Now I see what makes capitalism so sickening and offensive. They've got everything they could possibly want and then some, but it's never enough.'' So she resolves to catch the first plane back to Moscow - ''my world, a world where you can't get anything you need, everbody's afraid of everything, the real world.''
Most of the characters fit a bit too snugly into Mr. Aksyonov's political categories to be convincing, but they are fun anyway. The most interesting is Marlen Mikhailovich Kuznekov, a melancholy middle-level Soviet official who is deeply loyal to Communism yet is drawn irresistibly to the Island of Crimea, with all its openness and commotion. Kuznekov suffers from a case of divided loyalties, the ideal vs. the real.
An anti-ideological theme runs through the novel. Luchnikov, the Russophile and dissident, asks, ''Will we finally overcome our xenophobia, join the family of man, and cease beating ideologies into one another's heads?'' The answer offered here is not reassuring. In the East, as Mr. Aksyonov presents it, ideology has become a weapon of the powerful to retain the privileges of power. The West, meanwhile, is so racked by conflicting ideologies that there can be no sense of community.
When East and West finally do meet on the Island of Crimea, Luchnikov's hopes and fantasies are exploded by brute might. But they also meet in a happier way in this fiction. Mr. Aksyonov presents America though the eyes of a Russian (Looch is interviewed on television by ''Walter Gesundheit, the program's bore of a host'') and gives us Russia in the idiom of an American, or what is now the universal youth idiom, a prose equivalent of jeans: ''You must be off your gourd.'' The combination is sometimes as bumpy as an American car on a Russian road, but the trip is never dull. ''The Island of Crimea'' proves that detente can be fun.
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