Unlikely Visitors

I talked to the Russians a good deal, just to be friendly, and they talked to me from the same motive; I am sure that both enjoyed the conversation, but never a word of it either of us understood.

– Mark Twain

A few years ago, I was surprised to find out that Will Rogers had visited the Soviet Union. The hilarious tales of his travels were published in a slim volume that my father picked up for me at the Will Rogers Museum in Oologah, Oklahoma (it does not seem to be available elsewhere). Needless to say, I thought I would never again discover such an unlikely visitor to Russia.

I was wrong.

It turns out Mark Twain visited Russia (Sevastopol, Odessa and Yalta) in 1867 and met Tsar Alexander II, his wife Maria and their 14-year-old daughter Marie. You can read about it in Twain’s Innocents Abroad, chapters 35-37.

Twain seems to have held his famously quick tongue in the presence of the Emperor, but wrote this elegant and incisive passage afterward:

It seemed strange – stranger than I can tell – to think that the central figure in the cluster of men and women, chatting here under the trees like the most ordinary individual in the land, was a man who could open his lips and ships would fly through the waves, locomotives would speed over the plains, couriers would hurry from village to village, a hundred telegraphs would flash the word to the four corners of an Empire that stretches its vast proportions over a seventh part of the habitable globe, and a countless multitude of men would spring to do his bidding. I had a sort of vague desire to examine his hands and see if they were of flesh and blood, like other men’s. Here was a man who could do this wonderful thing, and yet if I chose I could knock him down.

The Twain-Romanov meeting took place in Yalta, which is where, nearly a hundred years later, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin – each of whom could set ships flying through the waves by opening their lips – met to begin mapping out the shape of the post-WWII world. We touch on this event in our own way in the piece beginning on page 46.

Alexander II’s wife was Maria, and it is her name that today still graces one of Russia’s most elegant and famous theaters, home to some of the world’s greatest ballet – the Mariinsky. Our story on the Mariinsky begins on page 38.

It would be quite impressive if I could now make a direct connection between Mark Twain, the Romanovs and ice skating. But I cannot, except to note that Twain would have delighted in the intrigue and colorful competition which informs our cover story on this topic (page 24).

Similarly, Twain was a great advocate of a free press, and he would surely congratulate (as, likely, Alexander II would not) Ekho Moskvy on their persistent effort to offer a more nuanced view of reality than that presented (through the rest of the Central Media) by the Kremlin. As do we. Our story on Ekho Moskvy begins on page 55.

Other New Year’s treats also await in this issue. I’ll leave it to you to explore and discover them on your own. Meanwhile, let me just wish you a Happy New Year and all the best for the months ahead.

Enjoy the issue.

Paul E. Richardson