Difficult to be a Writer

The final end of life lies not in politics, but the final end of life is concerned with the proper ordering of power to the end that it may enhance and not destroy human life. Only a fool hasn’t learned in the twentieth century that the political order in which people live deeply affects the personal lives they lead.

– William Sloane Coffin

The astonishing biographies of Osip Mandelstam (page 37) and Leonid Dobychin (page 60) give one pause. “What an incredibly difficult time to be a writer,” we think. Forcing our heads down the rabbit hole of history, we gawk in disbelief at Stalin’s phantasmagorical world of denunciations, mass imprisonments and terror.

We chuckle at the nostalgic fiction offered by Linor Goralik and Stanislav Lvovsky (page 33). “How odd to be so affected by one’s leaders’ lives,” we think, imagining the teetering Brezhnev, waving a stiff paw at a passing May Day parade.

We marvel at Sergo Mikoyan’s first person account (page 45) of the lead-up to Khrushchev’s Secret Speech. “How could one not have denounced Stalin?!” we wonder. “How could one not have understood the scale and scope of repression surrounding them and revolt against it?”

We Americans are fortunate to live a comfortable distance from the sort of all-pervasive fear that gripped Soviet life for much of the 20th century. (Our McCarthyism was but a pebble to the Soviet Union’s gaping gravel pit of terror.)

But talk to Bosnians who escaped the genocide of the 1990s, or to South Africans liberated after centuries of apartheid, or read what is going on in Darfur, Ethiopia, Iran, Cuba, Tibet and a host of other places, and it is not hard to see that Evil and Fear did not leave town after decimating Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, they just picked up and moved to a more hospitable neighborhood.

So why are we continually fascinated by these Mikoyans and Brezhnevs, these Dobychins and Mandelstams? Hopefully it is not simply armchair historianism. Hopefully there is a dose of prophylactic curiosity in it: we hope by reading and understanding these people’s lives and times we can better understand our own. More to the point: we hope to better recognize truth and evil incipient.

The thing about evil is that it rarely just shows up, Voldemort-like, announcing itself full force. Instead, it tends to infect slowly and stealthily, masquerading behind things like “security” or “the greater good” or “if you are not with us, you are against us.”

The pursuit of truth may be our only protection, our only hope of catching the early signs of That Which Shall Not Be Named. But, as the eloquent William Sloane Coffin, quoted above, so aptly noted, “‘The pursuit of truth’ aptly implies that a gap exists between ourselves and truth. But what’s hidden and evasive? Is it we or truth? Maybe it is we who evade truth’s quest for us.”

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The arrival of a new year is often a time for wiping the slate clean, making resolutions, reflecting back on the year that has passed. With this first issue of 2006, we have undertaken a bit of our own slate cleaning. We have begun a subtle but important redesign of our magazine. Our goal is to make it fresher, more readable, more flexible and engaging, both visually and content-wise.

This is process, not an immediate result. More changes and improvements (we hope) are in the cards. But this is your magazine too, so be sure to tell us what you think about what we are doing, and places you would like to see us go that we may not have thought of. And, as always, enjoy the issue.

Happy New Year.