Everything moved more slowly in the Middle Ages. Time and the universe were far less known – the sources of mystery and wonder, rather than the objects of science and math – but perhaps better understood. Stories traveled by mouth, people traveled on foot or, if they were lucky, on horseback. Journeys were more metaphorical, more all encompassing.
Arseny (aka Ustin, Amvrosy, Laurus) is a healer, born and raised in the midst of plague, educated in the traditions of herbalism and on the power of words to heal: “There was something in Arseny that eased lives that were anything but simple.”
The tragic death of his beloved sets Arseny off on a journey of discovery and redemption – something beyond dangerous in the late fifteenth century, even for a healer. It will take him to Europe and Asia, then back to Russia again, in something far more than a single lifespan or individual could encompass.
Indeed, the journey spans lands and times in ways that modern sensibilities cannot easily grasp, so it is best to suspend disbelief and enjoy the tale. And Vodolazkin is a beautiful storyteller (this book won both of Russia’s top book prizes; Vodolazkin has worked at the revered Pushkin House in St. Petersburg for over two decades and is a expert on medieval folklore and history). His fluctuations and riffs on language are entertaining and enriching – carefully transmuted into English by the able Lisa Hayden, and Arseny’s journey is a rumination on what it means to be human, to be Russian, to spend a lifetime seeking atonement.
This is an epic journey novel in all the best traditions. There are countless colorful characters, exciting twists of fate, and profound truths in the protagonist’s words and deeds. And, through it all, there is a distinctly “Russian flavor” – something like The Idiot meets Canterbury Tales meets The Odyssey.
Highly recommended.
The nineteenth century Great Man Theory had it that singular individual’s actions or decisions guided history, their charisma, wisdom or political skill shaping the geopolitical landscape like a carpenter shapes a chair rail.
While one cannot discount the impact of individuals nor the attraction of reading biographies, it is generally considered more true by historians that singular leaders are shaped by the societies from which they arise, seasoned by their times, forged by their experiences and mistakes.
Influential leaders, like say those who have 80+ percent of their nation’s popular support, are more like simulacrums – reflections of the nations they lead, worldviews made flesh. Yet the reflection goes both ways (after all, they are “leaders”): the head of a nation can reflect back on a country and reshape it in his or her image. If they are successful, that is.
If nothing else, this important new biography of Vladimir Putin speaks to the power of a single individual to shape (or hinder) a nation’s progress, of how the imprint of one’s past and experiences shapes their nation’s future, of how astoundingly well Putin reflects what much (not all, of course) of modern Russia is or would like to be.
Myers provides a balanced, well-documented (albeit with occasional transcriptional missteps), and insightful portrait of one of our century’s most influential leaders, one that any Russophile would be remiss for passing by. Most significantly, Myers illuminates the lesser-known, darker corners of Putin’s Leningrad past, of the imprint that World War II, poverty, martial arts, and service in the KGB (and later FSB) had in shaping his political style of a tenacious, self-righteous, fiercely loyal, and uncommonly cool politician, but also one who has public relations savvy and a forthright, if sometimes crude, political tongue that goes over well with average Russians.
We follow Putin’s unlikely, meteoric rise, aided by being the right person (loyal to a fault), in the right place (FSB, Security Council), at the right time (end of the chaotic 90s, Yeltsin, war), and then Myers provides a skilled exegesis of Putin’s 15-year tenure in the Kremlin. Here we see the earlier imprints coming out during crises (and many of the colleagues he assembled in St. Petersburg following him to the highest echelons of power). The actions that seem to so puzzle and surprise Western leaders and observers seem understandable, clearer, almost exactly what one would expect given what Putin – er, Russia – has been through over the past six decades, and where it is headed.
As Myers quotes Gleb Pavlovsky, “We talk about Putin too much. Putin is our zero, a void, a screen where we project our desires, love, hate.”
The implosion of the Soviet Union toppled not only the powerful, centralized state and the teetering command economy; it also upturned social structures. Gangs, bandity, gruppirovki – informal, mostly harmless groups of youths that have been around all through Russia’s modern history, gave disoriented young men, who previously might have transited into the working world, as Stephenson writes, “a structure that was available, familiar, and well adapted to developing new projects of accumulation.”
Absent the previous controls of the Strong State, the groups created protection rackets, parking lot scams, extortion and a myriad of criminal and semi-criminal operations that allowed many of the generation of the 90s to use their gang or group affiliations to accumulate wealth, cement social connections and build power bases for later advancement. As Stephenson notes:
“The generation that started their adult lives in the 1990s now occupies the top positions in the government, business, academia and the media. Among the members of the State Duma, leaders of political movements, leading businessmen and university rectors, we can find many of those who rose from the streets or progressed in life via unsavory collaborations with bandits.”
They brought with them a code or “ponyatia” that governs behavior in a manner starkly different from that of a law-based society, and that is more like a watered down version of the code of the vory v zakone (“thieves in law”). The gang – a “male militant tribal alliance that is cemented by quasi-kinship obligations and loyalties” – sees itself as superior and separate from society, having its own social order and not answerable to society’s laws.
To see how all of this is significant and relevant, one merely needs to look for the stamp of these social groupings on Russia’s clannish political culture, on the mutation of Soviet-era blat into the rampant corruption infesting state and privately-owned businesses.
As a result, Stephenson’s book is as revealing a look at the origins and nature of Russia’s new class of business, social and political leaders as was Milovan Djilas’ analysis of the post-war class of Soviet leaders.
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