Remembering Past Glories

At a time when it would seem Russians have little in the present to glory in, there is ever more reason for looking to the past.

Fresh from celebrating the beginnings of its 300-year-old fleet, this month Russia remembers another ‘golden age,’ the age of Catherine the Great, who died 200 years ago this month. The bicentenary is made particularly poignant by the fact that almost all of the territorial gains made by Russia in her reign — Belarus, Western and Southern Ukraine, the Crimea and Lithuania — have so recently been lost again. However, while we share in the respect held for the great Empress, we do not glorify her, and in our lead feature this month (A Woman of Substance, p. 4) historian Nikolai Pavlenko paints an honest portrait of Catherine, making no attempt to gloss over the seedier sides of her life.

Vigilant readers may note the omission of one important name among the Empress’ entourage, Grigory Potyomkin. Although he was Catherine’s favorite for two years, his role as a statesman merits more attention than we could fairly give him here. Look out for a feature on the ‘Tauride Prince’ in the coming months.

If the weight of the years makes objective assessment of Catherine’s reign that much easier, this cannot be said for a sadder episode in world history — the Budapest uprising of 1956 (Operation Whirlpool, p. 18). Documentary evidence is still coming to light, and 40 years on, what was for the Soviet government of the day a ‘counter-revolutionary revolt’ has become, according to today’s Russian government newspaper Rossiiskiye Vesty, an ‘uprising against Communist dictatorship.’ Historian Roy Medvedev, who has had his differences with both the old Soviet and new Russian authorities, provides an independent view based on his research into the lives of General Secretaries Nikita Khrushchev and Yuri Andropov.

As Russian Life engages two venerable historians for stories on Catherine and Hungary, we wish to congratulate one other, Dmitry Likhachov (photo left), on his 90th birthday. Likhachov’s contemporaries call him the cultural patriarch and living conscience of Russia. A literary critic and cultural historian, Likhachov suffered the hell of repression, and survived numerous attempts by the NKVD to recruit him as an informer. His personal intervention saved many historical monuments earmarked for destruction by the Soviet authorities. Likhachov leads an active social life and participates in many cultural projects of national scale.

It is probably thanks to the likes of Likhachov that such cities as Yaroslavl (Jewel on the Volga, p. 24) have survived so well to the present day. Igor Yunakovsky reports from this promising hub of provincial life with a sense of the future as well as the past.

This is just as well in an issue which looks so much to history, though we have taken further steps to correct the balance with a story on today’s talent. Regular readers will remember Russian Life’s July issue, where we showed members of the Russian Olympic team in Opening Ceremony costumes. Now we present a story by Yekaterina Ignatova of the man behind them — Valentin Yudashkin (Taking Fashion to the French, p. 12), after almost ten years still a major force in Russia’s fashion industry.

Perhaps Russia’s greatest hope for achieving the heights of 200 years ago lies in such people as Yudashkin. For that reason we hope in coming months to present more of those individual success stories that are making Russian life that much more interesting today.