"A Gentleman in Moscow" by Amor Towles. I had this book on my bookshelf for more than four years. It was waiting its turn to be read. The purchase was a result of a serious affliction called tsundoku where a person purchases more books than she or he can ever read and simply lets them sit on a bookshelf.
It's a brilliant, very well written, intelligent, witty, novel written by a man of great talent and erudition.
This is a book you need to savor like a glass of a rarest Bordeaux or a piece of a finest Belgian chocolate.
The main protagonist, Count Alexander Rostov, reflects on his past and lives through his memories. Like Swan in Proust's novel, Count's memories become vivid at the scent, sound or taste of things past.
In 1922 Rostov, an unrepentant aristocrat, is sentenced by the Bolshevik court to a house arrest. For the rest of his life he is confined to the walls of the Hotel Metropol in Moscow. His physical world shrunk considerably, but the confinement opened the door to a much richer regions of intellect and emotions.
This book evoked in me memories from the past long gone. Just like the Count, I suddenly remembered things I thought I forgot. Having studied Russian language, literature, and history in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and having visited Russia for the first time in December of 1980 - a trip that started in Moscow and ended in Kiev but took us with a special permit to the restricted area of Irkutsk and the Baikal Sea in Siberia at -52°F; the Silk Road republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan; Azerbaijan, and Georgia. I had so many memories of my own.
I was able to recall so much of that Russian soul that permeates every aspect of this book. I remembered the taste of Georgian red wine I drank in Tbilisi; I remembered the taste of caviar I ate in Moscow and Baku; I remembered the Olivier salad I had in Kiev; and all the horrible hotels, restaurants, and airports.
No visitor to Soviet Union liked the fact of being watched and never free to go wherever one wanted. The tourist guide would answer all your questions in accordance with the ideology of the communist party that held the Russians in a very tight grip. It seemed that people believed the nightmarish tale of the good life they had in the system that deprived them daily of their humanity.
Despite all this, the Russians were full of pride and admiration for their own culture, especially their classical music and literature. The Kirov or the Bolshoi ballet companies were the jewels the Soviets displayed proudly. And who in the West did not hear of Tolstoy, Pushkin, or Gogol?
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Russians searched for a new identity. The embarrassment of poverty, backwardness, and corruption, the loss of territory, the loss of power, came as a shock to a nation that collectively believed in the success of the communist ideology. (Dissent existed in the Soviet Union but was squashed and severely punished.)
Is it a wonder that the search for a new identity produced even more poverty, more corruption, more crime? Is it a wonder that power hungry dictators would rule in an absolutist manner? Is it a wonder that the new Russia wants to to reintegrate some of its lost territories and regain the importance it once had?
The tsarist Russia was a dangerous neighbor. So was the Soviet Union. So is the Russia of today. In the past, Russia swallowed and subjugated its neighbors. The Soviet Union did the same to countries in Eastern Europe. No one in Poland, Czech Republic or Hungary has ever forgotten this. Amid the largest military buildup in Europe since the Cold War, people in these countries are watching the war in Ukraine in fear and disbelief.
The war with Ukraine must be seen not only from the geopolitical perspective, but also from the historical and cultural one. There seems to be no resolution to the conflict as animosities are deeply rooted in the minds and hearts of peoples so similar and yet so different. Diplomacy has failed completely. Neither party is willing to make concessions to the other.
In his monumental "War and Peace" novel, Leo Tolstoy said that "if everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war." But isn't this the very root of the current conflict in which nobody is winning? The belligerent gentleman in Moscow must understand that if he wants to save the Soul of Russia he must end the war. The leadership of Ukraine must be open to compromise if it wants to save the "souls" of the Ukrainian people.
By Dominique Allmon
Dominique Allmon©2023