On the whole, what one experiences does seem imperial, be it in monuments to the many coexisting Vladimirs of the Russian conflicting history. You can sense it in a church, in the Ural Mountains dividing Europe and Asia, where the Bolsheviks brutally murdered the Romanovs, Russia’s last royals; or in Magadan, on the Sea of Okhotsk, where a newly built cathedral stands on the site once occupied by the local Supreme Soviet. You can discern it in Russia’s coat of arms with its double-headed eagle, whether depicted in amber in Kaliningrad or carved from rare red marble in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. You can even perceive it in a Buddhist temple in Buryatia, when a monk declares with all seriousness that Russia has two thrones, one for the chief lama here and another for Putin in the Kremlin.
This is the Russia of the twenty-first century, so very different from what it was during the communist decades, yet in some way ever the same, unchanging. From the White, the Baltic, and the Black Seas all the way to the Pacific Ocean, the president presides over a neo-Eastern Christian empire—a new Byzantium, if you will—and the majority of Russians continue to applaud his sweeping imperial ambitions.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My utmost gratitude goes to my late mother, Julia Khrushcheva, to whom this book is dedicated. She first made me think about Kremlin politics, its relations to literature, and pretty much everything else. One reason I completed the journeys related herein was to show her that traveling in Russia was not, as so many liberals like her in Moscow believe, such a frightening affair. Initially a staunch opponent of the venture, she soon became a great champion of it. She eagerly awaited my phone calls, during which I would describe every city we visited and tell her the funny stories we accumulated. She was delighted that I would visit some Stalin-era Gulag labor camps. “Grandfather would have been so proud of you,” she said, referring to Nikita Khrushchev and his legacy of de-Stalinization.
In June 2017, when we were almost halfway across the country, my mother was killed by a train in Moscow. The rest of the trip was, for me, an exercise in survival, perseverance, professional obligation, and constant inner dialogue with her about life, Russia, power, people, the Gulag, and literature—particularly the work of Mikhail Bulgakov, the author whose satirical writing helped Russians like me understand Stalin’s Soviet Union of the 1930s. When we set out to our first cities, Kaliningrad and Kiev, she encouraged me to see people the way Bulgakov would have seen them—as individuals trying to survive state oppression.
I would also like to remember my sister, Ksenia, whose death from cancer in winter 2016 became one of the reasons for my travels. This book is dedicated to her as well. I wish to acknowledge the immense encouragement of her stalwart husband, Igor Makurin, a former journalist who knows Russia well, and to express my gratitude and compassion to Ksenia’s children, Maria and Nikita. I now consider them my children.
Special thanks go to Barbara Paca, my wonderful friend, and now a sister really, for her patient listening, thoughtful suggestions, and unwavering support. After the death of my mother, Barbara became a critical and compassionate sounding board. I also would like to thank Nadezhda Azhgikhina, a Muscovite friend of mine and a journalist colleague, who has made invaluable suggestions to me about our Russia story. She has traveled extensively around the country and generously put us in touch with many of the people we met and interviewed along the way.
I am enormously indebted to Steven Lee Myers of The New York Times, the author of the best book on Putin, The New Tsar, and the newspaper’s former Moscow bureau chief, for his kind words of inspiration—in fact, the idea for this book arose from my conversations with him—and for his crucial and careful comments on the manuscript.
I would like to thank my New School mentor Michael Cohen for being one of the early readers of many chapters and for providing some important observations, and Philip Logan for his constant encouragement and support.
My sincere appreciation goes to our agent, Sonia Land, for her backing and assistance, and to Daniela Rapp, our fastidious editor at St. Martin’s Press.
I would also like to thank the following people (in alphabetical order) who were kind enough to share their views on Soviet history, Russian politics, and American perceptions of it: Peter Hoffman, Mark Johnson, Kenneth Murphy, Minerva Muzquiz, Alla Shevelkina, and Jeff Wasserstrom.
My profoundest gratitude goes to Vladimir Putin, Russia’s longest-serving president, for providing us all with endless material. He has been a constant source of fascination. I do thank and admire the Russian people, my people, for the remarkable patience and endurance they have shown throughout the centuries, though I hope in the future they will learn to surrender less to their “czars.”
And lastly but most importantly, I thank Jeffrey Tayler, my tireless companion and coauthor. It was a pleasure to make the journey together.
I would like to thank Nina Khrushcheva, my coauthor, for conceiving the idea for this book, researching the places we visited, and arranging our meetings with people there. Nina’s curiosity about Russia was the prime mover for this entire project. Her intellect sparkles on every page. It was an honor to work with her. My gratitude also goes, as usual, to my longtime agent and friend, Sonia Land, for her faith in me and her encouragement. And I would like to thank Daniela Rapp, our editor, for her diligent efforts and useful suggestions about the text. And of course I would like to thank my wife, Tatyana, for putting up with my absences during our journeys. She remains, always, my reason for returning home.
PHOTOS
