I recently returned from a very short trip to Moscow. I accompanied my son, Matthew, who recently won a Fulbright Fellowship which will allow him to pursue graduate study there for the next ten months. Despite the brevity of my visit, it was a compelling experience because, like all truly compelling experiences, it forced me to think about myself. 

I must admit that I was not an easy tourist. The Russians are still leery of too much individuality. I knew what I wanted to see during my too brief visit. However, when I finally realized that it would not be possible to find a group tour of the theaters and artists' residences (the manager kept insisting we would go from the Bolshoi to the Kremlin), I hired a private guide.

Everywhere I went I encountered monuments to Russia's great literary figures. Outside the Moscow Art Theatre is a statue of Chekhov . Plaques dedicated to the great artists and playwrights associated with the theatre decorate the apartment building reserved for them first by the Tsar and later by the Soviet government. I saw Chekhov's home , and Gorky's home , and the church where Pushkin was married. Then I saw Pushkin's statue .

It is difficult to explain Pushkin to an American. He is the soul of Russia. Every Russian child studies Pushkin. Every Russian adult can quote him. When I asked my tour guide why the Russians paid such public tribute to their writers, he thought for a moment and said,

As a people, we Russians have suffered greatly. These writers celebrated
our spirit even while we suffered. We rose above our daily troubles through
their words. They gave us the best part of our lives.

One young American told me that a Russian friend had asked her who was the American equivalent to Pushkin. My young friend did not know the answer, and she came to me because she knew I taught literature, and she was sure I could give her an answer. I could not.

We sat at dinner and talked about Twain, and Hawthorne, and Robert Frost, but I could not assert with any assurance that every American would know these authors as a Russian knows Pushkin. Yes, they would have read Huck Finn or The Scarlet Letter, but they would not have taken passages to heart, to quote in moments of turmoil or joy. As a nation, we do not respect our literature. Somehow, it is elitist, or idealistic, or useless. You can't fix anything with it. America would rather have an engineer, perhaps Henry Ford or Bill Gates, as its voice. This wounds my soul.

I teach literature because I respect what Faulkner calls its ability to help man
endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and
hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the
glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it
can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail. (Nobel
Prize Award Speech)

We are a great nation unable to articulate our own greatness. 

Dancing Bears

I must admit that I felt at home in Moscow. It is very much like any other European city. Typical city blocks are bisected by wide streets that absolutely teem with traffic . Yet just when you forget that you are one-third of the way around the world, the onion dome of a church pops up into view over the rectangular buildings. You walk into a grocery store to find elegant chandeliers and stained glass windows . And you descend into a Metro station to find yourself in a marble hall with mosaic walls and detailed ceilings worthy of a palace or a cathedral. 

Although the churches in the Kremlin are exquisite, I felt most as if I were in Russia the day we went to Ismailovsky Park. Moscow is a city encircled by a ring road and a river, and dotted with many beautiful parks. Ismailovsky Park is outside the ring, but it is no less wonderful. On weekends, there is a flea market. My tour book said, ìdon't miss this.î I've never been so glad I followed a guide.

I got off the metro and began the walk into the park. I was reminded of the park in my home town where there are four soccer fields, and the children play weekly games at these parks. It was very familiar. Then I saw the dancing bears. And, suddenly, I was truly in Russia.

At the entrance to the flea market was an enclosed performance area populated by a man and a woman in bright red folk costumes . Behind them were the bears: brown, fuzzy, and very large. The man had just been performing with his bears and was now talking to the crowd. The sign said that if we ìfed Mishka,î we could have our picture taken with him. This was actually a request for money, since we would not be allowed to give food to the bears. Their diets were a matter of grave concern to the trainer. The sign said so.

Frankly, I did not want to go into the pen with Mishka, but I did want his picture. I asked my son to explain to the gentleman that I would feed Mishka if I could take his picture with the bear. 

I put my money in the box, and Mishka went right up on his hind legs and applauded me.

I know that it is not politically correct, but I was charmed. I remembered all those times Ed Sullivan brought the Russian bears onto his show. We watched with both awe and patriotic jealousy. How did they train those animals? Why was there no American bear that could do those tricks? 

Now, here was The Russian Bear. And here was I, an American, standing with him and laughing with him. I was sharing the moment with the Russian men, women and children all around me, and we were one. 

There were other moments in Ismailovsky Park when I felt one with the people around me. I discovered that I could bargain here just as I once did in the markets in Israel. I heard the folk singers, and I discovered the folk art of Uzbeckistan and fell in love. Then I heard the balalaika. A woman in a kiosk was playing a Russian folk song. I didn't even bargain. I bought the balalaika because its haunting sound was Russia. I heard the echoes of the songs my grandfather sang. I could not move. Here was my past and my present. This soulful yet vibrantly clear sound would forever take me to Ismailovsky Park, and it, not those old Ed Sullivan moments, is what I now want to remember when I think of the Russian Bear.

Hope or Despair

Every place and every thing I saw reverberated with the earthquake that has been shaking Russia since she reclaimed her name. Yes, the infrastructure is crumbling. Yes, many live in poverty. Yes, violence and tyranny still rear their ugly heads. Yet there are signs of change that signal both hope and danger.

The danger is there. A diplomat was mugged while I was in Moscow. The television tower burned the day I arrived. And shortly before I arrived in Russia, terrorists bombed the Tverskaya Metro Station and the world mourned the sinking of a Russian submarine. I saw the damage, and I understood the fear and grief. Yet the danger is also there in the arrival of three trainloads of soldiers to patrol the City Day festivities. It was like watching newsreels of World War II troops being marshalled before battle. And the danger is there in the reported racial profiling of Chechens. The danger is there when political diversity is conducted as war.

And yet there is hope. When my son went to Moscow State University to register, the Dean asked him to complete a personal profile for their records. She asked if his heritage was ethnic Russian. He told her, "no, I am of Russian Jewish extraction, two different words in Russian". She shook her head. "No. We no longer make those distinctions." And she entered the word for ethnic Russian on his record.

Was this Russia? The country from which my grandparents fled because they were persecuted for being Jews? The country where I feared to send my son because he is a Jew, and Jews are still targets? We no longer make those distinctions?

I cannot completely surrender my fears. Russia is experiencing an earthquake. There is danger in every tremor. Yet, I cannot surrender my hope, either. Everywhere I went, I was treated with warmth and respect. The Russian guard at the dorm who would not let me upstairs because no parents were allowed, kept apologizing. He wanted to reassure me that no parents were allowed. It wasn't because I was American. The guard who replaced him on the weekend, saw that I was a mother about to leave her son and go thousands of miles away. So he cajoled the man who could give me a pass, and got me permission to enter the dorm. I was not "a stranger." I was not someone to fear. I was just a mother.

Signs of prosperity compete with signs of poverty. For every old woman I saw begging in the streets, I saw young Russians shopping at kiosks and at Western-style malls. One small tremor one way, one small tremor another.

My son loves it there. He is thrilled with his studies. He is thrilled with his new Russian friends. The dorm is filled with students from across all 11 of Russia's time zones. He still hasn't grown accustomed to waiting in line for hours to pay his rent, to register his visa, to buy his books. But he feels very welcome. And he feels very American. The security and well-being that we take for granted are non-existant for some of his friends. But sometimes, it takes the strangeness of a strange land to remind us of who we are. And so I put aside my fears, and focus on my hopes. 

About Myself

I truly enjoyed my visit to Moscow. I kept thinking that I would like to take a thousand pictures, because each would remind me of something I wanted to share with my students. As I walked through parks and along thoroughfares, I reflected on being an American, and the fortunate circumstances of my birth and life, eight time zones westward and across a great ocean. Better Off Alive. 

And I grieved our propensity to celebrate things rather than ideas, to value an American Dream defined in terms of ownership rather than as freedom, to dismiss great works of literature as useless. But all around me were Chekhov and Pushkin and Gorky, and my spirit, like that of my Russian guide, soared. I renewed my commitment to literature and to my students. I made myself a promise to read more and more deeply into our American Literature, and to find that one voice that would speak to and for us all: perhaps Frost after all, or perhaps in a voice only just born, and not yet grown. And I decided how I would like to answer that Russian tee shirt when I return:

Better Off Alive and Always Searching 

Professor Marilyn R. Stern