Russian Blog

Don’t let the fact that it takes a while to pronounce the long title above today scare you from reading today’s post! This long title is an attempt of mine to combine two equally interesting subjects worthy of one post each but really also equally interconnected with each other and thus worthy of being mentioned in one sentence (like the sentence I used in today’s complicated title above). Do I have your attention? Then «давай!» [come on!] and hear me out on this one. Have you ever tried keeping a diary in Russian? «Это хорошая идея, и, на самом деле, очень даже хорошая идея» [It is a good idea and in fact a very good idea indeed]. It could be a simple way of practicing the language at least a couple of times a week, if you, for example, keep finding yourself unable to write something every single day. I have never actually tried it myself (yet!), but during my years as a student of Russian language in Russia I’ve met many other students from around the world that have been accurate keepers of such ‘practice diaries’ in Russian. Perhaps this phenomenon could be called something like «дневники для практики языка» [diaries for language practice] in Russian? Some of my fellow students have been so persistent in their diary writing that they have given their notebooks to their professors for proof reading and thus also grammar correction every week.

What’s important to know before you start writing your Russian diary is that in Russian you do not «писать» [write] but actually «вести» [lead, conduct, guide; drive, navigate, pilot; carry on; hold, keep; prosecute, carry out an activity; give, transact] your «дневник» [diary; journal; day book]. If that was too many English verbs to one Russian verb for you to handle, then focus on the translation of «вести» here as ‘to keep’ and you’ll understand the phrase «я веду дневник» as ‘I keep a diary’ and can be fully content with this as it is a completely satisfactory comprehension of it. You’ll also be able to answer the question «ты ведёшь дневник?» [do you keep a diary?] (that’s the informal way to inquire, the formal way would of course be: «Вы ведёте дневник?» [do You keep a diary?]).

Have there ever been moments in your life when you’ve wished that you could back and check details from your past in diaries? Only to realize that you either а) didn’t keep a diary at the time; or б) didn’t write down what was truly significant? Have there ever been times when you have wanted to retell stories from long ago? Important accounts you wished you had written down? Things you have now forgotten? Names of people lost forever into the deepest corners of your memory? Not all of us can rely on our «память» [memory; recall; recollection] but have to write things down as they occur in order to later make them «воспоминание» [sg. recollection, memory, remembrance; flashback; memorial; reminiscence] first and later part of our «воспоминания» [pl. memoirs; reminiscence; memorials]. Some of us, however, are blessed with another gift – a gift to «запоминать» [memorize; mark] in order to much later «вспоминать» [recall, recollect, remember; reminisce]. The past month I’ve spent together with the memoir of a person blessed with such an amazing ability to remember every thing – from names of important people to the tiniest of details. During the past month I’ve been traveling through a memoir written with the accuracy of a diary – «Крутой маршрут» ["Journey into the Whirlwind"] by the brilliant, intelligent and lovely «Евгения Гинзбург» [Yevgenia Ginzburg].

While «в Кургане» [in Kurgan] on the 20^th of July I came across this «хроника времён культа личности» [chronicle of the times of the personality cult] on sale in a bookstore and just had to buy it. Only when the Russian writer «Василий Павлович Аксёнов» [Vasily Pavlovich Aksyonov] died on the 6^th of July did I realize that he was the son of «Евгения Гинзбург», whom I had known as the author of this spectacular work about 18 years spent on Kolyma ever since reading the notebooks of «Варлам Шаламов»… which I did in April this year. Time and time again it keeps being proved to me that to love Russia is to constantly discover something new about this country!

I started reading «Крутой маршрут» [the title could more literally be translated as ‘a steep route'] as soon as I had brought it home from the bookstore and since then I haven’t been able to let it go nor finished reading it. Finish reading it is not something done over a weekend – this memoir is over 800 pages long. And that’s one of the best things about it! I don’t know about you, but I’m a bit old-fashioned in the way that I prefer long works of fiction (or long memoirs, for that matter…) and now that I have only about 150 pages to go as I’m posting this I have to confess that I don’t really want it to ever end. I am absolutely and completely in love with Yevgenia Ginzburg. After spending almost the entire spring of 2009 with Shalamov and his tales from «Колыма» [Kolyma] it was not just interesting but also refreshing and surprising to read a woman’s account of the same place at the same time. Both Ginzburg and Shalamov were arrested during the terrible year of 1937 during ‘the infamous great purge’ and spent a total of 18 years in prison, camps and exile. Shalamov arrived in Kolyma already in 1937, Ginzburg only two years later – after spending two years in a prison cell in Yaroslavl. Of course one shouldn’t compare these two people because they are very different, but I can’t help myself. Both of them left important accounts of their life during this particular time in this region’s history behind that are well worth reading, even though they should be separate already by their different genres – Shalamov wrote many short stories, Ginzburg wrote one long memoir. Ginzburg is personal where Shalamov is not. They had different intentions with what they wrote and thus what they left for us to read are very different accounts. Yet many things remain alike and true even though – just like they both keep repeating in their works – there are many, many truths out there.

But while reading Ginzburg what kept coming back to me again and again was one single thought – that there seems to have been a lot more humor on the women’s side of the barbed wire. Not only Ginzburg, but all the other women surrounding Ginzburg in prison and in camps and in hospitals, keep joking and laughing long after Shalamov’s men have grown silent and stern and harsh. And the first thing the women in Ginzburg’s memoir say when they see the male prisoners upon arrival in Vladivostok after a month on a train is: “Oh no! And they who have such poor ability to endure pain!” (in Russian: «Они же так плохо переносят боль!») Women are really better prepared to endure that kind of cruel pain, and better prepared physically for hunger, which is why they did not die as fast and mercilessly as the men did on Kolyma.

Ginzburg was not able to keep a diary during her years in prison, camps and exile. And yet she remembered everything. In this work you’ll find hundreds of dialogues and an equal amount of names of real people from this time. «Крутой маршрут» is a terrible, beautiful, true chronicle of this time in the history of this country. Not only do I highly recommend it because of its value as a source for historical facts, but as a document of what it means to be a woman. Ginzburg is first and foremost a woman. I don’t really know how to explain it, but that’s what I found most in this memoir – her pride of herself and her sex combined with a marvelous dedication to motherhood which I have never read anywhere else before (but then again, I haven’t read that many books written by women – yet!). What I would recommend above everything else is of course to read it in the original Russian – not only because Ginzburg has a rich language, but also because she often quotes poetry. Both her own poems and the poems of many famous Russian poets. Poetry helped her survive these hardships. Poetry saved her life.

To me reading this memoir is one of the greatest reading experiences of my life. And the best part about admitting to this is that I haven’t finished it yet – thus the greatest reading experience of my life will continue!