my favorite russian pictures

I am going to take the luxury of loading a picture on my blog, for the first time, but not one that I took, but of my two, maybe, favorite Russian paintings, that I had the fortune of seeing in person.

They depict the two sons of Ivan the Terrible. They are both quite tragic. The first is by Ilya Repin, and it is called “Ivan the Terrible has killed his own son.”

The second is by Ilya Glazunov, who is still alive today and paints quite strange and haunting megamurals that show dozens of real people, from Hilary Clinton to Alexander Nevsky, with Russia’s ruin at the hands of the West usually being the theme. He is, basically, an arch-conservative monarchist, but there’s something very Russian and sometimes beautiful in his work. This painting is called “Tsarevich Dmitri,” who was the boy-son of Ivan the Terrible who was sequestered away to a monastery after his father passed away. A few years later he was found with his throat cut. The official commission decided that he had a fit of epilepsy while playing with a knife. Others suspected the new Tsar, Boris Godunov. Tsarevich Dmitri returned twice more to Russia in the form of people pretending to be him, and times were so tough that people believed them. Twice.

And isn’t Russian history interesting?

I could tell you all about the rest of my trip, about the incredible things I saw in the most oldest and most churchy part of Russia. But it was mostly museums that had old things and old churches, and the weather was either thick wet snow falling at night, which adds to the atmosphere of a town, especially if its already dark, or muddy slush the next day after the snowfall.

The dark Petersburg nights were not so bad after I made friends with a Finn in my hostel, who was all around a very good guy. Only I never learned how to pronounce his name, which only adds to my tremendous guilt about the fact that I only learned two finnish words for the whole 6 days I was there, “restaurant” Erich figured out from signs, but we never learned how to pronounce it. And we only learned “thank you” on the very last day from a Lebanese guy who sold us kebab. Oh, there is “hey,” which means “hello.” So I guess 3 words then.

After Peter I went to Velikiy (Great) Novgorod. It is called Great Novgorod because it is really old, not because it is big. Because there is another Novgorod to the south, appropriately named “Lower Novgorod.” I stayed in a hostel there, too, but not a “hostel” like the kind that you might find in Berlin, but in a Russian hostel. So when I got there I was told that I had a room on the 5^th floor—room 503, to be exact. I saw two bathrooms, someone’s frying pan plugged into an electrical outlet, and rooms 509-515. I searched a while for room 503 and then I found it: it was beyond the room with the lights turned off, in the room with, as far as I can tell, no light switch at all. My roommate was a youngish man, I think an engineer, named Aleksei, who was sociable enough, except he made a few not-to-subtle hints about how I should convert to Orthodox Christianity. He gave good reasons too, but its not really that simple, Aleksei.

The main things in Novgorod are the Kremlin, some ridiculously old churches, and the Monument to the 1000-year of Russia. It’s a sort of big statue in the middle of the old town with three tiers of figures shown: on the bottom row are war heroes, artists, and religious leaders. The middle tier are all the tsars, great princes, and emperors of Russia, and on the top: Mother Russia and the Orthodox church. Some lady asked me if I was on the tour, and I said no, and walked off to look at all the people on the statue. Then I realized that I was in Novgorod for another day and I didn’t really have anything to do, the Kremlin turned out to be a lot smaller than I thought. So I returned and decided to join the tour.

The excursion turned out to be our guide, a middle-aged woman in an incredibly ridiculous fur coat (even for Russia) and an pensioner-ex-engineer who was full of good cheer and energy and constantly interrupted the guide to ask unrelated questions and share personal jokes and anecdotes on the subject. I was secretly rooting for him, but the guide won the battle when she said “If you will stop constantly interrupting me and be quiet for just one second I’ll explain. Questions can come later!” But the tour was good, I found out who literally everybody on this statue was. I should say that it was commemorating 1000 years of Russian history in 1862, so there was no communists on there or anything. But the best part was on the artist’s section, where Gogol, Pushkin, and Lermontov are shown standing together like real pals.

I liked Novgorod a lot, the center is very peaceful and pleasant, but there’s not much to describe. There was a church that had some surviving (barely) frescoes from Theophanes the Greek, which means that they must be at least 700 years old. If you are at the train station, however, do not order an “open kebab” from the Firebird grill next door. Yech.

After Novgorod I returned to Moscow after a few weeks break. What can I say? Moscow feels different from other cities that I have been to. It feels terribly important, if that makes sense. I felt this when I was walking back from the New Tretyakov gallery, which had zillions of great modern art from the Soviet times, even after they “implemented” Socialist Realism and all that. Anyway, I was walking by Gorky Park, watching young Russian couples ice skating, I passed on, and snow was falling thickly. I passed by a young father with his son, they had a duffel bag which meant that they were going to go ice skating as well, and after I passed them I stopped and looked onto the Moscow river and the buildings crouched over the river with their yellow windows gave me the impression that Moscow was a very “dark” city, but not evil, but also terribly important. I don’t know.

I had a great time in Moscow largely due to the fact that I stayed with my friends Sarah and Liza, who lived in Irkutsk for a year, just like me, three years ago, and in the evenings I did not go crazy from boredom but in fact had “fun”. I still like museums a lot, and I had good reason to go now rather than later, because my Russian student ID means I pay 40 rubles when a normal Russian pays 100, and a foreigner—250!

The last major thing I did on my vacation was go to the town of Yaroslavl, four hours away from Moscow by train. Middlebury has a program there, and I was met by Glen, who had had a great semester there. I met his many friends, who were all very good people, and it gave me hope. I mean, it’s the same country, right? But I did notice that people in Yaroslavl seemed a lot more interested in foreigners, and they all spoke English a lot better than people in Irkutsk do. A lot of it has to do with distance. I once met a Kansan who told me that he had never gone abroad and didn’t really feel like doing so, not even once. I don’t know if that story makes sense to you.

But I am going to try harder this semester, there’s a film club that meets by my house, and there’s new students coming and all that.

I’m sure I forgot something, but that’s okay. I feel pretty optimistic, though. If things don’t get any better, I’ll be fine, and if they get better—even better! Всё будет в школаде!