But Russia was like what used to be called a 'Potemkin Village' - a big facade behind which lay a very poor and disorganised country. The total and sudden collapse was a surprise.
Going round Russia, did you sense that the Soviet Empire was falling apart?Ī. The liturgy is beautiful and very moving. In New York, one could also go to the Russian Orthodox services.
But passages, and short stories I'd read in Russian, sometimes with an old Russian emigre who coached me. Did you read the literary classics like Tolstoy in Russian?Ī. Russian is a beautiful but difficult language. Not nearly as well as I'd like, but enough to get by. Petersburg was during the magical 'White Nights', when it doesn't get dark.Ī. There were visits to the houses of Tolstoy, Pushkin, Chekhov, Tchaikovsky, the artist Repin, and the monastery of Optina Pustyn, the setting for part of The Brothers Karamasov. Also the Baltic, Novgorod, the Ukraine, the Crimea and even Samarkand. As well as the obvious places, they let me visit the Golden Ring of ancient cities round Moscow and took me out to Riazan. I made about six trips, on average a month each, travelling alone but usually with an Intourist guide. A few of my travel requests were refused, but not many. In researching the book you travelled to Russia. You were retracing your grandfather's footsteps? As a boy, it was always a haunting subject in my imagination. Russian music, it seems to me, from liturgical chant to Prokofiev, has a special sense of space that one doesn't find elsewhere. Some of the first music I ever remember was the Russian music, especially Prince Igor, that my father liked to play. My oldest aunt spoke quite fluent Russian. My grandfather, though English, lived abroad, including a period in Russia during Tsarist times. In your second book, Russka, you told the story of Russia.
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