Russia and Soul: An Exploration by Dale s> Pesmen (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 74I to agree: in the second and the fourth of these appendices, all but one of the dates and quotations are genuine. The other two have no such credentials:a sample of the first appendix is: 'Twelve adjectives were sentenced to labor camps,andtwopreviouslycommon particlesbecame unpropositions'(p. I39). The spoof classified ads, arranged by years, particularly appealed to this reviewer:example, 'I740. If you my husband have seen, please to contact me in Frankfurt.Missing since 1726' (P.I47), or 'I864. Spiteful old lady, life worth less than a cockroach, needed for social science researchproject.If you know one, contact RR' (p. I49). The conclusion to this section is entitled 'Two Dialogues of the Dead on EssentialRussianness'(p. 157). 'The Devil's Dictionary of Received Ideas'goes beyond Russiato American (and, doubtlessother)academia:for instance, 'academicjournals. A place for blind reviewing of dumb writing. "This article's a pile of rubbish." "It footnotes you three times, John." "Publish."' (p. I7I). Another example could be 'Comintern. Soviet physician. The public healthjust took a turn / For ill. Send for the Comintern' (p. I83). Finally, 'pseudonymous.Authored byBakhtin' (p. 2I9). This is a curate'segg, but curatesand eggs (leaving Russianpuns aside)are also far from standard. The present reviewer, whilst considering the verses much of a muchness, has attempted to choose a selection of good ratherthan weak examples. The quotations, genuine and spoof alike, may appeal to literature and history teachers setting exams, and to students seeking points for their essays.Literaryscholars,in particular,should look up theirfavourite authors the three Kharms stories, for instance, fit seamlessly into his canon -and there is much wit and imagination to enjoy in small doses. This is definitelya book for dipping into, and it deservesa place in all but the most po-faced libraries. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies ARNOLD MCMILLIN University College London Pesmen, Dale. RussiaandSoul.AnExploration. Cornell University Press,Ithaca, NY, and London, 2000. xii + 364pp. Bibliography. Index. /29.50; /Ji2.95. SOMEreaders of this periodical probably reached for the nearest revolver as soon as they saw the title of the monograph that is here under review. Before firinginto the air in order to otvesti dushu ('let off steam', as in a bania),sceptics should at least read the book's epilogue ('Non-Russian Souls', pp. 324-38), 'Two Stories' (pp. II 7-25) and, especially if they are philologists, chapter nine (pp. I89-207) on krutoi and krutit'sia. In otherwords, this is a book which busy people may not want to read from cover to cover but which is certainly worth dipping into from time to time, especiallyif one is becoming ratherless embarrassedwhen talkingin public about one's own and other people's souls (even Stalin did it, not least when referringto writersas engineers). Dale Pesmen is a brave American woman who not only dared to publish a book with such a provocative and nauseating (tosome) title but also voluntarily experienced several years of Soviet and post-Soviet bytin and around the 742 SEER, 79, 4, 200I unprepossessing Siberian city of Omsk (sometimes jokingly deciphered as Otdalennoe mestossyl'nykh i katorzhnykh, p. 20). Kicking off from Anna Wierzbicka 's statement that 'Soulcan always be translated into Russian as dusha, while the reverseis not true' (p. ix), Pesmen uses her trainingin anthropology and ethnography as well as her good (if not perfect) command of Russian to investigate some of the superficialand some of the deep manifestationsof the souls of people in the RSFSR/RF in the I990s. This naturally requires an examination of the importance of the bania,blat,sitting together at table, drinking,exploiting loopholes in the Soviet 'system'(and post-Soviet bardak); singing, inter-strata relationships and, especially, byt.These analyses could have been edited into clearer English, but even where the meaning is somewhat opaque the general drift is always clarified by the numerous quotations from the cross-section of the Siberian population with whom Pesmen has chosen to spend a good deal of her life. During the last eighteen months your reviewer has himself done time in three areas of provincial Russia several hundred miles to the east, south and north of Moscow, and would liketo confirmthat most of...