A Moscow Literary Memoir: Among the Great Artists of Russia from 1946 to 1980

Rolf Hellebust is a professor of Russian language and literature at the
University of Calgary.

Robert Ford, Canadian ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1980,
has spent more time in Russia than any other diplomat. He is also a
Governor General’s Award–winning poet and a lifelong student of
Russian language and culture who has throughout his career sought out
and befriended some of the latter’s most famous representatives.

It is thus with high hopes that the reader approaches these literary
recollections, which Ford calls the “flesh” to the skeleton of his
1989 political memoirs, Our Man in Moscow. Anyone who is familiar with
such names as Pasternak, Yevtushenko, and Solzhenitsyn—and who is
aware of the role played by these figures in the history of the Cold War
era—will read this book with interest. Ford’s reminiscences of the
day-to-day political struggles of painters, musicians, ballet dancers,
and writers; his observations on their personal relationships (notably
his anecdotes about the uneasy coexistence of rival poets Yevtushenko;
and Voznesensky); his own strongly expressed political and artistic
opinions—all make for a fascinating read.

At the same time, the more one is familiar with Pasternak,
Solzhenitsyn, and the rest, the more one is disturbed by various
inaccuracies and imprecisions, and the more one begins to doubt the
author’s assurances about his linguistic and cultural sensitivity and
about the unique entrée these qualities afforded him into Soviet
reality. Some of the typos, incorrect dates, misspelled names, and
mistransliterated Russian words can be attributed to sloppy editing.
Others are too egregious. For example, the everyday word vranyo
(“lying; nonsense”) becomes vranya, an “almost untranslatable”
substitute for lezh (which should be lozh, “lie”) and the basis for
Ford’s chapter heading “Uncle Vranya”—since he is struck by the
fact that “Uncle Joe” Stalin “was a far cry from Chekhov’s Uncle
Joe” in the play Uncle Vanya. (Is it too much to point out that Vanya
corresponds to the English name John, not Joe?)

Words such as vranya and bolata (boloto, “swamp; morass”) gain
metaphysical depth in Ford’s usage, becoming keys to a vaguely
formulated “Dostoevskyan duality” that underlies everything
mysterious in Russian behavior. His disparaging comments on the national
character—“[t]hese people don’t know the principle of the straight
line”—while ostensibly reflecting the historical reality of
Communist oppression, are evidence of a subtly patronizing attitude
that, together with Ford’s unreconstructed sexism, mar what could have
been a wonderful book.