USSR and America: cultural difference in the eyes of a conservative

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Culture and America are incompatible, like genius and villainy.

Like many in the USSR, as a child, I dreamed of seeing America, which seemed mysterious and alluring, bright and attractive, original and ultra-modern. Life in a small southern town where my childhood passed after my parents moved from large and cultured Saratov was boring. There was no entertainment, except for cinema, and, as Vysotsky wrote, "I buried myself in books."

Then it was the same as it is now to have a smartphone. All the courtyard punks, gathering in the evenings on forays on roofs, heating mains trenches and playing football on the asphalt of the schoolyard or the dried grass of a nearby park, discussed the books they had read about adventures and travel. Not reading Daniel Defoe with his Robinson or Jules Verne with his series of incredible stories was as embarrassing as not watching The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter now.

The teenagers knew by heart "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain, and they knew how the translation of K. Chukovsky differs from the translation of N. Daruzes. Everyone was unanimous that Chukovsky's translation was funnier. At school, everyone went to the library and read Uncle Tom's Cabin by the brave Harriet Beecher Stowe. Each of us visited the cult movie "Gold McKenna" 10 times. The brave Goiko Mitic unfolded before us a whole epic of the confrontation between the Indians and the insidious American colonialists. Theodore Dreiser with his novels in subscription was in many apartments, and his novel "The Financier" was a shock for an entire generation.

Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky. Connoisseurs of books (Teaching-light). Early 1920s

Jack London was our idol, a symbol of courage, honor, courage and male reliability. In his youth, O. Henry was added to them with his stories. From all this well-read volume, a collective image of a distant country with an interesting history and a bold, albeit a little strange, but sympathetic people was formed. We knew America from novels and movies, loved it and, as it seemed to us, understood it better than the Americans themselves.

Since it was boring in the Soviet Union, apart from reading books and going to the cinema, we went to theaters. It was a trip to the temple of culture. People wore the best suits and dresses, which they took care of especially for such outings, in winter no one went to the auditorium in winter shoes - everyone brought change shoes with them and changed their shoes in the wardrobe. Coats and boots remained in the hall, and people who had changed into shoes received theater binoculars and programs along with numbers. Gradually walking in the foyer, they waited for the second bell and went slowly to take their places. The lights went out, the third bell sounded, applause rang out and the curtain opened. The miracle began to take place right before our eyes.

Evertt Shinn. White ballet

During the intermission, no one flew headlong into the buffet - it was shameful. After all, they don't go to the theater. At first, everyone lingered a little in their places, talking quietly, then they went as if to warm up, and only then, as if by chance, ended up in the buffet. While taking the queue, they were extremely polite and patient. We were in a hurry to finish what we had bought before the third bell, looking embarrassedly at the attendants, if they did not have time. Nobody took food with them to the hall, they preferred to leave it half-eaten, but not to chew and litter in the hall. It was a shame among theatergoers.

After the performance, everyone took a queue in the wardrobe and waited very culturally for everyone to be served. They dispersed sedately, talking and discussing the acting. This was the case in all cities, from capitals to provinces. The costumes could have been simpler, but everything else is unchanged.

We are used to the fact that a miracle always happens on stage. Whether it is a performance, an operetta, an opera or a concert, the ritual of visiting a cultural center has always been the same. It somehow entered the bloodstream from childhood and did not surprise anyone. We were a little embarrassed by our poor clothes and believed that in the West everything is probably as it should be - tuxedos, long dresses, the miracle of contact with art - everything is as it should be.

Even as students, when we managed to escape to a concert at the conservatory between sessions, we calmly looked at our simple wardrobe. I remember that in the late eighties, in the small hall of the Saratov Conservatory, he was giving a small recital accompanied by an accompanist, who accompanied on the piano, some senior student. A shorter-than-average boy stood in the corridor in a brownish suit with sleeves one size longer and wandered around with a distant gaze. Shabby boots and a slightly disheveled hairstyle completed the look.

Edgar Degas. Opera Orchestra. 1868-1869

Conservatory students, their friends from neighboring universities, teachers, as many amateurs gathered in the hall. Verdi was announced. The accompanist took the first chords, and the boy stood up on his toes, straightening his chest. At first, the juicy baritone just poured into the ears, growing like the roar of the surf, and when the guy took the forte, we, the audience, for a moment, had eardrums.

When the guy began to sing a little quieter, his ears put off. This happened several times during the concert. And people reacted to this as something familiar and proper. The mediocre did not study there. There were no less cultured people in the hall. This was not Moscow, this was Saratov. Not a province, but not a center either. Something in between. The usual, customary practice of Soviet culture, carried to the masses. And the masses, I must say, were distinguished by their ability to understand culture and be very serious connoisseurs of it.

Sometimes serious musicians came to my seaside town, and the hall was always full. What sounded from the orchestra pit was a hundred times more wonderful than what came from the stereo speakers at home. And each time there was long grateful applause and always flowers. A sea of flowers. Somehow the audience brought them in advance and saved them until the end of the concert or performance.

And then one day I ended up in America in the late nineties for two weeks. In New York, we were shown the Trump Center - a surprisingly gaudy and flashy mall, trimmed with gold and selling stinking perfume, Chinese bags, T-shirts with shorts, and evening gowns reminiscent of cheap women's combinations with tattered tail feathers from some ostriches that managed to catch up. It was New York. I swear the C&A shopping center in small German Solingen is a hundred times better.

New York view

We were shown the Twin Towers of the International Trade Center, then still unharmed, taken by a high-speed elevator to the upper floors and showed New York from a bird's eye view - or an airplane flight, as it turned out later. We were taken to Wall Street to the New York Stock Exchange, showing the financial center of the world and old banks, which could only become shareholders by proving that you made your first million dollars before the First World War. Even Broadway and Brighton Beach were given us a taste and color.

Throughout the journey, I could not help feeling deeply disappointed. This was not the America I dreamed of. New York was hopelessly losing to Frankfurt, Washington to Cologne and even Bonn, Los Angeles to Berlin. Las Vegas was like Krasnodar on the way out of town during the day, and San Diego was weaker than Sochi. I still did not understand why the American Embassy in Moscow demanded from me so many certificates of property, guaranteeing that I would not stay there and seek asylum. They clearly overestimated the value of their country.

But New York ended the case. November, evening, chilly wind from the Atlantic, something drizzling, but the group was brought to Rockefeller Center. Before showing us the Empire States Building. This is something like the American Eiffel Tower. And Rockefeller Center is something like their Bolshoi Theater. Getting tired of food and cultural fast food, I set out now to rest my soul and plunge into the environment of high culture. Moreover, the program included a combined concert with fragments from Tchaikovsky, Verdi and other world classics. I felt proud of Tchaikovsky - they say, know ours! If I only knew what awaits me …

First of all, there was no wardrobe. All went into the hall in outer clothing. People in coats, street jackets and raincoats were sitting around me. This was the first shock I experienced on American soil. The second shock followed immediately - they all ate popcorn from huge bags that they held in their laps. This lasted the entire performance, which they call the farce word "show". But that was just the beginning.

Meal'n'Real

Rockefeller Center is proud to have 9 stages, sliding and replacing each other. As huge as a football field. The Americans showed Tchaikovsky in a rather strange way - the ballet The Nutcracker was shown on ice. It's not scary, but when 50 people are skating there at the same time, it's hard to get rid of the desire to shout "Puck, puck!"

But the apotheosis happened on an excerpt from Verdi's opera Aida. When the scene was changed, about 200 people in oriental clothes came to it, they lit real fires, brought out a herd of live horses, a herd of camels, I'm not talking about donkeys and the rest of the animal world. Spectators chewing popcorn around me in winter outerwear with turned up collars in a dark, cold hall finished the job. I felt in 1920, finding myself in the midst of devastation and the Civil War at the performance of Cultural Enlightenment for the rural masses.

Honestly, from such an interpretation of the world classics, I lost not only the gift of Russian speech, but also ceased to understand what was happening on the stage. But this was not important to the Americans! The scale of the show is important to them. The Americans tried to suppress and amaze with their scope - apparently, this is how they understand culture if they are not teaching it from Russian teachers. Only in America could Vanessa Mae appear, playing on electronic (!) violin, accompanied by percussion instruments, rhythmized classics arranged for easier understanding for those who in America consider themselves a cultural layer. Vivaldi's The Four Seasons accompanied by a drum - I think that even in Hell the composer could not imagine such a thing. America and culture are incompatible concepts, like genius and villainy.

Flying from America, I realized that not only I want to get home as soon as possible, but also that I will never fly to this country again, no matter how they lure me here. America has died for me forever as a country that I respect and want to see. That America, which I learned from books, does not exist in the world. The one that exists is disgusting and not interesting to me.

American poster. This is life!

There is no way that I will cross the doorstep of the American Embassy again. Even if they explain to me that there are normal theaters and normal spectators in the form in which we are used to seeing them at home. And you don’t need to tell me about uncivilized Russia and the cultured West. After Rockefeller Center, I felt that I was thrown into a lot of money and rolled on a pole, smeared with tar and rolled in feathers.

It is useful to visit America, as there is no better remedy for myths. But this medicine works only in one case - if you yourself are infected with the bacillus of the culture. If you are "tabula race" in this regard - a blank board on which you can write anything, then you can safely go there - you will not feel the difference. Cultural dissonance will not arise due to the absence of you in the cultural space.

Tchaikovsky's benefactor Nadezhda von Meck once told the young aspiring French composer Claude Debussy that if he wants to seriously learn music, he should go to Russia and certainly get to know the work of Russian composers there. Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Glinka, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov - in general, the entire “mighty handful”. Without acquaintance with this music, there can be no question of the formation of Debussy as a serious musician.

Debussy followed von Meck's advice and went to Russia. He experienced a very serious influence of Russian musical culture. Although, I must say that Tchaikovsky did not understand Debussy's impressionism, as he was an adherent of classicism. But without Russian influence, European culture would not have arisen, especially without S. Diaghilev's Russian seasons in Paris, who took out our cultural heritage for display in the West.

Debussy plays the opera Boris Godunov by Mussorgsky in the Salon of Ernest Chausson. 1893

After that, to amaze the Russian audience with a herd of horses and camels on stage instead of vocals and interpretation of the libretto in Verdi's opera - you must admit that this is somehow not only weak - it is generally in the wrong direction. If I want to see camels, I will go to the circus or the zoo. I don't need opera for this. But Americans are as happy as children.

True, a whole generation of "Pepsi" has already grown up in our country, which has heard the word "opera", but does not quite understand what it is about. They are not afraid to be in America, they will not feel the difference. But for those who not only know, but also personally know this phenomenon, I advise you to never go to America for cultural events, if you do not want to part with sympathy for this country, probably in something wonderful, only for now. I still did not understand what it was.

Contact with Pushkin forever closes modern America for you. One trip to the Tchaikovsky concert will make you miserable while traveling to this country. Penetration into "War and Peace" by Tolstoy will make it impossible for you to emigrate to the West in principle. You will never be at home there again. Even if the refrigerator there you will be full of local sausages. But you will not be protected from the Russian existential depth there. Horses and camels on the stage of the opera will not be allowed.