Pushkin's Button

Russia's greatest poet received a fatal wound in a duel with a man who had been flirting with his wife. Yet such a bald statement fails to convey the byzantine events surrounding Pushkin's death.

D'Anthes

A handsome but semi-literate Frenchman with "a merry disposition, loose tongue, and ready wit." He was also "a tenacious and zealous flirt" who "preferred targeting married women." Above all he was an "impeccable inexhaustible dancer."

He was also lax in his duties as a cavalry officer, being “cited 44 times for lateness, unexcused absences, and other breaches of discipline.”

Baron Heeckeren

The Dutch ambassador took a liking to d'Anthes, supporting him financially and taking the unusual step of adopting him, even though d'Anthes's father was still living and they were not estranged. Subsequently Heeckeren made him his heir.

Described as "polished and shrewd” with "an elastic idea of truth," the Dutch ambassador's name after Pushkin's death became "synonymous with iniquity and deicide.”

Natalya

Pushkin was 36 when he died, his wife Natalya 24. Though she had given birth to four children, she was still the most beautiful woman in Petersburg and loved to dance. She was considered by many to be shallow and flighty.

Though it's true she and d'Anthes had been flirting, such behaviour at the time it was not considered improper. Pushkin on his deathbed told her, “None of this is your fault.”

Pushkin

Where d'Anthes was tall and blond, Pushkin was short and dark, the great-grandson of an African who came to Russia as a boy.

Vain, proud, aloof, volatile, and quick to take offence, Pushkin had already been involved in numerous duels and challenges. On one occasion he famously ate cherries out of a hat while waiting for his opponent to fire.

"A man under permanent special surveillance," he persisted in defying strict sartorial rules by wearing a coat with a missing button, an act that the author of Pushkin's Button says is hard not to see as "a mocking symbolic statement."

The Letter

The attention that d'Anthes paid to Natalya did not go unnoticed and became the subject of gossip, which Pushkin chose to ignore until he and several of his friends received a letter awarding him a cuckold certificate. The sender's identity is not known with certainty, but it is generally agreed that without the letters the duel would never have taken place.

Pushkin issued a challenge to d'Anthes, then withdrew it when d'Anthes agreed to marry Natalya's sister. A marriage ensued but the flirtatious behaviour between d'Anthes and Natalya continued.

Pushkin brought the matter to a head by writing an offensive letter to Heeckeren, accusing him of pimping for d'Anthes. If Heeckeren took the bait and challenged Pushkin, it would imply that d'Anthes was craven. This forced d'Anthes to issue his own challenge, which was exactly what Pushkin desired.

The Duel

A lane 20 paces in length was cleared in the snow. The first shot was fired by d'Anthes. Pushkin fell but managed to return fire, striking d'Anthes and knocking him down. The wound however was not serious. It was said that a button on his clothing deflected Pushkin's bullet. Pushkin's was a belly wound, and it took several days for him to die in extreme agony.

Pushkin's death is foreshadowed in Eugene Onegin and the short story "The Shot."

The Court Marshal

D'Anthes, Pushkin, and Pushkin's second were found guilty and sentenced to death. The judgment was a formality. Instead, d'Anthes was stripped of his rank and ejected from Russia. In Pushkin's case, the ruling was "a farcical black comedy," his hanging suspended "on account of death."

Heeckeren was recalled without being offered another posting.

Serena Vitale

The author is an Italian professor of Russian literature. The book was first published in Italian in 1995. The English translation by Ann Goldstein and Jon Rothschild appeared 1999.

Pushkin's Button is packed with excerpts from contemporary correspondence imparting an immediacy to the story, and the author uses a engaging personal style, making such comments as:

• For the first time we feel a twinge of pity for d'Anthes... 
• A mischievous urge inclines us to consider... 
• We dissolve in laughter, unable to read on. 
• And here we were wracking our brains! 
• Instead of giving up let us reread the invaluable text yet again...

Oblomov

Usually I disregard the blurbs plastered on the covers and inside pages of books, but two on this one deserve notice.

Tolstoy on the front cover: "I am in rapture over Oblomov and keep rereading it."

And Chekhov on the back: "[Goncharov is] ten heads above me in talent."

Oblomov is a Russian couch potato, a flabby landowner who seldom leaves home and spends most of his day dozing in bed. Meek and gullible, he is an easy mark for his friend Tarantiev, who is as grasping and venal as any character in fiction.

His manservant Zakhar, who has dressed him since boyhood, is lazy, clumsy, petty, and loyal. Though he constantly complains about Oblomov, he defends him passionately if anyone else speaks ill of him.

Stolz is Oblomov's one true friend. Active, vigorous, hard-working, and well-travelled, he constantly urges Oblomov to get up off his butt and introduces him to a young woman named Olga. Love blooms and for a time Oblomov is transformed, but his inability to manage his own affairs dooms the relationship.

Though Olga ends up marrying Stolz, both remain devoted to Oblomov for his innocence and purity of heart.

Oblomov's Dream

One of the finest passages in the book is Oblomov's dream of his pampered youth and the simple happy lives of peasants on his family's estate. It describes an idyllic picture of Russian rural life.

Since Stolz and Oblomov grew up together, we also get a picture of Stolz's early home life and how different it was from Oblomov's. Stolz was taught to be self-reliant from an early age.

Analysis

It seemed obvious that the novel was intended as a criticism of the slothfulness of Russian nobility. In an Afterword novelist Mikhail Shishkin indicates this was the usual Soviet interpretation, but argues otherwise.

He states that the marriage of Stolz and Olga is doomed because Stolz is too preoccupied with material advancement. The part-German Stolz lacks the Russian soul that Oblomov and Olga share. Oblomov resists Stolz's advice because it is directed only at personal advancement. There is nothing noble or ideal in it, no higher cause to serve.

Translation

The translation by Marian Schwartz is a recent one and based on the 1862 version, whereas previous ones were based on an earlier edition.

Travels in Siberia

The five journeys described here took place over a period of 16 years, with a third of the book devoted to a 2001 road trip from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok. Bankrolled by a $22,000 advance from The New Yorker magazine, the author bought a van and hired a couple of tough and resourceful Russians as guides. It took them just over five weeks to complete the trip.

Of the other trips to Siberia, the first was to Ulan Ude and Lake Baikal in 1993 and the next in 1999 to Chukotka just across the Bering Strait from Alaska.

The third took place in the winter of 2005 when the core of the journey was by rail from Irkutsk to Ulan Ude via the Trans-Siberian, then by BAM from Severobaikalsk to Yakutsk.

The final visit was in 2009 to Novosibirsk and Akademgorodok.

When asked what kind of style he wrote in, the author's understated reply was "factual." This is true up to a point, for he writes in a quiet and easy-going manner with a multitude of closely-observed details, but the book is also leavened with humour and the author is not afraid to show himself in an unflattering light. He also weaves a vast amount of historical and literary information into the text, but so expertly that it's never dry or overwhelming.

The Road Trip

Before crossing the Urals they encountered a wedding party that was blocking traffic in both directions. They coughed up ten rubles for the newlyweds, refused the offer of vodka, and managed to cajole their way through. One of the guides, Volodya, observed that he had once been forced by a wedding party to drink for an entire afternoon, and had heard of others who had been detained for days.

They paid $200 to cross a roadless stretch in a private boxcar. Soon after they encountered a gauntlet of watermelon sellers, who after a while became so numerous that free watermelons were being thrust through the vehicle's windows.

Names of villages they passed through: Puddle, Free, Noisy, Smokes, Jellies, Luxury, Merry Cliff, Devil Bread, Unhappyville.

Quotes

...the remarkable ability possessed by all Russians, even the sweetest and gentlest, to make their faces rock hard instantly... "Some people here in Russia refer to the events of the last ten years as the Third World War," he explained. "They say that Russia lost the war, and you Americans won. And if you just look around you anywhere in Russia, except in the biggest cities, it's obvious that this country lost a war." Russians have long been proud to claim that by absorbing the worst the Mongols could do they saved Western Europe, and maybe civilization, from destruction. My attempt to join the Great Patriotic War conversation was met with silence. America lost four hundred thousand people in the war, a frightening number; but Russia’s dead numbered about twenty million. To many Russians, America’s participation in the war was that of a bystander who holds the combatants' coats and steps in at the end to finish off the loser.

Misc

The Russia word for Siberia is Sibir’ with the final syllable pronounced like a shiver: brrr.

The most popular American in Russia appears to be Sylvester Stallone, and the the most popular recent English-language writer is Farley Mowat. "Everyone there seems to know Ne Kri Volki."

Pushkin eating cherries out of a cap before fighting a duel.

The charming practice of Aeroflot to name its jetliners after writers.

Zugzwang

Good chess novels are hard to come by, but this is one of the better ones, set in St. Petersburg in 1914, three years prior to the Russian revolution. Lining up against each other are the Bolsheviks, of course, and the Tsar backed by his secret police, the Okhrana.

At the same time a prestigious chess tournament is being held, in which many of the world's strongest players are competing, including Lasker, Capablanca, Tarrasch, Blackburne, Nimzowitch. The tournament was real, but departing from historical fact is the inclusion of a fictional GM named Rozental (though he is based on Rubinstein). He is favoured to win.

In a third narrative strand, the main character, Dr. Otto Spethmann, is a psychoanalyst treating not only Rozental, but also Petrov, the de facto leader of the Bolsheviks with Lenin in exile, and a woman named Anna, with whom Spethmann falls in love. Thus we have the intricacies of chess mirrored by the intricacies of revolution, psychoanalysis, and love -- an impressive and ambitious conceit.

Finally, to top it all off, Spethmann is playing a correspondence game against his friend, a gifted violinist named Kopelzon. Spethmann has never beaten him, but this time he feels he has a good chance. As the book opens, they have reached a rook and pawn endgame. Spethmann has just played Rxg4 -- and the body of a liberal newspaper editor has been retrieved from a canal.

Over the course of the novel, the progress of this game is followed by means of 12 diagrams.

"Psychoanalysis is like panning for gold"

Rozental is on the verge of a mental breakdown and has been brought to Spethmann by Kopelzon. The latter is very keen that Rozental win the tournament, for both are Polish Jews, and with Poland occupied and partitioned by Russia, a victory by Rozental would be a symbolic victory against their country's oppressors. Soon after Spethmann's first session with the Rozental, two thugs invade his office and steal the GM's file.

Petrov is a champion of the city’s poor and an electrifying speaker, but he is also exhausted and depressed. His life is hellish and the party a snakepit, especially since its penetration by a traitor, codenamed King, who has been betraying comrades. He visits Spethmann under the alias of Grischuk, and tells Spethmann, "I want you to make my lives possible."

Anna is suffering from nightmares, which appear to be related to a traumatic event that happened when, as a young girl, she visited Kazan with her father, Zinnurov, from whom she is now estranged. Zinnurov, nicknamed the Mountain, is an influential industrialist and anti-Bolshevik. He warns Spethmann that his daughter is erratic and cannot be trusted to speak the truth. Their stories about events in Kazan do not match.

"A series of ingenious slayings"

That is how Spethmann describes the chess tournament. They are matched by actual slayings beginning with the newspaper editor and quickly followed by that of a young man, whose body is found with Spethmann’s card in his pocket. Inspector Lychev of the St. Petersburg police believes Spethmann’s 17-year-old daughter, Catherine, is somehow involved.

Bodies continue to pile up as Bolsheviks clash with the secret police. A notorious Polish terrorist is on the loose and a plot to assassinate the Tsar is uncovered. Nothing can be taken at face value. Everyone has a secret, allegiances shift, complications spring up, lies and spies proliferate. The dizzying complexities suggest the many possible lines in a chess match. Spethmann observes:

…I tried to be as logical about Lychev’s story as about the variations in a chess game. In chess it is easy to be panicked by a complicated position and the aggressive manoeuvring of an opponent. What is needed always is a cool eye and a clear head. Calculate. Calculate concrete variations. What do I do if my opponent does this? What do I do after that?

Spethmann's cool approach to life is turned upside-down when he is drawn into a torrid affair, thrown into jail, shot at, blown up, and finally has to flee the country. The dilemma he faces cannot be won. He, like Russia itself, is in zugzwang.

Links

Book Trailer
Author interview on Chessbase
Reviews

Dead Souls

I was astounded when I first read Gogol's short story, "The Nose." It is so absurd, so Pythonesque, I could scarcely believe it had been written in the 1830s. It begins with a barber eating a roll for breakfast and finding a nose inside. Yes, a nose, and from there the story only gets more bizarre.

I mention this because in the notes to this edition of Dead Souls, the translator, Christopher English, mentions that a rhinological theme runs through Gogol's work. The protagonist of Dead Souls is Chichikov, a name that suggests the Russian word for sneeze, while the name of another character is Nozdryov, which derives from the word nostril.

Comic Masterpiece

The book is set in rural Russia at a time when landowners paid tax on their serfs, even dead ones. This gives Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov an idea, and he visits a number of farms hoping to increase his wealth and status by acquiring the title to serfs (aka souls) who have died.

Of course, it's a shady scheme, and the comic possibilities are obvious. One of the most priceless scenes occurs when a widow dithers over whether or not to turn over her dead serfs. "They might come in useful around the farm," she says worriedly.

Sometimes the humour is pure physical comedy, but it also serves the purpose of bursting pretentions:

At this moment the footman standing behind him wiped the ambassador's nose, and not before time too, for otherwise a sizeable foreign droplet would have fallen into His Excellency's soup.

Eventually Chichikov's plan unravels due to unfounded rumours, each more ridiculous than the last. He is a spy, he is planning to abduct the governor's daughter, he is Napoleon in disguise, he is a veteran with only one arm and one leg. Wait a minute, how can that be? Chichikov is not missing any limbs. No matter, the damage is done and he has to flee.

However, it is not just humour that makes this book a masterpiece. The writing is so easy-going, so natural, we feel as though we're taking a stroll with the author through the Russian countryside. He speaks directly to us; Chichikov is "our hero."

Then there is the loving detail that Gogol weaves into the story:

The black tailcoats flashed and whizzed about, singly and in groups, like flies on a hot July day buzzing round a dazzling white sugar-loaf which the old housekeeper, standing before an open window, chips and divides into sparkling chunks, while the children gather round and gaze in fascination at the movements of her sinewy arms wielding the hammer, and the airborne squadrons of flies, buoyed up by the light air, swoop bravely in, like full masters of the house and--taking advantage of the old woman's poor eyesight, made worse by the glare of the sun--scatter over the succulent morsels, either separately, or in dense clusters.

Gogol's achievement is even more remarkable when one considers how far away in time and language is rural pre-Revolutionary Russia. Differences include the mode of dress, the many civil service ranks, the forms of measure no longer used (versts, poods, arshins), even the different kinds of carriages (droshky, britzka, troika, etc.). Yet none of these are serious obstacles to our enjoyment of the work.

Part Two

It seems that Dead Souls was conceived as a trilogy. We know at least that Gogol worked on Part Two for a number of years, but became mentally unstable at the end of his life and burned the manuscript just days before he died. However, much of it has been restored from previously existing copies. It is fragmentary in a few places, and has no ending.

Whereas in Part One Chichikov is merely engaged in a somewhat shady activity, in Part Two he is more reprehensible. At the same time a moralistic tone enters the book, which I found hard not to see as a reflection of Gogol's own crisis. It seems clear that "dead souls" refers not just to dead serfs, but also to people like Chichikov whose souls are morally dead.

Dickens

Dead Souls reminds me of another comic masterpiece, Pickwick Papers. They share a picaresque quality and protagonists accompanied in their travels by bumbling companions. They get lost, stop at inns, and listen to tales distinct from the main storyline (in Dead Souls "The Tale of Captain Kopeikin").

There is the same delight in food, and the same use of exaggeration. An army courier has moustaches two feet across, a woman wears a hoop skirt so big it takes up half the church, a colonel offers a "sauce-boat" to a lady on the end of his sabre. The miser Plyushkin, and the quarrelsome bully and inveterate liar Nozdryov, are in many ways as grotesque as anything in Dickens.

Mention is made of a man who, like Krook in Bleak House, spontaneously combusts due to excessive drinking; and when Chichikov tries to process the transfer of the serfs he has acquired, he meets the same bureaucratic obfuscation that Arthur Clennam encounters at the Circumlocution Office in Little Dorrit.

And bits like this:

And along both sides of the highroad it was the same old story: the usual succession of milestones, station-masters, wells, waggon trains, dreary villages with their samovars, countrywomen, and a spry, bearded inn-keeper, running out of his coachyard to meet them, bearing oats for the horses, a wayfarer who had trudged some eight hundreds versts in his worn-out bast shoes; small, wretched towns with the houses arranged haphazardly, with their ramshackle wooden shops, flour barrels, bast shoes, calatches, and other trifling wares; striped turnpikes, bridges under repair; fields stretching as far as the eye could see on both sides of the road; the landaus of local landowners; a mounted soldier, carrying a green box of lead shot, which bore the legend: 'Artillery Battery such-and-such'; the steppe, with its stripes of green, and gold, and freshly turned black earth; a song borne from afar; the tops of pine trees seen through the mist; the peal of church bells ringing, and fading, in the distance; crows clustered as thick as flies, and a horizon without end.

Postscript

Just as I was finishing the book, I read a newspaper article about a man who died in a Russian jail three years ago. He is to be put on trial later this month.

Dersu the Trapper

Early in the 20th century Vladimir Arseniev led a number of scientific expeditions in the Russian Far East where a chance encounter with a native man, Dersu Uzala, led to a lasting friendship.

Dersu had no permanent dwelling, carried all of his belongings in a birchbark knapsack, and possessed bush skills so extraordinary he seemed almost clairvoyant. He was able to track wild pigs by his sense of smell, and pluck grouse out trees using a stick with a noose.

He scolded a tiger for stalking them, and reproved Arseniev for throwing a piece of meat into the fire. "In taiga many sort men," he said in imperfect Russian. He was referring to any of the animals who might visit the campsite after they had left, including ants. He believed that everything had a soul, even inanimate objects.

Dersu saved Arseniev's life several times, once when a forest fire overtook them, another time when a blizzard caught them in a marshy area with only reeds for shelter. When they were starving it was Dersu who found fish heads a bear had discarded, and boiled up strips of hide to fill their stomachs.

The Taiga

Arseniev's affection for Dersu was matched by his love of the taiga, and he recorded with an eager eye the plant and animal life they encountered. There were poplars three centuries old and so immense that two or three bears could hibernate inside. Garganey, hazel hen, and eagle owls were a few of the birds he observed, while mammals included roedeer, fanged muskdeer, raccoon dogs, and herds of wild pigs, some of them weighing as much as 600 pounds.

He witnessed a battle between ants and bees, and a chipmunk airing out its cache of food to prevent rot, and a Tibetan bear shaking acorns out of a tree. When they spotted fur seals at the coast he commented on their love of music.

There were moments when even the Cossacks who accompanied him were silenced by the taiga's beauty.

The People

Living in the Russian Far East was an uneasy mixture of Russians, Chinese, Koreans, and various native groups. They hunted and trapped, gathered fungus and ginseng, and cultivated poppies for opium, but it was non-natives who so ransacked the forest that "on every side one sees nothing but robbery and exploitation."

Arseniev provided some amazing glimpses of those natives not yet "in a complete state of slavery." They lived in cedar bark huts and wore moccasins made of fish skins. In the winter they armed themselves with spears and hunted wild pigs on skis. They set nets beneath the ice in small streams, and at night herded fish into them by torchlight while pounding on the ice with mallets.

The End of Dersu

When Dersu's eyesight began to fail, he reluctantly agreed to stay with Arseniev in Khabarovsk. Unfortunately he was unused to living in "a box" and could not understand the restrictions necessary for living in a settlement.

It was not permitted to fire off a gun or pitch a tent in the street. He thought Arseniev was being swindled when he paid money for firewood. When he cut down a tree in a park, he was arrested.

Eventually he left Khabarovsk but did not get far before he was murdered. Arseniev visited the unmarked grave only once. Two years later he was unable to find the spot due to changes brought about by development.

Notes

In the introduction to this edition, it is stated that Dersu is a composite character.

When Arseniev died in 1930 there was a warrant out for his arrest. His widow was shot as a Japanese spy and his daughter imprisoned for 10 years in a gulag.

The graceful translation is by Malcolm Burr, whose life was no less interesting than Dersu's or Arseniev's. He was an entomologist with an abiding interest in the Balkans and the author of several books. He died in Istanbul in 1954.

The cover photo is a still from the motion picture by Kurosawa.

A free audio version is available in the Audio Archive section of the Internet Archive.

The book takes place in the same general region as John Vaillant's enormously readable The Tiger.

The Tiger

A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

We tend to associate tigers with jungle settings, but the Siberian subspecies lives in the subarctic and has no difficulty surviving minus 40 degree temperatures. It's the largest big cat in the world, but unlike its Bengal cousin does not have a reputation as a man-eater. Yet in 1997 a male killed and devoured two men in Primorski Krai, a region in the Russian Far East.

John Vaillant's book recounts these events, and the subsequent tracking down and killing of the tiger. It's a sensational topic, but the author's handling of it is sensitive and wide-ranging. His portrait of life in Primorski Krai, and of the ghastly effects of perestroika, is empathetic without being sentimental.

Particularly moving is his sketch of the first man to be killed. He was poacher, yes, but he was also a person who had not been ground under by the harsh realities of life in post-Soviet Russia. Whether or not he was a victim of bad luck, or caused his own demise by interferring with the tiger in some way, perhaps by pilfering some of its kill, remains unknown.

What is astonishing is the vindictive manner in which the tiger acted, seeking out this man's cabin, vandalizing everything he had touched, and then waiting for his return. There can be no question that the tiger was targetting him.

Vaillant's approach to this extraordinary tale is similar to that of Sebastian Junger in The Perfect Storm. Indeed, Siberian tigers are so fierce and implacable they seem like a force of nature. Vaillant likens an attack to having a piano dropped on you from a two-storey window. The difference is that tigers act with intent. They are endowed with ferocious cunning, a hypnotic gaze, an earth-shaking roar, and an almost supernatural ability to move invisibly through the forest.

As of December 2009, only 400 remain in the Russian Far East. Some of the proceeds of this book go toward their protection.

Go HERE to watch the author speaking about The Tiger. He won a G-G for a previous book, The Golden Spruce.

Bering

The Russian Discovery of America

Vitus Bering was a Dane who served in the Russian navy from 1704 until his death in 1741. He is best known for leading the Second Kamchatka Expedition, which sailed from the Russian Far East to the Gulf of Alaska.

This book is primarily an account of that astonishing journey, which started out from St. Petersburg and took four years just to cross Siberia. On the east coast another four years passed before two ships, the St. Peter and the St. Paul, finally put out to sea in June of 1741. They made landfall on several islands in the Gulf of Alaska and brief contact with native Americans. In the latter case the two groups only succeeded in perplexing each other.

The St. Paul returned to Kamchatka in October, but Bering's ship, the St. Peter, was hampered by bad weather and bad decision-making, and in November was wrecked on an island (later named after Bering), which was mistaken for the mainland. Bering died the following month at the age of 60. The survivors built a smaller vessel out of wood scavenged from the St. Peter and sailed to Kamchatka the following summer.

Misc. Notes

The author incorporates two recent sources of information. One was the exhumation of Bering in 1991 by a joint Danish-Russian expedition. The other was the discovery in 1996 of a dozen letters that Bering and his wife had sent home from Kamchatka.

Bering (the author says) was virtually a hostage of his officers. In an eerie foreshadowing of socialism his orders were sometimes overturned by a sea council. The fatal decision to land on Bering Island rather than continue sailing west was not made by the captain.

Bering Island was thronged with "wicked" arctic foxes. They "dragged apart all the baggage, ate the leather sacks, scattered the provisions, stole and dragged from one man his boots, from another his socks and trousers, gloves, and coat.... They even dragged off iron and other implements that were of no use to them."

The men survived by killing manatees, also known as sea cows. One was 30 feet long and weighted nearly four tons. The men not only ate the meat and fat of these gentle creatures, but also drank their milk.

Bering's "discovery" of Alaska led to an influx of Russian fur traders, and the eventual formation of the Russian-American Company, which constructed settlements as far south as California. "Russian America" came to an end in 1867, the same year as Canadian Confederation, when the US purchased Alaska.

Stellar Steller

Bering for me remained a rather distant and shadowy individual. As the author explains, there are valid reasons for his aloofness and expensive tastes, but these are attributes that do not endear one to a modern sensibility.

Most readers, I think, will find Georg Stellar a more interesting and praiseworthy figure. A naturalist and physician, he was the butt of much unprofessional behaviour by the officers and Bering himself. Yet Steller's interest in nature remained unquenchable, and his humane behaviour when shipwrecked was exemplary. He used plants and fresh meat to cure scurvy in his crewmates, and provided the kind of leadership that helped carry them through the winter.

Steller survived the expedition, returned to Kamchatka, and died a few years later in Tyumen. Today his name graces a number of species, including Steller's Jay and Steller's Eider.

His Journal of a Voyage with Bering, 1741-1742 is available in a 1993 edition prepared by the author of Bering, Orcutt Frost.

Silverland

A Winter Journey Beyond the Urals

"A typical old Irish Leftie" is how Dervla Murphy was once described.

A grandmother in her 70s, she embarks upon her second journey through Siberia. She travels alone, speaks no Russian, and stashes money in her vagina.

This trip seems a little grimmer than the first one. The openness and generosity of many people are counterbalanced by the rudeness and xenophobia of many others. The word "Nyet!" is heard far too often, and there are sad examples of poverty, alcoholism, bureaucratic tangles, and "pollution on a truly sinister scale." Towards the end of the book she is robbed at gunpoint.

Murphy is an engaging, well-read, and plain-speaking traveller. She suffers the occasional hangover, provides apt historical asides, and collects interesting observations from others, such as support for the US invasion of Iraq, the reason for gigantism in Soviet architecture, and the opinion that Russia is "too big for democracy".

For me, two lines sum up the book:

I met no one who could honestly express optimism about Russia's future. Siberia's uninhabited vastness mesmerizes me; as I write these words I long to return.

Details

1. Silverland is a companion volume to Through Siberia by Accident, which recounts the author's abortive attempt to bicycle through the Russian Far East in 2002. She returned in 2004, drawn by Siberian hospitality and such natural wonders as Lake Baikal (a "Hallowed Sea").

2. She travels almost entirely by train -- from Cologne to Moscow with an awkward interruption in Belarus, then over the Urals with stops in Severobaikalsk, Tynda, Komsomolsk-na-Amure, and Vanino. Her return journey takes her through Khabarovsk, Ulan-Ude, and Rostov-on-Don, with a final week in St. Petersburg.

3. She airs some personal views. Bicycle helmets are "wimpish," the IMF has caused "despair and death on three continents," and crematories release dioxins into the air and mercury vapour from dental fillings. She recommends a "woodland" burial -- no coffin, just a winding-sheet of wool or cotton.

4. The book contains a map, bibliography, and four pages (eight sides) of B&W photos.

More Quotes

electric "butter-lamps" tea sweetened with blackcurrent jam the sordid engine room of the capitalist ship that notorious Soviet mix, zealotry and incompetence a society dazzled by but not fully comprehending the workings of capitalism

A Hero of Our Time

The prose in this slim volume is as clear and bracing as a mountain stream.

The book presents five episodes in the life of a Byronic character named Pechorin. The unusual narrative structure allows us to see him first through the eyes of other characters, for whom he is a cipher.

The core of the book, both in terms of length and psychological depth, is the fourth episode, "Princess Mary," which is told in Pechorin's own words. He describes himself as a "moral cripple."

The final piece, "The Fatalist," has an eerie Poe-like quality to it, describing a man with "the mark of death" on his face.

Now examine the cover of the novel above. This is a portrait of Lermontov. Do you see the mark of death on his face?

Lermontov was a soldier as well as a Romantic poet -- brave, dashing, and equipped with a lethal wit. He was twice exiled to the wild Causcasus region, once for a poem he wrote on the death of Pushkin, and the second for fighting a duel. The character of Pechorin is clearly modelled on himself.

Byron (the name comes up several times in the book) was an important influence. Another was Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. Pechorin and Onegin (both characters named after rivers) are similarly bored but dangerous men. Both kill a friend in a duel.

The duel in A Hero of Our Time is impossibly Romantic. It takes place on the ledge of a cliff against a backdrop of mountains. Even a wound is likely to prove fatal. A coin is flipped to see who will shoot first. The men are positioned six paces apart, so that a miss is highly unlikely.

Like Pushkin, Lermontov himself was killed in a duel. He died in 1841, the year after A Hero of Our Time was published. He was only 27.

Mikhail Lermontov was the greatest Russian poet of his age, after Pushkin, and his influence on later Russian writers has been great -- Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Pasternak.

Tretiak: The Legend

I've wanted to read this book by Tretiak for a long time, and was particularly interested in getting a Soviet perspective on Canadian hockey. However, the English version of this book appeared in 1987 when the Soviet Union was still intact, so in many places the book reads like propaganda. Advice given by coaches is often trite or couched in language that reeks of ideology.

When the Soviet team fell behind in a game against the Canadiens, "the coaches suggested that our players skate faster and be more accurate with their passing."

In another game they said, "Lock up your opponents in their zone, force the goalie to make mistakes, fool the defensemen, and most importantly, show your character."

I assume the book was vetted by Soviet censors, making it impossible to know how accurately it reflects Tretiak's views. I have no doubt he is patriotic, so it is possible his words are genuine.

After retiring, he became a political worker with the Central Red Army Sports Club. And though he dismisses as "ridiculous" the suggestion that Soviet athletes were engaged in subversive indoctrination, he also says:

Athletes are, in fact, on the main line of the ideological fight of two social systems. Our athletes have to prove constantly that they are not only the strongest and most talented, but, more importantly, they must let the world know that behind them is the strength of Communist ideals, the all-triumphant truth of Soviet morality.

Hockey Thuggery

A number of Tretiak's complaints while playing in North America are similar to those made by Dryden, Esposito, and others while in Moscow during the 1972 Summit Series -- complaints about food, officiating, and accommodation. But Tretiak's harshest words are reserved for the "gladiator psychology" of NHLers.

The dirty tricks, punches, threats to the referees, and after-the-whistle hits were all tactics that the Canadians demonstrated without any trace of shame. They employ their tested weapon -- dishonest, dirty hockey. [They have] malicious, twisted faces, foaming at the mouth.

Tretiak overstates his case, but there is some truth in what he says. In The Game, Ken Dryden provides a careful analysis of the differences between the Russian and the Canadian styles. Because Russian hockey developed differently, it was able to avoid the limitations of the North American game, where (Dryden says) "violence had been allowed to make sense."

Compliments

Tretiak has many gracious things to say about us. He's particularly complimentary about Bobby Hull: "The legends about him are told for a reason. What a shot!"

Gerry Cheevers is "fearless, skillful and calm."

Bobby Clarke: "To look at him, you'd swear that Bobby was a wanted murderer, but once you got to know him, you realized what a very friendly and kind fellow he was."

Phil Esposito: "...his superb ability to control the puck, his powerful game in front of the net, and his astounding intuition were, as always, distinct Esposito trademarks."

He refers to the Montreal Forum as "a great hockey citadel" and suggests that Russians "could learn from the Canadiens everything that concerns respect for fans and players."

Trivia

Tretiak, like all the Russians, did an incredible amount of dryland training. This included having someone hit tennis balls at him with a racket. During games he watched the eyes of incoming players so intently that he was accused of hypnotizing them.

Before the first game of the Summit Series, Jacques Plante made a surprise visit to give him tips on how to play the Canadian forwards.

He was fascinated by Gerry Cheevers, who smoked a cigar before games, and had a clause in his contract permitting him to drink beer between periods.

He addresses Ken Dryden directly, responding to comments made in Dryden's first book, Face-Off at the Summit. "You're right, Ken. We all had the same feelings..."

The Stanley Cup: "a huge, paunchy, glittering trophy that looks like a Russian samovar."

Retirement

"Vladik" retired in 1984, stating that he never wanted to play in the NHL. "It wouldn't suit me, as an officer and Soviet citizen..." This may or may not be the truth.

The Wikipedia entry on him indicates he may have retired because he was not allowed to go to the NHL, and also because he no longer wanted to play for Tikhonov. It was Tikhonov who pulled Tretiak during an Olympic match against the Americans in Lake Placid (the "Miracle on Ice"), after Tretiak had let in a weak goal at the end of the first period.

In 1987 there was a reunion of the Summit Series players. Tretiak writes:

Now there was no trace of the old antagonism. We had become wise and kind. We looked at one another's aging faces and couldn't hold back the laughter, thinking about what bullies we had been in 1972.

Tretiak is one of the most admired and respected hockey players in the world. He was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1989.

The following year he became the goaltending coach for the Chicago Blackhawks. Among those he tutored are Ed Belfour, Martin Brodeur, and Dominic Hasek. Any goalie wearing number 20 does so as a tribute to Tretiak.

In 2006 he was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal by the Governor General.

He runs the Vladislav Tretiak Elite School of Goaltending in Toronto.

The translation is by Sam and Maria Budman.

Through Siberia by Accident

Dervla Murphy is a beer-swilling cigar-smoking travel writer with more than 20 books to her credit. She is also an eccentric Irish granny who prefers travelling by bike. She does not own a car, microwave, washing machine, computer, TV, or central heating.

The misfortunes she has suffered during her travels are many:

Afghanistan – broken ribs, scorpion bite
Albania – three attempted robberies
Cameroon – “triple tooth abscess”
Ethiopia – dislocated knee, robbed by bandits
India – heat stroke, mumps, brucellosis (brucellosis!)
Laos – torn tendon in right foot
Madagascar – gout, more broken ribs, Hep A
Nairobi-London flight – life threatening clot in leg
Pakistan - amoebic dysentery
Rumania – robbed by police, concussion, fractured coccyx, broken foot
South Africa – tick bite fever, shattered left arm
Zimbabwe - malaria

In 2002 she crossed the Russian Federation by the Baikal-Amur Mainline, her intention being to cycle through a portion of Siberia. In this she was prevented by a couple of injuries that occurred before her starting point was reached. Instead she continued to travel by train and boat in the Baikal and Sakha areas.

She extols the friendliness of Siberians, and falls under the spell of Lake Baikal and the Lena River. Her observations are intelligent, well-informed, and contain none of the usual whining often found in travel writing. She complains about toilet facilities only once. She is gutsy, pragmatic and open-minded.

My sole complaint is her continual fussing over pets. No incident is too trivial to report on:

As I drank, the pup farted – potent farts which at first provoked only laughter and comically expressed disgust. Then, as they increased in volume and frequency, filling the cabin with asphyxiating fumes, the consensus was that he should be exiled. Tears gathered in the little boy’s eyes. But I had finished my beer, and thawed, and was returning to the platform where the pup could sit on my lap because Baikal’s wind would disperse his wind. When I had found the most sheltered corner he gazed up at my face with a puzzled expression. No doubt I smelt wrong, foreign. Soon he struggled to be free, loudly relieved his bowels behind a milk churn and thereafter farted no more.

Murphy undertook this trip in 2002, when she was in her early 70s. A few years later she returned and completed it, the results being published as Silverland: A Winter Journey Beyond the Urals.

King of Russia

A Year in the Russian Super League

Dave King coached Canada’s national team for nine years, followed by stints with Calgary, Columbus and Montreal in the NHL. Later while coaching in Europe he was courted by Metallurg Magnitogorsk of the Russian Super League, which includes such fabled teams as Central Red Army and Moscow Dynamo.

In taking the job King became the first Canadian to coach in the league, and led Metallurg to their most successful season ever. They finished first overall with only five regular season losses in 51 games. They also won the Spengler Cup, a five-team mid-season tournament played in Davos, Switzerland. However, they fared less well in the league playoffs. They were hit with a lot of injuries and went out in the semi-finals, losing 3 games to 1, all their losses being in overtime.

Nineteen-year-old Evgeny Malkin was the star of the team, and King has a lot of good things to say about him. When the team played in Finland for the Tampere Cup, Malkin did “such dazzling things with the puck that the fans just stood up and applauded.” But it’s not just his natural skills that make him a great player. “Sometimes Russian players can be extremely dour. Malkin smiles all the time. He seems to enjoy practice. He loves to compete. He plays the game with tempo. He’s unselfish.” Eric Lindros played for King as a nineteen-year-old, and King ranks Malkin ahead of Lindros at that age.

At the start of the season King thinks the team needs more grit, and convinces the management to bring in a couple of warhorses, ex-Leafs Dmitri Yushkevich and Igor Korolev. It was a smart move, as both players made major contributions to the team. King is particularly complimentary about Yushkevich, who with a bad knee is “as close to a one-legged player as you can get.” His great heart makes up for this deficiency. During one game he's hit in the face with a puck. King says:

I didn’t think I’d see him for a while, but the next day, who’s there at practice? It’s Yushkevich -– and he looked like hell. If little kids on the street had seen him they would have run the other way. He looked like a character in a horror movie, with all those scars of his and now his face all lopsided.

Likewise Korolev. In the playoffs he’s cut by a skate and receives 23 stitches. “It was so bad that our doctor was practically throwing up.” Korolev refuses to stay out of the game and comes back “with a great big patch over his eye, blood all over his sweater and his face.”

Observations about Russian Hockey

Before the season begins a Russian Orthodox priest enters the dressing room and sprinkles the players with holy water.

Not only must teams travel vast distances for league play, but Metallurg's pre-season training took place in the Swiss Alps, and included an exhibition tournament in Finland, while mid-season dry-land training was located in Dubai.

For top-level players the Russian Super League is as lucrative as the NHL. Yet on some teams players went unpaid for months.

The amount of physical training is phenomenal. King says:

I’m no doctor, but we don’t have nearly as many groin strains here [as in the NHL] and I’m wondering if that has something to do with the tremendous strength the Russian players develop in their quadriceps... To a man, the leg strength of a Russian player will amaze you. The quadriceps muscles, which deliver so much power to the stride, are huge on virtually every one of them. Right from the time they turn eight or nine years old, they do an immense amount of work to build up their leg strength.

Also the whole approach to coaching is different:

The players rarely complain or give you any emotional reaction... I blame it on the fact that, starting at young age, coaches confront players one-on-one on the bench, in the dressing-room, or on the ice, scolding them harshly for mistakes. They rarely do it privately, so in order to cope the players simply don’t react. They absorb the comments and show their strength to their teammates by wearing a blank expression. I’ve seen grown men coaching young ten- or eleven-year-olds go nose-to-nose with a youngster, ranting and raving almost incoherently -– and the young player simply takes the medicine...

King decided to stay for the 2006-2007 season, but many of his top players had moved on, including Yushkevich and Malkin, who is now with the Pittsburgh Penguins. After just eight games King was fired. His record was 3-4-1.