By Katya Sedgwick
Friday, February 21, 2020
Democratic presidential front-runner Bernie Sanders likes
to market himself as a wise old man who just happens to have clown hair but is
right about everything, such as the War in Iraq. Yet his opposition to the Iraq
War was dictated not by cool-headed geopolitical calculations, but the lifelong
habit of romancing American enemies — as is typical for communism-lovers.
The recently surfaced press conference Sanders gave
following his return from his honeymoon in Yaroslavl, USSR, is a great example
of leftist naïveté about totalitarian regimes. For Bernie to fawn over Soviet
culture the way he did indicates a staggering degree of incuriosity. I was only
15 and growing up in Kharkiv, now Ukraine, when the couple visited the USSR,
and I’m not impressed when I watch Sanders sing Moscow’s praises
Start with the metro. Sanders said at the time, “The
stations themselves were very beautiful, including many works of art,
chandeliers that were beautiful. It was a very, very effective system.”
It’s slightly creepy that Joseph Stalin initiated the
tradition of building chthonian palaces underneath Soviet cities. The stations
are beautiful, no doubt, but effectiveness is a whole different matter.
Coverage was so-so, and the rush hour commute was a nightmare, so Sanders’
classification of the stations as “effective” is puzzling. People stuffed into
trains like sardines.
More importantly, metros were only built in cities with
populations exceeding one million. Investing money into extravagant projects
makes sense if the goal is to dazzle foreigners, but it’s also highly unwise
considering that the condition of roads across Russia has always been
atrocious. Traveling in the USSR, especially in provincial towns such as
Yaroslavl, Sanders, an American man with a driver license, would take note of
the state of the infrastructure — one would think.
Free Theaters That Nobody
Wants to Visit
Bernie continued:
Their palaces of culture for the
young people, a whole variety of programs for the young people, and cultural
programs which go far beyond what we do in this country. We went to a theater
in Yaroslavl which was absolutely beautiful, had three separate stages. Their
cultural programs were put together by professional actors and actresses,
including a puppeteer area. And the cost, the highest price of the ticket you
can get was equivalent of $1.50.
It’s true that the Soviet Union subsidized all sorts of
cultural programming for children, such as theaters and youth culture palaces
with after-school enrichment programs. Unfortunately, in a socialist economy,
that type of institution existed without any feedback from the markets.
I was part of the generation that took yearly field trips
to the Theater of The Young Viewer. Ticket costs aside, there was just one such
stage in the city, plus the Puppet Theater for the younger kids, and not a lot
of demand for the shows. I don’t think American cultural programming is in any
way inferior, albeit the cost to the consumer might be higher.
When I was 10, I started taking the metro across town to
a children’s palace where the after-school activities were offered. The palace,
a beautiful pre-revolutionary structure, was named after Stalin’s henchman
Pavel Postyshev. Postyshev presided over Red Terror, purges, and Holodomor,
before himself falling victim to Stalinist repressions.
Toward the end of his life, the executioner, by then an
alcoholic, was displaying symptoms of paranoia. He once decided that the flame
drawn on the box of matches resembled the profile of Leon Trotsky and that
sausages, when cut, have swirls similar to swastikas. He ordered the
confiscation of all matches and a purge of the grocery.
My generation of Soviets came of age knowing that the
USSR was built on tyranny and lies. We are the most cynical generation in
Russian history. Once the country crumbled, our lives spun out of control. As a
result, Russian speakers my age suffered through high rates of substance abuse,
low life expectancies, and through-the-floor birth rates. On the plus side, we
grew up with gaudy chandeliers in public places.
The Incurious Nature of
Bernie and Jane
Bernie’s bride, Jane, picked up where her husband left
off:
We were astounded with the
openness, the optimism, the enthusiasm in the nation. … What struck me the most
was the way that they dealt with children, and the cultural life of their
community. As Howard [another man on the trip] mentioned, they put the money
into public facilities, and they have palaces of culture which are paid for
strictly by trade union dues, and those have movies and dances, and those have
a lot of artistic outlets for people — for instance, they might become members
of an orchestra and study to play an instrument and perform, and when they go
off on performances, it seems not as — not something as they are doing on their
own, and they need to take vacation time from work, but it’s seen as providing
and contributing to the community life, so it becomes part of their work
instead of compartmentalizing their life into job and hobbies. It’s all
interrelated, and it’s all under the banner of community involvement.
The First-World problem Jane is trying to solve here is
called “the fractured modern man,” and you wouldn’t know it was a problem until
you took a fair number of college classes. I mean, is it really that bad to
have a job and a hobby?
Her talk of “community involvement” is rather ridiculous,
considering she visited a country with a very low level of trust, no meaningful
civic culture, and lots of alcoholism. When the workday was over, most Soviet
people didn’t go to culture palaces that they viewed as an extension of their
work life. They didn’t practice violin. They went moonlighting, making money on
the side, or shopping, a time-consuming process, or otherwise cared for their
families.
Also drinking or maybe watching a foreign movie at the
cinema — the USSR bought a limited number of those, but drinking was a favorite
pastime. Alcohol consumption doubled from 1955 to 1979.
Nobody knows what paid for the construction and
maintenance of Soviet culture palaces. In a planned economy with its web of
subsidies and bribery, such things are not transparent. The trade union fees,
however, were levied on everyone enrolled in a trade union, meaning every
worker, because all those employed by the government were automatically
enrolled in one, and everyone worked for the government — or at least pretended
to. As the Soviet joke went, “We pretend we work, and they pretend they pay
us.”
To be in awe of those palaces of culture performances in
the late ’80s, a visitor would have to be really, really — I mean really —
incurious. I understand the Sanderses went on their honeymoon surrounded by the
KGB minders, but wow! The newlyweds were shown performance venues, but did they
make an effort to meet an artist? Their tour was literally a Potemkin excursion
through the Soviet Union: the best of architecture, no real people.
The Watchful Eye of the
Censor
The late ’80s was a difficult time, when the economy had
suffered as the country struggled to compete with U.S. military spending. But
it was also an incredibly exciting time because Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost
provided an opportunity to learn about the country’s past and discuss a whole
universe of new ideas. Jane Sanders is right that there was much enthusiasm and
openness in the country, and ordinary people were eager to meet Americans. The
Sanderses let them down by staying with their minders.
And the culture palaces? Through most of Soviet history,
those were the sanctuaries for second-tier Soviet culture — amateurish and
produced under the watchful eye of the censor. Top-level Soviet performers
didn’t start in provincial adult education classes; they were groomed in major
cities starting in early childhood.
The kind of entertainment Soviet people wanted most
wasn’t created by youth puppeteers, either. A handful of officially produced
Russian-speaking stars remained popular among people of all ages. Many of those
born after World War II developed a preference for Western performers and
homegrown underground acts. Recordings of banned performers were bootlegged
from friend to friend and sometimes pressed on X-ray vinyl film — “na kostyah”
or “on the bones.” A few Western performers, most notably David Bowie, were
allowed to tour the USSR. Soviet bands usually played concerts in apartments.
After a smuggled recording of Soviet underground rock was
released in the West, Gorbachev reportedly said, “Why can’t we do it here?”
Shortly after, artists featured on the recording got contracts with the sole
Soviet recording company, Melodia. Stadiums and other official performance
venues opened for musicians who had endured years of prosecution, including
being fired from work, expelled from official youth organizations, and
sentenced to prison terms.
Bernie Sanders Is Hopelessly
Naive
That was happening when Bernie went to the USSR. Yet with
all his excitement about chandeliers, puppeteers, and the KGB-sanctioned
rehearsal spaces, he completely missed the zeitgeist. The Vermont
communism-lover was as close to liberation as he could ever get, but he chose
to bond with his minders. And millennial hipsters think he’s cool.
He is a special kind of tourist known to Russians. The
“tell me something nice about your country” tourist, the “surely the bad things
I’ve heard are all CIA propaganda” tourist, which is one grade below the “let’s
be nuanced about your situation” tourist.
That said, the attitude toward those types of people was
generally positive. They were still American, still in blue jeans, and they
could tell us a thing or two about the music. We believed them to be basically
well-intentioned but hopelessly naïve.
After moving to the United States, I no longer believe
Bernie-types to be well-intentioned. Regardless, the man who could be led
astray that easily should never be the president of the United States.
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