When I think about 1987, I think of my first visit to the Soviet Union, to then Leningrad, where I met some of my best Russian friends and experienced firsthand what Mikhail Gorbachev, in the book we had to read for our classes at Leningrad State University, called "Novoe myshlenie," New Thinking.
Glasnost', Perestroika, Demokratiia. Those were the catchwords of 1987. I've been revisiting those years lately for two reasons -- first, I'm teaching Soviet and post-Soviet literature and am trying to explain to my students what those years felt like and what it meant to have literature literally coming to life as the USSR headed to its demise. Secondly, my daughter is doing a graphic novel project for her 9th grade history class. She is supposed to do oral interviews with someone who experienced a big historical event -- and that someone is me. I was there as the Soviet Union began to unravel. I experienced lines and rationing and underground poetry readings that gradually came out into the open. My friends were called in to speak with the KGB about me, and they walked out of those meetings after telling the KGB officers that times were changing. In other words, my life is now history -- and soon some of its episodes will be featured in my daughter's graphic novel.
But this weekend I'm thinking of 1987 in a whole new way.
For my birthday last week, one of my students from Warsaw, Andriy Lyubka, posted on my timeline something on the order of "I prefer my madness in literature" -- Вітаю щиро! :) Бажаю madness тільки в літературі!)))
This was a reference to the course I taught this spring, "Madness and Power in Russian Culture," where I explored my book with students, covering aspects of insanity in literature, politics, history across about 2 1/2 centuries of Russian life.
Andriy himself is a contemporary Ukrainian poet -- who in his spare time is pursuing a master's degree in Slavic Studies at Warsaw University. One of his early published collections of poetry was called Eight Months of Schizophrenia (2007), so he may know even more about madness in literature than I do.
But his Facebook greeting was also a reference to what's going on in Ukraine today.
Andriy was born in 1987, which makes him exactly as old as my personal experience of the former Soviet Union -- of Russia, Ukraine, Belorus, etc. He is truly a post-Soviet citizen, as became clear when my Warsaw students took their ethnographic research trip to Belorus in May. Andriy wasn't permitted across the border. Something he had done in 2004 during the Orange Revolution had resulted in his being banned from Belorus for ten years.
After this weekend, I have the feeling the border guards of Belarus will extend that ban.
Andriy is currently "on the barricades" (as he assures me and others following his Facebook posts) in Kyiv, Ukraine. And he also reports that it "smells like Revolution."
He reports this in typical twenty-something style, with a yellow smiley-face emoticon. And I am hoping that he, and others engaged in defending Ukraine's right to "lean West," to embrace European values in the face of Russian bullying, will succeed in their endeavors to change contemporary Ukraine, and in keeping those smiles and their optimism about their country's, and their own, future.
Andriy, and other young Ukrainians, don't really know what the Soviet Union was like. Born after the Chernobyl disaster (or Chornobylska Katastrofa in Ukrainian), they have watched Ukraine move toward democracy. They have a freedom of movement and ability to travel that must amaze their parents. At a conference recently, talking about the "new intelligentsia" of post-Soviet countries, I brought up Andriy Lyubka, who in my opinion behaves just as a twenty-something European poet should. He travels all over Europe (especially Central and Eastern Europe) to poetry festivals. He gives readings and signs books at bookstores and clubs. He even now does spoken word poetry with music and posts videos on YouTube. He constantly posts on his Facebook page and "checks in" on FourSquare wherever he goes.
This is the face of European Ukraine. Check him out.
His song "I hate mornings" (see here: А я ненавиджу ранки) expresses a sentiment my thirteen-year-old son would understand perfectly. My son is an adolescent experiencing growing pains who needs a minimum of 12-15 hours of sleep a day. But Andriy can't linger in the post-adolescent grouchiness of everyday life anymore. The general public, as his song says, is bound to learn about his existence. He cannot remain quiet or private, can't merely be a creative individual who has the right to linger over breakfast. Instead he -- and several other of my Ukrainian former students, along with hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens -- is out protesting the politics of his homeland.
That may not be what Gorbachev meant by "new thinking," but that's the new thinking that 1987 gave birth to.
I, like many middle-aged people, am afraid of revolution. But I'm excited to see the possibility of change in Ukraine, the possibility that Ukraine -- birthplace of Russian and Ukrainian culture, homeland of proud and talented people young and old -- may "lean west" rather than east. I would love to see a European Ukraine.
I can't wait to see what comes next.
Glasnost', Perestroika, Demokratiia. Those were the catchwords of 1987. I've been revisiting those years lately for two reasons -- first, I'm teaching Soviet and post-Soviet literature and am trying to explain to my students what those years felt like and what it meant to have literature literally coming to life as the USSR headed to its demise. Secondly, my daughter is doing a graphic novel project for her 9th grade history class. She is supposed to do oral interviews with someone who experienced a big historical event -- and that someone is me. I was there as the Soviet Union began to unravel. I experienced lines and rationing and underground poetry readings that gradually came out into the open. My friends were called in to speak with the KGB about me, and they walked out of those meetings after telling the KGB officers that times were changing. In other words, my life is now history -- and soon some of its episodes will be featured in my daughter's graphic novel.
But this weekend I'm thinking of 1987 in a whole new way.
For my birthday last week, one of my students from Warsaw, Andriy Lyubka, posted on my timeline something on the order of "I prefer my madness in literature" -- Вітаю щиро! :) Бажаю madness тільки в літературі!))) This was a reference to the course I taught this spring, "Madness and Power in Russian Culture," where I explored my book with students, covering aspects of insanity in literature, politics, history across about 2 1/2 centuries of Russian life.
Andriy himself is a contemporary Ukrainian poet -- who in his spare time is pursuing a master's degree in Slavic Studies at Warsaw University. One of his early published collections of poetry was called Eight Months of Schizophrenia (2007), so he may know even more about madness in literature than I do.
But his Facebook greeting was also a reference to what's going on in Ukraine today.
Andriy was born in 1987, which makes him exactly as old as my personal experience of the former Soviet Union -- of Russia, Ukraine, Belorus, etc. He is truly a post-Soviet citizen, as became clear when my Warsaw students took their ethnographic research trip to Belorus in May. Andriy wasn't permitted across the border. Something he had done in 2004 during the Orange Revolution had resulted in his being banned from Belorus for ten years.
After this weekend, I have the feeling the border guards of Belarus will extend that ban.
Andriy is currently "on the barricades" (as he assures me and others following his Facebook posts) in Kyiv, Ukraine. And he also reports that it "smells like Revolution."
He reports this in typical twenty-something style, with a yellow smiley-face emoticon. And I am hoping that he, and others engaged in defending Ukraine's right to "lean West," to embrace European values in the face of Russian bullying, will succeed in their endeavors to change contemporary Ukraine, and in keeping those smiles and their optimism about their country's, and their own, future.
Andriy, and other young Ukrainians, don't really know what the Soviet Union was like. Born after the Chernobyl disaster (or Chornobylska Katastrofa in Ukrainian), they have watched Ukraine move toward democracy. They have a freedom of movement and ability to travel that must amaze their parents. At a conference recently, talking about the "new intelligentsia" of post-Soviet countries, I brought up Andriy Lyubka, who in my opinion behaves just as a twenty-something European poet should. He travels all over Europe (especially Central and Eastern Europe) to poetry festivals. He gives readings and signs books at bookstores and clubs. He even now does spoken word poetry with music and posts videos on YouTube. He constantly posts on his Facebook page and "checks in" on FourSquare wherever he goes.
This is the face of European Ukraine. Check him out.His song "I hate mornings" (see here: А я ненавиджу ранки) expresses a sentiment my thirteen-year-old son would understand perfectly. My son is an adolescent experiencing growing pains who needs a minimum of 12-15 hours of sleep a day. But Andriy can't linger in the post-adolescent grouchiness of everyday life anymore. The general public, as his song says, is bound to learn about his existence. He cannot remain quiet or private, can't merely be a creative individual who has the right to linger over breakfast. Instead he -- and several other of my Ukrainian former students, along with hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens -- is out protesting the politics of his homeland.
That may not be what Gorbachev meant by "new thinking," but that's the new thinking that 1987 gave birth to.
I, like many middle-aged people, am afraid of revolution. But I'm excited to see the possibility of change in Ukraine, the possibility that Ukraine -- birthplace of Russian and Ukrainian culture, homeland of proud and talented people young and old -- may "lean west" rather than east. I would love to see a European Ukraine.
I can't wait to see what comes next.
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