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Записки Русской Американки - Семейные Хроники и Случайные встречи
Ольга Матич (р. 1940) - русская американка из семьи старых эмигрантов. Ее двоюродный дед со стороны матери - политический деятель и писатель Василий Шульгин, двоюродная бабушка - художница Елена Киселева, любимица Репина. Родной дед Александр Билимович, один из первых русских экономистов, применявших математический метод, был членом Особого Совещания у Деникина. Отец по воле случая в тринадцать лет попал в Белую армию и вместе с ней уехал за границу. Семейные Хроники, первая часть воспоминаний, охватывают историю семьи (и ей близких людей), начиная с прадедов. Воля случая является одним из лейтмотивов воспоминаний, поэтому вторая часть называется Случайные Встречи. Они в основном посвящены отношениям автора с русскими писателями - В.Аксеновым, Б.Ахмадулиной, С.Довлатовым, П. Короленко, Э.Лимоновым, Б.Окуджавой, Д.Приговым, А.Синявским, С.Соколовым и Т.Толстой.О.Матич - специалист по русской литературе и культуре, профессор Калифорнийского университета в Беркли.
578 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2017
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April 3, 2019
I was going to write this review for a long time – and hesitated quite a while.
What I liked: the panoramic picture of Kiev intelligentsia (university professors, mathematicians, scientists, journalists, publishers); the atmosphere of Russian White emigration in Yugoslavia; the story of illustrious ancestors going back several generations; finally – last but not the least – sketches devoted to more contemporary Russian writers teaching at UC Berkeley thanks to the invitations initiated or helped along by the author. Voinovich, Aksyonov, Dovlatov, Okudzhava – they must have been delighted by California, and by the all too brief reprieve from a very different life at home.
What I did not like: the chapter devoted to V.V. Shulgin, the sibling of author’s grandfather. I did not like numerous attempts to whitewash V.V. Shulgin’s antisemitism, his humiliating sneers towards Jews in the newspaper where he was both an editor and a journalist, “Kievlyanin” (“The Kievite”). Interestingly, this newspaper – although under the most recent name, “Kiev Pravda”, lovingly preserved its anti-Semitic strain (probably the only thing about this newspaper that remained the same since 1905), and continued to mock and humiliate the Jews all the way to my departure from Kiev in 1992 – and very possibly after that as well.
The attempts to make V.V. Shulgin look at least a little better were justified by his negative attitude towards the Jews taking an active part in revolutionary movements at the beginning of the century. In spite of that – supposedly – some of his friends were Jewish, and he defended Beilis in front of his friends. Not because he considered Beilis to be innocent, or even worse, wanted to protect him, G-d forbid, but because the monarchy looked bad, not having collected enough proof of his non-existing “crimes” for the Beilis trial.
The reason that I go on and on about it is that my grandfather was born in 1905, during one of Kiev pogroms, very likely inspired by V.V. Shulgin’s editorial articles in “Kievlyanin”. His mother, my great-grandmother, died very soon after giving birth because no doctor could get in time to the cellar where they were hiding. His father died several years later, in another pogrom, when my grandfather was 5 years old. One might say: but V.V.Shulgin did not kill anyone personally in a pogrom, and surely did not head the crowds of criminals and looters roaming the city. All true. However, the “Kievlyanin” articles inspired those very crowds to kill and to rob the Jewish community. Honestly, it gave me goosebumps to read about this individual.
Olga Matich tries to defend her attachments to people “over the barriers” – even though her family belonged to White emigration, her first husband has been a Yugoslavian communist. However, antisemitism is one of the barriers that I could never cross, and felt that the author and I would part our ways here.
What I liked: the panoramic picture of Kiev intelligentsia (university professors, mathematicians, scientists, journalists, publishers); the atmosphere of Russian White emigration in Yugoslavia; the story of illustrious ancestors going back several generations; finally – last but not the least – sketches devoted to more contemporary Russian writers teaching at UC Berkeley thanks to the invitations initiated or helped along by the author. Voinovich, Aksyonov, Dovlatov, Okudzhava – they must have been delighted by California, and by the all too brief reprieve from a very different life at home.
What I did not like: the chapter devoted to V.V. Shulgin, the sibling of author’s grandfather. I did not like numerous attempts to whitewash V.V. Shulgin’s antisemitism, his humiliating sneers towards Jews in the newspaper where he was both an editor and a journalist, “Kievlyanin” (“The Kievite”). Interestingly, this newspaper – although under the most recent name, “Kiev Pravda”, lovingly preserved its anti-Semitic strain (probably the only thing about this newspaper that remained the same since 1905), and continued to mock and humiliate the Jews all the way to my departure from Kiev in 1992 – and very possibly after that as well.
The attempts to make V.V. Shulgin look at least a little better were justified by his negative attitude towards the Jews taking an active part in revolutionary movements at the beginning of the century. In spite of that – supposedly – some of his friends were Jewish, and he defended Beilis in front of his friends. Not because he considered Beilis to be innocent, or even worse, wanted to protect him, G-d forbid, but because the monarchy looked bad, not having collected enough proof of his non-existing “crimes” for the Beilis trial.
The reason that I go on and on about it is that my grandfather was born in 1905, during one of Kiev pogroms, very likely inspired by V.V. Shulgin’s editorial articles in “Kievlyanin”. His mother, my great-grandmother, died very soon after giving birth because no doctor could get in time to the cellar where they were hiding. His father died several years later, in another pogrom, when my grandfather was 5 years old. One might say: but V.V.Shulgin did not kill anyone personally in a pogrom, and surely did not head the crowds of criminals and looters roaming the city. All true. However, the “Kievlyanin” articles inspired those very crowds to kill and to rob the Jewish community. Honestly, it gave me goosebumps to read about this individual.
Olga Matich tries to defend her attachments to people “over the barriers” – even though her family belonged to White emigration, her first husband has been a Yugoslavian communist. However, antisemitism is one of the barriers that I could never cross, and felt that the author and I would part our ways here.
Displaying 1 of 1 review