MERCURIALITY AS MUSE:

INTERSECTING IDENTITIES IN CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN-JEWISH-AMERICAN

LITERATURE

Peter Alfredson

An honors thesis submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in

partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in the Department of

Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures (Russian Language and Culture).

Chapel Hill

2014

Approved by:

Stanislav Shvabrin

Radislav Lapushin

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©2014

Peter Alfredson

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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ABSTRACT

Peter Alfredson: Mercuriality as Muse:

Intersecting Identities in Contemporary Russian-Jewish-American Literature

Under the direction of Stanislav Shvabrin

This honors thesis explores transitional identity among Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés

in the United States, as represented in literary works by five writers from that community: The

Last Chicken in America by Ellen Litman, What Happened to Anna K. by Irina Reyn, Yom

Kippur in Amsterdam by Maxim Shrayer, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook by Gary

Shteyngart, and Petropolis by Anya Ulinich. Chapter One presents Russian identity as a largely

cultural and sentimental phenomenon. Chapter Two explores representations of Jewish identity

based in memory, historic anti-Semitism, and ethnic belonging. Chapter Three introduces and

discusses the existence of a persistent Soviet identity that has been largely ignored by previous

scholarship. Chapter Four examines a composite, pluralistic American identity that has

redefined the relationships among all other identities. This thesis draws upon extensive

secondary sources from across the social sciences and humanities to demonstrate the

complexities of these identities and their literary representations.

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Dedicated to the memory of my grandmother, Edna Ruth Limmer Alfredson, 1931-2010.

Your love and encouragement will always be a source of inspiration and strength for me.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I first became interested in issues of identity among Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés in

the United States during the summer of 2012, when I was able to get to know members of that

community while living and working in New York City. To that end, I would like to extend my

gratitude to Roman Shmulenson, Lisa Klig, Iryna Gubenko, and other former colleagues at

COJECO (the Council of Jewish Émigré Community Organizations), the nonprofit organization

where I interned. My time at COJECO taught me a great deal, both about the complexities of

transcultural identity and the tremendous creative energy within the Russian-speaking Jewish

émigré community. I would also like to sincerely thank the Lutsker family (Arthur, Victoria,

Daniel, and Chris), with whom I lived in Brooklyn that summer. In addition to many

enlightening conversations with them about their experiences in the United States as a family of

immigrants from the former Soviet Union, they showed incredible hospitality and kindness

toward me, something for which I will always be grateful.

My heartfelt recognition goes to Dr. Anna E. Peck, who has been a close friend and

mentor for nearly five years. She has contributed immensely to my interest in Russian culture

and history, both in and out of the classroom, and helped show me how to “think like a

researcher.” She continues to be an incredible source of intellectual and personal inspiration to

me.

I would also like to thank a number of faculty members and teachers in the Department of

Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures at UNC who have guided and assisted me over

the past few years. All of my Russian language instructors have worked so hard and displayed

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tremendous patience in helping me to become more comfortable communicating and thinking in

Russian: Jenny Barrier, Dr. Nicholas LeBlanc, Professor Eleonora Magomedova, Scott

Morrison, and Professor Kevin Reese. Professor Chris Putney first introduced me to the joys of

studying Russian literature in depth and has offered me a great deal of support and advice.

Professor Radislav Lapushin helped me to understand the ways in which Russian literature can

change how we see the world, and also first encouraged me to undertake this honors thesis.

My advisor throughout this process, Professor Stanislav Shvabrin, has been an invaluable

mentor, and his guidance and feedback have been extremely helpful in completing this project. I

am grateful to have been one of the first of what I know will be many UNC students to benefit

from his immense expertise, kindness, and dedication to effective scholarship and teaching. I

will always appreciate the support and wisdom that he has shared with me along this journey.

I would like to recognize the wonderful support that I have received from so many of my

friends throughout this process. I thank them for encouraging me when this project felt

overwhelming and cheering me on each time that I drew closer toward my goal. There are so

many generous and creative people whom I have been fortunate enough to have in my life during

my time at UNC.

Finally, I would like to thank my family for their unconditional love and help at so many

points in my life, especially as I have worked on this project over the last ten months. In many

ways, this thesis is a product of having grown up in a family that emphasized intellectual pursuits

and an appreciation for other cultures and ideas. I would particularly like to acknowledge the

contributions of my cousin, David Limmer; my grandparents, Lawrence and Elaine Cerny; my

brother, Robert Alfredson; and my parents, Louise and Glen Alfredson. I truly could not have

done this without them.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1

CHAPTER 1: BECOMING “THE REAL RUSSIANS?”: ........................................................... 12

CHAPTER 2: “I’M A JEW, TOO”: ............................................................................................. 26

CHAPTER 3: HOMO SOVIETICUS IN EXILE: ......................................................................... 46

CHAPTER 4: “I CAN EASILY DOUBLE AS A FIRST-RATE AMERICAN”: ....................... 65

CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................. 80

BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................... 83

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INTRODUCTION

The last decade has witnessed the rapid appearance of a new group of Russian-speaking

Jewish writers within the American literary community. The literature produced by these

authors, all of whom are émigrés to the United States from the former Soviet Union, has

intersected many different lines of ethno-cultural identity. This process has been reflective of the

issues facing the broader émigré community to which these writers belong. Writing in English,

these authors have achieved critical recognition and, sometimes, commercial success on the

broader American literary scene by focusing on characters who are also Russian-speaking Jewish

émigrés living in the United States. The narratives that these authors construct are often

permeated by questions of identity and belonging that reflect the roles of memory, place, and

community in shaping how these authors and their characters perceive their interwoven and

evolving Russian, Jewish, Soviet, and American identities. As a result, these authors have

created works of literature that evoke real historical and sociological issues about the nature of

transitional identity among this community.

According to the political scientist Zvi Gitelman, since the late 1970s, between 350,000

and 500,000 Jews have relocated from the former Soviet Union to the United States (see

Gitelman 243).1 As sociologist Larisa Remennick describes, this exodus was largely a reaction

to institutionalized anti-Semitism on the part of the Soviet government that had led to widespread

1 Official U.S. Department of State immigration records do not delineate whether or not

immigrants from the former Soviet Union were Jewish, so, as Gitelman observes, it is not

possible to know exactly how many of the more than 500,000 immigrants to the United States

from the former Soviet Union and its successor states between the 1970s and the late 2000s were

actually Jewish.

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educational, economic, and social discrimination against Jews (see Remennick 37). Even after

the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of official government-supported anti-Semitism,

historian Annelise Orleck points out that Jewish emigration from Russia and the other post-

Soviet republics continued well into the 1990s due to a volatile political situation, economic

insecurity, the aftermath of the Chernobyl meltdown, and a desire to reunite families that had

previously been split by emigration (see Orleck 73).

As these émigrés settled in the United States, they quickly formed close-knit

communities within neighborhoods in New York City and other urban centers, often interacting

with members of the existing American Jewish community in the process. It was through such

contact that many points of confusion and separation began to emerge. Fran Markowitz notes

that established American Jews were dismayed by the newcomers’ lack of religious observance,

while the émigrés felt that American Jews failed to properly accommodate to their cultural and

economic standards (Markowitz 1993 60). The fact that many émigrés continued to use Russian

as their primary language, even after having arrived in the United States, as well as significant

cultural differences between the émigrés and their American Jewish counterparts, often led to the

émigrés being labeled by other Americans as “Russians,” a label that was eventually embraced

by the émigrés themselves. As sociologist Aviva Zeltzer-Zubida describes: “People whose

parents were never fully accepted as Russians in the former Soviet Union could become ‘real’

Russians in Brooklyn—living within the boundaries of the Russian-speaking community”

(Zeltzer-Zubida 353). This was more than a bit ironic, considering that in the former Soviet

Union, Russian and Jewish identities were legally defined and mutually exclusive under the

Soviet ethnic classification system (see Gitelman 127). Consequently, as these émigrés have

adjusted to life in the United States, they have often faced deeper existential questions about the

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extent to which they are Russians, Jews, and Americans, as well as how much these identities are

internally and externally assigned.

Within this thesis, the term “Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés” (sometimes shortened to

“émigrés” for the sake of brevity) is used to refer to members of this demographic community.

As Remennick notes, the term “Russian-speaking Jews” serves as both a broadly-encompassing

and accurate label for this community in a post-Soviet world, due in no small part to the high rate

of usage of the Russian language as a unifying factor for this community in the late twentieth

century (Remennick 51).2 Many Jews who arrived in the United States from the former Soviet

Union also came from outside the borders of the modern-day Russian Federation, hailing from

what is now Ukraine, the Baltic States, Belarus, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Thus, while the

term “Russian Jews” may be largely accurate in a cultural sense (considering the fact that many

of these immigrants feel a strong identification with the Russian language and Russian culture),

it is somewhat misleading in a post-Soviet geographic and political context.

The term “Soviet Jews” was long used to describe Jews from the former Soviet Union,

including those who had already emigrated, yet that label has been eschewed from this thesis as

well. Markowitz states that the academic community has increasingly abandoned that language

following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the fact that much of the “Soviet

Jewish” community now actually lives outside of the former Soviet Union (see Markowitz 1995

104). However, this is not to deny the continued presence of a Soviet identity among members

of this community, even in a context of emigration—a point that is discussed in great detail in

the third chapter of this thesis.

2 Remennick points out that according to the 1989 Soviet Census, Russian was the first language

of around 90% of Soviet Jews.

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The term “Russians” has become common when discussing this population in an

American context, even increasingly by the émigrés themselves, as Orleck observes (see Orleck

11). While there are indeed many Russian components of these émigrés’ identities, for the sake

of this thesis, it is important to differentiate this population as distinctly Jewish, a task which that

succinct-yet-incomplete label does not effectively accomplish. It is also important to distinguish

members of this émigré community from residents or citizens of the present-day Russian

Federation and non-Jewish ethnic Russians; this one-word label would invite confusion with

those groups as well.

Finally, because this thesis stresses the importance of emigration to the process of

defining identity among members of this community, the word émigré is also included as a

component of this label. In a literary context, this term also helps to reinforce connections with

the notion of these writers as a part of the broader genre of American immigrant and émigré

literature. Thus, “Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés,” and at times, “émigrés,” will be used

within this thesis to denote the demographic and ethno-cultural community from which these

writers have emerged. While they will be included at times, “in the United States” or

“American” will usually be omitted from this label to avoid wordiness. It should be assumed

that the terms “Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés” and “émigrés” refer exclusively in this thesis

to people who have emigrated to the United States, unless stated otherwise.

This thesis will focus on the work of a group of authors who are all members of the

Russian-speaking Jewish émigré community now living in the United States. This project

specifically examines the literary works of five writers: Ellen Litman, Irina Reyn, Maxim

Shrayer, Gary Shteyngart, and Anya Ulinich. All five of these writers were born in the former

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Soviet Union (four of them in Moscow, and one in what was then Leningrad).3 By this point,

they have become acculturated into American society in many ways, to the point that their

fictional prose is written fluently in English, and that four out of the five authors hold tenure-

track or tenured academic appointments at American universities (three of them as creative

writing professors, and one as a Russian literature professor).4 Yet these authors have achieved

their success as increasingly mainstream American writers despite, or arguably, because of the

fact that much of their work is centered on Russian-speaking Jewish émigré characters and their

often challenging search for identity in their adopted American nation.

The decision by these writers to focus on émigré characters can be seen as an extension

of the broader tradition of the immigrant narrative within American literature, as the literary

critic Morris Dickstein has observed (see Dickstein 130). Their emphasis on émigré characters

has also given new life to Jewish-American literature and simultaneously undermined and

reinforced Irving Howe’s 1977 prediction of the imminent demise of Jewish-American literature

without the influence of the immigrant narrative: “My own view is that American Jewish fiction

has probably moved past its high point. Insofar as this body of writing draws heavily from the

immigrant experience, it must suffer a depletion of resources, a thinning out of materials and

3 Litman was born in Moscow in 1973 and emigrated in 1992 (see Wanner 2011a 142 and 2011b

63). Reyn was born in Moscow in 1974 and emigrated in 1981 (see Wanner 2011b 73 and 2011a

157). Shrayer was born in Moscow in 1967 and emigrated in 1987 (see “Maxim D. Shrayer”).

Shteyngart was born in Leningrad in 1972 and emigrated in 1979 (see Wanner 2011a 95).

Ulinich was born in Moscow in 1973 and emigrated in 1991 (see Wanner 2011a 167 and

Rabalais).

4 Litman is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Connecticut

(see “Ellen Litman”). Reyn is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University

of Pittsburgh (see “Irina Reyn”). Shrayer is Professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies in

the Department of Slavic and Eastern Languages and Literatures at Boston College (see “Maxim

D. Shrayer”). Shteyngart is Associate Professor of Writing in the School of the Arts at Columbia

University (see “Gary Shteyngart”).

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memories… there just isn’t enough left of that experience” (Howe 16). In the process of finding

their place on the American literary scene, these authors have filled a specific niche by writing

about a new and still-acculturating group of Americans and highlighting the unique challenges of

identity faced by Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés in the United States.

Indeed, all five of the works chosen for further examination in this thesis (one by each

author) meet very specific criteria, even from within the larger volume of work produced by

contemporary writers from this émigré community. Each of these books is focused upon the

experiences of Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés in the United States and their search for

identity, as well as explorations of the Russian, Jewish, Soviet, and American components of the

characters’ identities. As a result, Russian-speaking Jewish émigré authors such as Lara

Vapnyar, who writes about Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés but does not focus as heavily on

the theme of Jewish identity in her émigré characters, or Russian-speaking Jewish émigré authors

who write in English, but emigrated to countries other than the United States, such as the

Canadian writer David Bezmozgis, were not covered in this project. These five works all take

place mainly in the United States, and portray Russian-speaking Jewish émigré protagonists,

their families, and their broader émigré communities. They also emphasize conflicts that have

arisen between the émigrés and the broader American Jewish community or American society,

and the implications of these divisions for the characters’ identities.

While all five of these works are different in form and substance, they all describe the

search for identity by characters within the Russian-speaking Jewish émigré community, often

through humor and depictions of personal change. The Russian Debutante’s Handbook by Gary

Shteyngart, the most prominent of the five writers covered in this study, is a debut novel

detailing the exploits of its protagonist Vladimir Girshkin, a Russian-speaking Jewish émigré

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living in New York City. In the novel, Vladimir moves to the fictional Central European city of

Prava in the 1990s with the help of Russian (but not Jewish) mobsters to fleece other Americans

in a Ponzi scheme. Irina Reyn’s What Happened to Anna K., also a debut novel, is a

contemporary retelling of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, set among the modern-day Russian-

speaking Jewish émigré community of New York City. Reyn includes extensive familial and

romantic drama, and also highlights the tension between émigrés and the established American

Jewish community. The novel Petropolis by Anya Ulinich features the resilient black-Jewish-

Russian character Sasha Goldberg as she journeys from her hometown in Siberia to Moscow and

then to the United States, where she explores her identity, falls in love, and reunites with her

father, on a quest that takes her from Arizona to Chicago and, finally, to New York City. In

Ellen Litman’s The Last Chicken in America, the interconnected tales of a number of Russian-

Jewish émigrés adjusting to their new lives in Pittsburgh are told through chapter-length short

stories, with a focus on the teenage protagonist Masha. Similarly, Maxim Shrayer’s Yom Kippur

in Amsterdam is a collection of short stories that mainly center on Russian-speaking Jewish

émigrés (largely academics like Shrayer) who are dealing with the challenges of acculturation

and conflict between various aspects of their identity, such as the prospect of marrying non-

Jewish women. This thesis will examine three of the short stories from Shrayer’s book: The

Disappearance of Zalman, Sonetchka, and Yom Kippur in Amsterdam. Overall, these five works

offer a significant opportunity to study the issues of transitional identity that have embodied the

experiences of these Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés over the last roughly 35 years that they

have lived in the United States.

As these authors have achieved greater popularity in the United States, increased

scholarly attention has focused upon them, and there is now an ever-growing selection of

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academic literature about these writers. Adrian Wanner’s 2011 monograph, Out of Russia:

Fictions of a New Translingual Diaspora, was the first full-length scholarly work to cover this

literary phenomenon, and he extensively discusses many writers living in the United States, in

addition to chapters on Russian-speaking Jewish émigré writers living in France, Israel, and

Germany. Wanner thoroughly summarizes and analyzes much of the fiction that these authors

have produced, eventually speculating on the extent to which these still-young writers will

continue to focus on Russian-speaking Jewish émigré characters and risk “repetition and

predictability” (see Wanner 2011a 196). Other scholars have published academic articles about

this trend, including Yelena Furman in her 2011 article “Hybrid Selves, Hybrid Texts:

Embracing the Hyphen in Russian-American Fiction;” Donald Weber in his 2004 article

“Permutations of New-World Experiences Rejuvenate Jewish American Literature;” and Adrian

Wanner, in a number of articles that later became the basis for his aforementioned book (see

Furman 2011, Weber, and Wanner 2011a ix). This literary phenomenon continues to be

discussed at academic conferences as well, and at the most recent convention of the Association

for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, held in Boston in 2013, there was a panel

discussion entitled “Russian Diaspora Culture I: American Contexts” that featured papers by

Furman and Wanner analyzing the works of various Russian-speaking Jewish émigré writers,

including stories by Ulinich, Shteyngart, and Reyn (see Furman 2013 and Wanner 2013).

However, much of the existing scholarship on these writers has examined them strictly

from the perspective of literary criticism, rather than more directly contextualizing their fiction

with the extensive research on Russian-speaking Jewish life, both before and after emigration,

that has been done by historians, sociologists, and political scientists in recent years. As a result,

this thesis examines these five primary works for specific issues related to the evolving identity

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of their characters, and, by proxy, their authors and their émigré communities, by drawing from

both literary criticism and a rich assortment of secondary sources from across the disciplines that

exist on Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés living in America, and on Jewish life the former

Soviet Union prior to emigration.

For the purposes of organization, this thesis has been divided into four different chapters,

each focusing on a unique identity: Russian, Jewish, Soviet, and American. The first chapter

presents a Russian identity that has largely emerged in a context of emigration and is generally

based in connections to Russian culture and an understanding of Russia as a former homeland.

The second chapter describes a mostly irreligious Jewish identity that is largely tied to a sense of

ethnic belonging and memories of anti-Semitism. The third chapter demonstrates the emergence

and persistence of a depoliticized Soviet identity. This is a perspective that has been largely

overlooked in existing scholarship on these writers, making this chapter perhaps the most distinct

contribution within this thesis to a new understanding of these writers and their cultural context.

Finally, the fourth chapter depicts a pluralistic American identity that has facilitated a process of

hybridization among all identities, despite some cultural barriers. Throughout this thesis, none of

these identities will be presented as occurring in isolation, and the connections between them

will be explored to show the intersections of memory, space, and community in a transcultural

environment. Indeed, all of these identities have together contributed to the deeply composite

Russian-Jewish-Soviet-American émigré identity that has been so thoroughly expressed in the

literature of these five authors.

Finally, the title of this thesis is an allusion to one of the major concepts presented in Yuri

Slezkine’s book The Jewish Century, a work that proved especially helpful as a guide for

approaching this project. Slezkine contrasts “Apollonian” and “Mercurian” societies and ethno-

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cultural groups, noting: “The difference between Apollonians and Mercurians is the all-important

difference between those who grow food and those who create concepts and artifacts” (Slezkine

24). These terms reference Apollo, the powerful Greek god of agriculture and war (see Slezkine

24), and his younger brother Mercury, the clever but comparatively less-grounded god of

thinkers and travelers (see Slezkine 8). As Slezkine describes: “One could choose to emphasize

heroism, dexterity, deviousness, or foreignness, but what all of Hermes’ followers had in

common was their mercuriality, or impermanence” (Slezkine 8). For Slezkine, it is the

Mercurians, able to negotiate different cultural boundaries and identities, who have generated

many of the most fundamental changes in human consciousness and history. However, such

progress often occurs alongside stigmatization and exclusion that prevents the Mercurians from

fully assimilating into Apollonian societies. Consequently, much of Slezkine’s book focuses on

the idea that the Jews, especially those who lived in Russia and the former Soviet Union, have

exemplified this concept of “mercuriality” through the significant cultural shifts that they have

instigated within their host societies, despite never having been fully accepted as equals by their

Apollonian Russian and Soviet hosts.

When Slezkine’s book was published in 2004, just two years after the release of The

Russian Debutante’s Handbook, this group of Russian-speaking Jewish émigré authors had not

yet emerged as a distinctive literary phenomenon. Yet in many ways, the experiences that these

writers have had as émigrés in the United States epitomize the idea of mercuriality which

Slezkine describes. Through their own hybridization and fluidity of identity, so thoroughly

reflected in their literature, these writers have demonstrated the ways in which they have drawn

artistic and creative inspiration from the shifts in identity that they and the Russian-speaking

Jewish émigré community have experienced, both prior to and following their emigration to the

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United States. This mercuriality has at times presented these writers with significant challenges

of acculturation, exclusion, and uncertainty. But it has also served as their muse and empowered

them to make unique contributions to the American literary scene and to the discourse on

transcultural identity in contemporary society.

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CHAPTER 1: BECOMING “THE REAL RUSSIANS?”:

EMBRACING A RUSSIAN IDENTITY IN AMERICA

Throughout their literature, these authors frequently engage their Russian identities,

shedding light on what it means to be Russian for them and their fellow Russian-speaking Jewish

émigrés living in the United States. With the emergence of these authors onto the American

literary scene, much public attention has focused upon the “integral Russian component” of their

literature, as noted by Furman in her study of the hybrid identities of recent Russian-speaking

Jewish writers in the United States (Furman 2011 21). While all five authors included in this

study were born in the former Soviet Union and lived there for much or part of their childhoods,

as Jews they were never considered fully “Russian” during their lives prior to emigration, and as

writers they have eschewed their native tongue by publishing exclusively (or in Shrayer’s case,

mainly) in English. However, as Wanner describes, authors from this group often emphasize

their Russian identities in their literature, and, at least in part, “this identity is actively created

through a process of literary self-invention” (Wanner 2011a 8). Many of these authors’ primary

characters are also immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and their stories are typically set in

the former Soviet Union, post-communist Russia, or in Russian-speaking Jewish émigré

communities in the United States. There is also a substantial focus on exploring issues and

themes related to Russianness and Russian identity. Thus, to at least some extent, the Russian

identity of these authors is both reinforced and developed through the characters and settings that

they create through their literature.

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The relationship that emerges between these authors and their Russianness is often a

strained one, reflecting the difficult process of negotiating identities that these émigrés have

undergone since their arrival in the United States over the course of the last 35 years. As a

result, when notions of Russian identity do appear in these works along cultural, sentimental, and

existential lines, it is often in a negative light that reflects simultaneous feelings of both

connectedness and distance between the authors and their Russianness. In the process, these

authors demonstrate that a sense of Russianness remains a part of who they are, despite the

baggage that comes along with this identity.

In a context of emigration, conceptions of cultural Russianness and group identification

are often linked to macro-level community formation. Zeltzer-Zubida observes how the

“thriving cultural industry” that these émigrés have built in the United States has kept the

Russian language and culture alive in a new land, and, as a result, “emigration enabled them to

rediscover a sense of Russian-ness” (Zeltzer-Zubida 353). Economic networks and stores also

play a significant role in the development of this Russian identity through a sense of shared

interest and social interconnectedness, especially in larger Russian-speaking émigré enclaves,

such as the Brighton Beach neighborhood of southern Brooklyn. Orleck analyses how Russian

stores “have become informal community centers: news is exchanged, and congratulations or

condolences are offered” (Orleck 106). Further reinforcing this perpetuation of Russian identity

through communal activity is the presence of public spaces such as Russian restaurants, which,

as Markowitz notes, offer opportunities to these émigrés “for public display of their Russian-

ness” (Markowitz 1993 236).

These shared cultural experiences represent a key manner in which these émigrés are able

to nurture their Russian identities. Within these authors’ literature, this also serves as a

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mechanism for the characters to relate to other cultural Russians in an émigré setting and, in the

process, examine their own identities more closely. The role of such spaces and networks can be

seen in Shrayer’s short story Sonetchka during a visit that the protagonist, Simon, makes to a

Russian restaurant located in suburban Boston:

He was too early for an appointment with a rental broker in Brookline, so he went

into a Russian bakery-cafe to kill half an hour. The proprietress, a turtle with the dovish

eyes of an Odessan belle, asked him where he came from in the old country and what his

biznes was up in Boston. After Simon had introduced myself [sic] with the affected

cordiality that he sometimes poured on fellow émigrés—in the sense that it’s fine to see

other Russians in a strange land—the turtle-dove said she used to know his mother’s half-

sister during her days in the Bolshoy [sic] Ballet troupe. She served Simon a glazed

poppy-seed roll on the house and wouldn’t stop talking about his aunt’s gorgeous legs.

Simon ended up giving her his mother’s number just to be rid of her and settled with a

Russian daily paper near a rain-speckled window. (Shrayer 57)

Simon, visiting from Providence and ostensibly unfamiliar with the area, is still somehow

drawn to this Russian bakery-cafe over all of the other potential establishments that he might

have visited instead. He is a character who has experienced significant American acculturation

since arriving in the United States nine years prior to this scene, having changed his name from

Semyon to Simon, received a doctorate in literature from an American university, and published

English-language essays in Harper’s Magazine. Yet the pull of his Russian identity, of his

Semyonness, still remains. Rather than a mere coincidence, Simon’s decision to enter this

establishment reflects his ongoing connection with Russian culture and aspects of Russian

identity. To whatever extent this was an unconscious decision versus one made out of a more

mindful sense of duty or obligation remains unclear. However, as both of those options still lend

themselves to some sense of cultural identification, this would simply mark the difference

between a fixed identity and an actively-evoked one; an identity that is still there nonetheless.

Similarly, upon taking up conversation with the “Odessan belle” working at the

restaurant, it is possible to see the ways in which this solidarity with other cultural Russians

15

emerges and brings out Simon’s own sense of Russian identity. Justifying his politeness and

friendly introduction to the woman behind the counter, Simon notes that this was how he

“sometimes poured on fellow émigrés—in the sense that it’s fine to see other Russians in a

strange land.” This sense of linked fate and solidarity causes Simon to act in a way that Shrayer

implies is different from how Simon might have behaved toward “other Russians.” As émigrés

in a country where few people share their cultural background, the ability to find some shared

sense of identity with those around them takes on greater importance. In this passage, Shrayer

presents this development largely along cultural and linguistic lines (biznes appears in italicized

text, implying the usage of the Russian word, rather than the English “business”). This sense of

communal Russianness plays a vital role in why Simon initially relates to her in such a pleasant

way.

The next part of this passage, in which Simon ends the conversation after feeling annoyed

by listening to the proprietress ramble on about memories of his mother in the former Soviet

Union, also establishes the character’s Russianness. On the surface, this desire to create distance

between himself and the store owner might represent a barrier between Simon and the Russian-

speaking Jewish émigré community, and thus, potentially, his Russian identity. Instead, this

exchange reflects the disdain that Markowitz observes among Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés

in the United States toward the “instant friendship” that they notice among Americans who

barely know each other, a habit that they consider to be insincere and rude, based on their own

standards of Russian interpersonal interactions (see Markowitz 1993 56). Thus, while initially

drawn to the proprietress due to their shared cultural Russianness, it is also partly Simon’s

Russian-based social patterns that cause him to push her away and end the interaction between

them.

16

As the scene concludes, instead of escaping into an American literary magazine or the

Central European prose that is the focus of his academic research, Simon chooses to immerse

himself in a Russian-language newspaper. Through such cultural ties, which have continued

despite ongoing Americanization, this important connection to one principal component of

Russianness, a feeling of linguistic identity, remains intact. He breaks off from talking with

another émigré not to pursue any number of non-Russian options that might have been available

to him, but to connect with something inextricably linked with his own Russianness.

Hallmarks of Russian culture, especially those encountered during childhood, also serve

as a frequent reference point for many characters to process their surroundings and relate to the

world around them, creating an innate means of seeing the world through Russian eyes. In their

work on the formation of self through culture, Carolin Demuth, Heidi Keller, Helene Gudi, and

Hiltrud Otto note the importance of exposure to stories and narratives to the development of a

framework for identity within a culture, as well as the broader implications of this process for

establishing a lifelong concept of self (see Denneth, Keller, Gudi, and Otto 92). There are

numerous scenes in the primary literature in which Russian cultural and literary sources provide

context and meaning to the protagonists, with references ranging from the characters of Russian

folklore such as Vasilisa the Beautiful, to Crime and Punishment’s Raskolnikov, to the poetry of

Anna Akhmatova. For the protagonists in these literary works, this lifelong attachment to such

narratives helps to place them into Russian cultural identities.

During one scene in The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, the protagonist, Vladimir

Girshkin, travels to Poland to visit the site of what was once the Auschwitz-Birkenau death

camp. When viewing a watchtower located on the camp grounds, Vladimir’s first thoughts turn

not toward the issues of anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, or Jewish identity that might have arisen

17

in the minds of many other visitors (especially Jewish ones), but to the memories of the Russian

folk tales of his childhood:

Across the tracks a sole structure stood—a rickety, wooden lookout post on a set

of stilts, which reminded Vladimir of the house of Baba Yaga, the witch of Russian fairy

tales. Her house was supposed to be built on chicken legs that would take the Baba to

wherever she felt havoc needed to be wreaked. The house could also act on its own

accord, galloping through the village, trampling honest Christian folk at will.

Vladimir’s grandmother had fulfilled the duty of Russian grandmothers and told

him Baba Yaga tales as an inducement for eating his farmer cheese, buckwheat kasha,

and the other insipid delicacies of their country’s diet. But as these tales were frightening

indeed, Grandma tempered the carnage with helpful disclaimers, such as “I hope you

know that none of our relatives was ever killed by Baba Yaga!” Whether Grandma

consciously understood the deeper significance of this disclaimer, Vladimir would never

know. But it was true that practically his entire family escaped Hitler’s advance into the

Soviet Union. (Shteyngart 2002 424)

Upon encountering these remnants of Auschwitz, Vladimir’s Russian cultural identity, as

expressed through the lens of the Baba Yaga story, serves as a coping mechanism and a point of

reference in making sense of the inexplicable cruelty of the Holocaust. Baba Yaga is one of the

most common figures in Russian folklore, a mythical witch capable of relocating her house and,

as Vladimir grimly notes, of “trampling honest Christian folk at will.” For Vladimir, the trauma

of confronting the legacy of the Holocaust evokes the most primal and intrinsic of reactions. Yet

Vladimir does not turn to the biblical story of Job, or visions of lynching and ethnic conflict in

the United States, but to the fairy tales of Old Russia from his childhood. They remain at the

heart of how he perceives and interprets the world around him.

The role of Vladimir’s grandmother in this passage also helps firmly contextualize the

place of Russian identity in Vladimir’s consciousness. His grandmother makes a deliberate

attempt to define the culture of narrative and memory that she passes on to Vladimir in a

Russian, rather than a Jewish context. Even if their Soviet passports did not recognize them as

“Russian” due to Soviet nationality policies, for Vladimir’s grandmother, sharing “their

18

country’s diet” meant giving her grandson more than just buckwheat and farmer’s cheese. It

meant imparting upon Vladimir a cultural identity that she was not necessarily born into herself,

having grown up in a Jewish family in Western Ukraine, and later moving to Leningrad, a

primary center of Russian culture, where she became a respected school principal. These

developments in the life of Vladimir’s grandmother are much like the phenomenon of Jews

“converting to the Pushkin faith” that Slezkine describes in the context of Jewish acculturation

into Russian society during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Slezkine 285).

Further proof of this intent on the part of his grandmother comes from the fact that she

not only tells this story as something that happened to other people, but that she inserts their own

family into the narrative. Her declaration, “none of our relatives were ever killed by Baba

Yaga,” is of course true in the most literal sense. However, this also represents a situation in

which she reframes the historical separation of Jews from Russian culture from a theme of

exclusion into one of survival. Thus, Vladimir was able to grow up, at least for a time, believing

not only that had his forbearers lived alongside the ancestors of his non-Jewish peers, but that

they had thrived. His grandmother was able to contribute a sense of cultural and historical

Russianness to her grandson that remains relevant to Vladimir at a deeply personal level, even

long after his departure from the Soviet Union.

Just as Russian cultural traditions and narratives have formed some role in generating the

sense of Russianness that these authors feel, the idea of the former Soviet Union as “home,” at

least in a historical or sentimental context, remains crucial. This notion forms a central means of

defining Russian identity for these émigrés, even with the accompanying recognition that this

onetime home had many serious flaws. The characters in all of these works, like the authors that

created them, may have left behind a country where they had faced anti-Semitic discrimination,

19

and, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, volatile economic and social conditions. But it was

still a place that represented home in a physical and cultural sense for many of their most

formative years. Even after years of living somewhere else, they do not dismiss this idea of

memory as a component of defining their Russianness. Several years after her relocation to the

United States, Sasha Goldberg, the protagonist of Petropolis, returns to Russia to visit her

mother and daughter in her remote Siberian hometown of Asbestos 2:

The Prostuda flight is full. Tan families carry baskets of fruit and vegetables from

their Crimean vacations. Here, nobody bothers with seat belts. Men smoke in the

lavatory, and children play under their seats. Sasha thinks that her mother would never

let her play on the filthy floor like this.

By the time she gets to Asbestos 2, Sasha Goldberg is exhausted and jittery.

Every little thing threatens to make her cry: a faded May Day banner by the District

Soviet, graffiti on the walls of the bus stop pavilion, and the mere fact that it’s all still

there. Sasha realizes that she’s halfway expected her hometown to be gone or to be

unrecognizable. It has only been two years, she reminds herself.

Her apartment building is there, too. The same littered foyer, busted lightbulbs,

same reek of rotten potatoes, cat pee, and human pee. This is home. Sasha feels herself

immediately settling into it, the way Heidi’s cell phone snaps into its charger. She

wonders where she has found the strength to live anyplace else. (Ulinich 269)

For Sasha, this trip to Russia represents a return to her former physical home, but not

necessarily a homecoming to Russian culture or consciousness; those things have still remained

with her, even long after she had left Russia. Sasha has remained largely in the midst of other

Russian-speaking émigrés during her stays in Arizona, Chicago, and New York, interpreting

questions of Russian identity and Russianness in an American context. However, Sasha’s

awareness is still often tied to memories of the place and time that she has left behind in

Prostuda. As a result, Sasha’s relationship to Russia through a sense of place remains important

to her and serves another function in defining her Russianness.

This scene also serves to reflect the position of space in defining Russian identity

specifically for these émigrés. As a former resident coming back to visit Asbestos 2, the intense

20

emotions that Sasha feels upon once again returning to her hometown are reflective of the

significance of this place, and by extension, the importance of Russia more broadly, in forming

Sasha’s identity. After being away for two years, Sasha feels much deeper ties to even mundane

components of her surroundings, such as graffiti on the walls of a bus stop, or a May Day

banner, than she had previously; indeed, their presence nearly drives her to tears. This process of

self-definition through spatial memory represents a phenomenon that is universal and not merely

specific to people from Russia. However, because Sasha and the other émigré characters created

by these writers were all born and raised in the former Soviet Union, this sense of memory

through space is inescapably Russian for them, and thus continues to form a large part of their

sense of Russianness. It also provides a contrast from Sasha’s relationship to her Jewish identity,

which was a part of her childhood as well, but rooted in time rather than in space. As Étan

Levine notes, in a diaspora context, Jews exiled from Zion have traditionally “inhabited the

domain of time” (Levine 4). Thus, this space-based connection to their Russian roots through

memory takes on even more value for these characters in the absence of a similarly constructed

relationship with their Jewish identities.

The picture of Russia that emerges in this passage, however, is hardly a flattering one.

The “busted lightbulbs” and “rotted potatoes” that Sasha observes reflect a sense of decay and

grime, reflective of the social problems and neglect that have occurred in post-communist

Russia. These images may not prevent the nostalgia that Sasha feels for her place of origin, but

they also seem to reinforce that in leaving Russia for the United States, she has made the right

decision. Russia may, in a sense, always be home for Sasha, but this is true largely through

memory and cultural identity, as she has no interest in staying in a nation that she believes is

falling apart.

21

As this passage suggests, the relationship that these writers have toward their Russian

identities, even when filled with meaning or emotional significance, is often also accompanied

by a sense of pessimism and dysfunction. This relates to the melancholia of the “russkaia

dusha,” or “Russian soul,” as well as the existential attitudes of some of these characters as a

means to more fully define their Russianness. At one point in The Last Chicken in America, the

protagonist, Masha, discusses her memories of Russia and what it means to be Russian with

Victor Harlamov, a professor visiting Pittsburgh for the semester from Russia, and with whom

Masha is taking a literature class:

The campus was snowy and cold, and, as in Russia, we were wrapped in scarves

and coats. He wore a long woolen coat and a fur hat with earflaps.

“What do you miss the most?” he asked.

I said I missed walking in Moscow, traversing old boulevards, the sidewalks

glistening in the night, Pushkin Square, the lovers clutching flowers beneath the poet’s

statue—the sentinels of love.

He said he also liked the boulevards, and Eskimo Ice cream sticks for twenty-five

kopeks.

What Victor missed was Russian brokenness. He said it was the core of the

Russian soul. “You see it in poets: Tsvetaeva’s suicide, Esenin, Mayakovsky. But it’s

not just the poets. We’re sensitive, foolish, illogical. We live in a state of turmoil, on the

brink of being destroyed, steps away from the next drunken bout.”

I knew what he meant, I had my own brokenness. (Litman 94-95)

Like Ulinich, Litman constructs Russianness through nostalgia and spatial memory,

although this is tempered by the “brokenness” that she describes. The visions of walks through a

snowy Moscow convey a romanticized sense of Masha’s time in Russia, and in this moment, she

focuses on many things that could not easily be cast in a negative light. However, it is through

the suggestions of Harlamov, a character who is not an émigré, but a non-Jewish visitor from

Russia, and who frequently expresses his preference for life in Russia to being in the United

States, that these more somber thoughts enter the conversation. Indeed, the fact that out of all of

Harlamov’s possible choices of what he might miss most about Russia, the most salient is the

22

brokenness of Russian consciousness, seems to offer its own sense of romanticized memory, just

as Masha has through her own recollections of the snow-covered Moscow squares of her past.

This connection to the brokenness of the “Russian soul” that Harlamov experiences, and

with which Masha identifies, evokes larger issues of how Russianness has related to that concept

over time. While Harlamov presents the importance of the Russian soul with passionate

conviction, the model that he describes is more of a clichéd philosophical and sentimental ideal

rooted in the past than a serious modern approach to Russian identity. As Richard Pesmen

observes: “Russian soul was certainly a myth, notion, image, consoling fiction, trope of romantic

national self-definition, and what romantic foreigners came to Russia for” (Pesmen 6). As a

result, Harlamov can be seen as representing one strain of thought from bygone days,

ungrounded in the realities of life but instead consumed by clichéd notions based in historical

abstraction. Masha relates to the challenges associated with the brokenness that Harlamov

describes, but she does not seem to romanticize it in quite the same way. Indeed, this divergence

is one of the factors that eventually leads to their estrangement from one another. Masha does

not disregard this sense of brokenness and trauma as a component of Russian identity, but she

does not put it on a pedestal either. As a result, Masha can be seen as pragmatically Russian;

aware of her brokenness, but not consumed with these theoretical constructions of suffering in

the same way as Harlamov, who here acts as a representative of contrasting non-émigré Russian

culture. This feeling of simultaneous strain and connection is in many ways reflective of the

conflicted experiences of these writers as Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés.

Just as these authors introduce this concept of the “Russian soul” as somewhat detached

from the realities of contemporary consciousness and life, they often use satire and humor to

describe other aspects of their Russianness that they perceive to be absurd. These authors

23

actively mock what they think of as the more negative components of Russian identity, while

still identifying with many of these traits themselves. Early in What Happened to Anna K., the

titular character muses on the nature of what it means to be Russian and the implications of this

identity on her own life:

We cannot continue the story of Anna K. without tackling the issue of the Russian

soul—velikaia russkaia dusha. Much ink has been spilled on it, no one can adequately

articulate what it entails. It is generally agreed that the term is hazy and amorphous, an

exclusive gift for the suffering Russians. Does it have anything to do with bitter cold?

Communist timetables? Policing grandmothers? The addictive qualities of vodka? Wars

fought with little training, shoddy clothing, and primitive equipment? An affection for

murderous dictators? Ambivalence about the Westernizing innovations of Peter the

Great?...

Yet, Anna decided, shards of the Russian soul might have lodged themselves

inside her, unwilling to be removed. She loved to drink, even if it often made her

combative and depressed afterward, for reasons she could not pinpoint. She had a

fatalistic binary mentality—things tended to be wonderful or terrible; there were few

nuances to her failures. Like a child, who builds castles with the aim to destroy, so Anna

was tempted to topple her own best efforts—a hard-earned employment contact she

didn’t follow up on, a phone message from a promising romantic prospect ignored until it

was too late. She didn’t believe or didn’t want to believe in therapy as a cure for any of

these ailments. Most damningly, even at the height of her pleasure—splashed by sun on

a beautiful spring day or in the middle of an engrossing activity requiring all her

concentration—she was engulfed by an overall feeling of doom.

The Russian soul had come to claim her, extinguishing all that was sanguine and

buoyant, all that was American inside her, leaving only the Siberian Steppes, the crust of

black bread, the acerbic aftertaste of marinated herring, the eternal, bleak winter. At least

that was what she told herself. Her Russianness, her immigration, had given her the

license to tell that story. (Reyn 13-15)

For Anna, this examination of what constitutes Russianness is a decidedly negative one,

rooted in a great deal of melancholy and negativity, and she satirically tackles several aspects of

Russian identity that she finds ridiculous. Indeed, many elements of backwardness

fundamentally characterize this presentation, including historical and political challenges

(“affection for murderous dictators”), alcoholism (“the addictive qualities of vodka”), and even

the extreme Russian climate (“bitter cold”). Anna also observes manifestations of Russianness

that she dislikes among members of the émigré community in which she resides, including

24

“Indifference to the Enjoyment of Others” and “Fondness for Politically Incorrect Jokes” (Reyn

14). Reyn’s use of farcical humor advances a narrative that, in many ways, being Russian is

something that is irrational and chaotic; for Anna, it is worth mocking.

However, satirizing Russian identity and focusing on the negative ways in which it may

be expressed through Anna’s actions and that of the other émigrés around her does not mean that

Anna lacks a connection with her Russianness. Indeed, perhaps most crucial to conceiving Anna

as Russian seems to be her own admission that despite holding three other major American,

Soviet, and Jewish identities, the sway of her Russianness often drowns out those identities.

Anna regretfully notes how her Russian outlook has led to feelings of gloom that cancel out the

comparatively positive aspects of other identities, “extinguishing all that was sanguine and

buoyant, all that was American inside her.” On one of the most profound existential levels,

Anna finds herself defined within her psyche as inescapably Russian; her velikaia russkaia dusha

has remained a part of her long after physically leaving Russia behind.

These writers present many aspects of what it means to be Russian in a negative and

undesirable light. The idea that Russianness is related to regressive qualities and adverse

situations emerges in all of these works, and when the authors engage their Russian identities,

they often do so in a way that reinforces their decisions to emigrate and remain in America.

However, depictions of cultural, linguistic, and sentimental identity repeatedly emerge to

demonstrate that these authors are still fundamentally Russian on an existential level.

Russianness, for all its challenges, continues to be a part of who these writers are and how they

define themselves. As émigrés living in a new land, never to move back “home,” part of them

still remains in Russia and part of Russia has accompanied them to the United States, forming an

integral part of their identities and concepts of self in their new land. This construction of

25

identity in exile also introduces issues that are relevant in defining these writers and their literary

characters as Jews, and thus as a part of another diasporic community, as will be addressed in the

following chapter.

26

CHAPTER 2: “I’M A JEW, TOO”:

VISIONS OF A UNIQUE JEWISH IDENTITY IN TRANSITION

Jewish identity is one of the most important themes for these authors, and the characters

in each of their works seek to define and understand the relationship between themselves, their

Jewishness, and the broader American Jewish community. This process of self-discovery and

introspection in the primary literature evokes many related questions that have been explored by

the Russian-speaking Jewish émigré community in the United States since arriving here over the

last 35 years. These émigrés have had to reconcile their unique experiences as Jews with many

of the ways in which their established American Jewish counterparts experience their Jewish

identities, often acting and thinking quite differently from each other. Due in part to the

challenging environment in the former Soviet Union, for many Russian-speaking Jewish

émigrés, Jewishness is often centered on issues of ethnic and national identity and memories of

the anti-Semitic persecution that they had faced in the former Soviet Union, rather than religious

practices or cultural traditions. Gitelman notes in his study of Jewish identity in Russia and

Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union: “Post-Soviet Jews do not consider the items relating to

the tenets of Judaism essential to being a ‘genuine Jew.’ For them the most essential ingredients

of Jewishness are matters of feeling and memory…” (Gitelman 103).

Indeed, many of these attitudes have transferred over to the United States, where they

have generated a number of conflicts between these new émigrés and the established American

Jewish community, who were often disappointed by the disconnect between their vision of the

Jews that they were expecting and the reality of the émigrés who actually arrived. In her field

27

study of Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés living in New York City in the early 1980s,

Markowitz describes an interview with a man named “Maxim,” who tells her: “American Jews

want us to be Jews their way—on the second day we are here. They can’t understand that we are

Jews our way” (Markowitz 1993 60). The idea of these émigrés viewing themselves as Jewish,

but doing so distinctively “their way” is something that thoroughly pervades the characters and

situations that these authors create, and the conflicts and issues related to Jewishness among

Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés in the United States have provided a crucial source of material

for these writers in finding their place on the American literary scene.

Due in large part to the substantial discussion of Jewish themes and issues in their

writing, this group of writers has frequently been classified as a part of the Jewish-American

literary community by scholars such as Morris Dickstein, who describes how as émigrés, they

“turned more Jewish, as if licensed by the strong Jewish presence in American literary culture”

(Dickstein 129). The heritage of Jewish-American literature includes such prolific and

acclaimed writers as Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, and Isaac Bashevis Singer, all

of whom explicitly focused on themes of individual and communal Jewish identity within their

works, while also becoming popular with a more mainstream audience that went beyond the

Jewish community. In his analysis of recent trends in Jewish-American literature, Weber notes

that by the 1970s, Howe and other scholars of Jewish-American literature were convinced that

Jewish-American literature as a genre was in irreversible decline due to increasingly distant

memories of immigration to the United States and greater Jewish acculturation into the American

mainstream (see Weber B8). Weber finds, however, that with immigration as the basis for the

literary exploration of Jewishness and Jewish themes, writers from the newly-arrived community

of Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés were in a unique position to reexamine Jewishness in their

28

works and reinvigorate the field of Jewish-American literature; to Weber, these authors

“represent a fascinating new chapter in a long tradition of Jewish immigrant writing” (Weber

B8). According to this line of thought, while there are still unquestionably many Jewish authors

active on the contemporary American literary scene and writing about Jewish characters, it is the

distinct experiences of these Russian-speaking émigrés of negotiating and adapting their Jewish

identities in a context of transcultural migration that has enabled them to approach issues of

Jewishness in their works from an otherwise unfamiliar perspective. As the Russian-speaking

Jewish émigré community as a whole has been forced to examine its definitions and applications

of Jewish identity in an American context, these writers have found an outlet for describing these

conflicts in their literature, subsequently achieving mainstream appeal among American

audiences and literary critics.

In framing the experiences of Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés, many of these authors

set up the narrative of exclusion that has been present in much of the recent Russian-speaking

Jewish experience, especially in the context of pre-revolutionary Russian and Soviet history. As

Harry G. Shaffer describes, Jewish communities have existed within the boundaries of what

became the Soviet Union since ancient times, although persecution and orders of expulsion over

the centuries meant that the few Jews living in what constituted the Russian Empire typically led

difficult lives (see Shaffer 3). The three partitions of Poland in the late eighteenth century meant

that Russia finally had a large Jewish population living within its borders (see Shaffer 3-4).

Despite this territorial inclusion within the Russian Empire, by the beginning of the twentieth

century, very few Jews living in the Russian Empire were proficient in the Russian language or

lived outside of the “Pale of Settlement” that had been established as the area in which Jews

29

were allowed to reside within the Russian Empire, as Eli Lederhendler points out in his

examination of Tsarist-era Russian Jewry (see Lederhendler 22).5

However, as Steven Cassedy observes, changes to Russian law in the mid-nineteenth

century that permitted Jews to enroll at government-run universities and subsequently settle

anywhere in the Russian Empire upon completion of a degree were responsible for the

development of a small but increasingly influential Russian Jewish intelligentsia (see Cassedy 8).

Similary, as Shaul Stampfer notes, during the late-nineteenth century, there was a great deal of

internal migration by Jews within the Russian Empire in order to take advantage of increasing

economic opportunities (Stampfer 42). Thus, even as the vast majority of Jews remained

disconnected from Russian culture at the onset of the twentieth century, the foundations had been

laid for Jews living in Russia not only to join mainstream Russian society and relocate to new

cities, but to play a leading role in debating and resolving the contemporary philosophical and

political issues facing Russia.

This process of integration hastened after the Revolution in 1917 and the subsequent

establishment of the Soviet Union. Some Jews, such as the members of the Jewish Social

Democratic Union, commonly known as the Bund, opposed the Bolsheviks during the initial

struggle for post-Revolutionary power (see Salitan 12), as did many older Jewish members of the

Russian intelligentsia (see Ettinger 10). However, as Gitelman observes, many Jews came to

support the eventually victorious Soviet government in the wake of anti-Semitic violence by

supporters of the White Army and after the implementation of progressive Soviet legal reforms

which benefitted Jews (see Gitelman 301). As David Shneer notes, many Jews believed at the

5 According to Lederhendler, in the 1897 Russian Census, 96.5% of Jews in the Russian Empire

reported Yiddish as their mother tongue, and 95% of Jews in the Russian Empire lived in the 25

gubernii that made up the Pale of Settlement.

30

time that there was a new possibility for successful integration within a state that had defined

itself along the basis of participation by many different nationalities, among which the Jews were

to be included, with a secular Jewish culture that would be rooted in the Yiddish language (see

Shneer 11).

A period of initial acculturation that saw many Jews living in the former Soviet Union

leave the shtetls behind, achieve fluency in the Russian language, and become active members of

Soviet society and the intelligentsia, was followed by a period of renewed anti-Semitism and

discrimination after the Second World War and the creation of the State of Israel. As Slezkine

describes, following the establishment of Israel, many Soviet officials began to view Jews as “an

ethnic diaspora potentially loyal to a hostile foreign state,” which, combined with a belief by the

Soviet government that Jews had permeated the Russian-Soviet intelligentsia and subverted the

foundations of Russian identity in the nationality-centric Soviet state, led to a hostile paradigm

that defined many Jews as “traitors twice over” (Slezkine 297). Eventually, anti-Semitic

discrimination became institutionalized in official Soviet policy in areas such as education and

employment to the point that many Jews sought to emigrate from the Soviet Union to the United

States and Israel (see Goldman 338). It is in the background of this inequality and sense of

historical exclusion toward Jews throughout the course of Russian and Soviet history that the

titular character in What Happened to Anna K. reflects during a trip to the Guggenheim Museum

in New York City:

This Saturday, they were at the Guggenheim to see the “Russia!” show. Nine

hundred years of masterpieces, the posters said. The lobby teemed with Russians, other

New Yorkers, and tourists….

They decided to begin at the bottom, to circle their way up, to skip the ruddy

canvases of socialist realism.

The icons were astounding, the gleam of them, the sheer size, as well as the

tapestries of the shroud of Christ with their silk and gold and silver threads, but Anna had

always felt that as a Jew, most of Russian history was inaccessible to her, as if she had

31

been shoved out of its way. In the Russian language, one was either a “Russian” or a

“Jew” (one annihilated the possibility of the other), and this show only highlighted the

exclusion of the Jews. And now, as an immigrant and a Jew, she could only be one of

these awed Americans, ogling the work of a foreign country. (Reyn 40-41)

For Anna, these national treasures of Russia, despite their beauty, seem largely out of

place to her as a Jew born in the former Soviet Union. In a very literal sense, Anna’s perception

of exclusion is rooted in reality, as her ancestors were almost certainly not present for the

creation of the medieval icons or the tapestries that are on display—there simply were not many

Jews living in Russia when such artifacts would have been made, and those Jews that were there

would have had minimal cultural ties to the non-Jewish population, especially in the context of

art produced by the Russian Orthodox Church. However, absence during the production of

artifacts or symbols of a national culture does not necessarily preclude later identification with

them by immigrants or others who lack ancestral ties to the culture of origin. An example of this

has already been described in the earlier chapter on Russian identity, in which a young Vladimir

listens to his grandmother retell the Russian folk tale of the Baba Yaga in The Russian

Debutante’s Handbook.

However, these items on display at the Guggenheim are distinct in that they are primarily

tied to a sense of Christian religious identity within the context of Russian history and culture—

something that has been, and continues to be a major fault line within the narrative of Russian

history that specifically excludes Jews. To the extent which Russia as a society, empire, and

nation has found identification and meaning in Christianity through symbols, practices, and

beliefs on a larger scale, this is something that has often failed to provide inclusion and definition

for Jews that have lived there. As a result, Anna’s perception of her Jewishness as having led to

a sense of exclusion in reaction to these treasures of Russian history evokes broader feelings of

32

marginalization and isolation that have characterized the history of Russian-speaking Jews prior

to, during, and after the Soviet period.

The issues of terminology raised in this passage, in which Anna points out how within the

confines of the Russian language “one was either a ‘Russian’ or a ‘Jew’ (one annihilated the

possibility of the other),” also demonstrate the presence of this sense of exclusion among

Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés due to their identity as Jews. This is true in the sense that,

according to Soviet nationality policy, “russkii” and “evrei” were specific national identities that

were written into one’s passport and were not interchangeable in a basic legal sense, let alone on

a cultural level. Even after the fall of the Soviet Union, many Jews, both in the former Soviet

Union and the United States, rarely use the term “russkii” to describe themselves, even as the

English term “Russian” has been assigned to them both externally and, increasingly, by the

émigrés themselves. In a Russian-language interview with sociologist Sam Kliger conducted by

writer Aleksandr Burakovskii, both Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés, the term “russkii” is

repeatedly placed in quotation marks when used as a label to describe the Russian-speaking

Jewish émigré community, even as the term “russkie evrei” is repeatedly used without quotation

marks, demonstrating the extent to which Russian and Jewish identities continue to feel

exclusive to many Russian-speaking Jews (see Burakovskii 517). Even in a context of

emigration, in which Burakovskii is free to omit the quotation marks when he writes the word

“russkii,” and Anna is free to think of herself as both Russian and Jewish without being

subjected to a pogrom or harassed by the NKVD, these attitudes persist on an existential level.

Along those lines, many Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés feel that their Jewishness has

been defined in large part by the anti-Semitism and persecution that they faced in the former

Soviet Union. Jews were adversely affected by Soviet policies that targeted the usage of Yiddish

33

and Hebrew, shut down many Jewish cultural and religious institutions, and led to quotas and

other obstacles that prevented Jews from attaining many educational and career opportunities.

While there were some sporadic respites from this discrimination, including the initial

development of a Soviet Yiddish culture between the 1920s and 1940s (until its repression by the

Soviet government after World War II), as well as several largely unsuccessful attempts to revive

the use of Yiddish after the 1950s and attract more Jews to the distant Jewish Autonomous

Oblast of Birobidzhan, as Igor Krupnik notes, these limited measures failed to engage many

Soviet Jews on cultural terms (see Krupnik 80). Nor did they distract from the issues of

everyday discrimination that many Soviet Jews still faced. In addition, the Holocaust and the

Second World War, while not stemming directly from Soviet policies, also took a heavy toll

upon many Jews living in the Soviet Union.

Thus, it is not surprising that memories of these past trials continue to form a large

component of definitions of Jewishness for these émigrés, even today. As Markowitz states of

many Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés: “In America, while they no longer suffer as Jews, their

past suffering and that of their parents and grandparents remain a core part of their Jewish

identity” (Markowitz 1993 151). This sentiment emerges in a scene in The Last Chicken in

America, in which Masha is riding in a car with a condescending family of American Jews who

are discussing issues of Jewish identity in the context of the upcoming Passover holiday:

In the car, Pamela asked why Jews celebrated Passover. Kevin said it was

because of the Exodus from Egypt. Pamela said that was correct. We must never forget

the bitterness of slavery. Nor must we forget about the Jews in Russia, who were still

enslaved and couldn’t pray or celebrate High Holidays. It was why they came to

America. Because American Jews rescued them.

“Has Masha been rescued?” said Kevin.

“Of course she has.”

“She doesn’t seem very grateful.”

“I’m sure she’s grateful. She just hasn’t learned what it means to be Jewish yet.”

“Maybe she’ll learn at the pageant,” said Kevin.

34

“Let’s hope,” Pamela said.

I wanted to tell them I knew what it meant. It meant classmates calling you

names. It meant a line in your passport, schools that would never accept you, jobs you

couldn’t have. It meant leaflets and threats and a general on TV promising pogroms in

May. It meant immigration. (Litman 68)

For Pamela and her son Kevin, Jewishness is inextricably tied to Judaism, and Jewish

identity is impossible to conceive fully without taking part in Jewish religious practices. The

option of defining their Jewish identity in the context of persecution and anti-Semitism is not

available to Pamela and Kevin as it is to Masha. This is true in large part due to the fact that

many American Jews do not experience anti-Semitism on a regular basis, and when it does

occur, it is rarely in a government-backed or institutionalized context, as per in the former Soviet

Union. Thus, for many American Jews such as Pamela and Kevin, the more proactive or

positive components of Jewish identity, such as attending a synagogue, being a member of

Jewish organizations, and adherence to religious practices, such as keeping a kosher kitchen,

assume greater importance as a means of being Jewish. For Masha, Jewishness is a simple

existential issue that she inherently encounters through her ethnic heritage. Indeed, the

disconnect is mutual, as Masha feels that Kevin and Pamela have been coddled by living in a

society where they have not had to endure many of the same hardships that she and her family

faced as a result of being Jewish. Masha’s Jewishness has been framed in no small part by these

memories of persecution and anti-Semitism, even after relocating to a new social context in

which she and her family no longer deal with anywhere near the same level of anti-Semitism that

they faced in the former Soviet Union. Ironically, much of the judgment and stigmatization that

Masha and other Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés now face in the United States comes from

their fellow Jews.

35

This scene also reveals much of the frustration and confusion that American Jews

experienced in reaction to the Russian-speaking Jews who had emigrated to the United States,

and vice versa. Pamela’s statement that American Jews had rescued their fellow Jews from the

former Soviet Union is true in the sense that many American Jews pushed for changes to the

immigration policies of both the United States and the Soviet Union to facilitate increased Jewish

emigration. However, it is also quite patronizing, as many Jews emigrating from the former

Soviet Union often felt neglected by the established American Jewish community once they had

arrived in the United States. As sociologist Steven J. Gold notes: “Émigrés would often

complain that they were not assisted in the ways that they desired. This was especially the case

in job placement” (Gold 275). To whatever extent that Pamela recognizes that Masha and her

family were victims of anti-Semitism in the former Soviet Union, her belief that by having

brought them to the United States, where they could practice the Jewish religion freely (and

indeed, some émigrés have become religiously active, though most have not), fundamentally

misattributes the source of the anti-Semitism that Jews faced in the former Soviet Union, as well

as their goals in emigrating.

As Laurie Salitan describes, many Jews in the former Soviet Union were hampered by

the fact that the fifth line in their passports indicated that they were Jews, tying them to a

nationality that was also partly considered an objectionable religious-based identity by the Soviet

government, regardless of individual levels of religious observance (see Salitan 22). These

Soviet Jews faced discrimination more on the basis of the nationality that was listed in their

passports than from lighting candles on Shabbos or holding Passover seders. Orleck interviewed

a Russian-speaking Jewish émigré and resident of the Brighton Beach neighborhood named

Alexander Sirotin, who stated: “Here in America the first concern of the Russian Jew was not

36

religion. Being Jewish had kept them from getting many good things in Russia… good

apartments, good jobs, respect, education for their children. But the American Jews offered

prayer books, candlesticks, prayer shawls” (Orleck 98). This disconnect has become quite

prominent, as American Jews have been forced to confront the fact that many of their

counterparts from the former Soviet Union are often very distanced from Jewish religious

practices and traditions. As Zeltzer-Zubida described, many Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés

“felt that they were being forced to adopt an identity that was unfamiliar to them, while at the

same time being alienated and excluded from decision making [sic] positions within the

[American Jewish] community and its organizations” (Zeltzer-Zubida 356). Despite this reality,

many American Jewish organizations and institutions have engaged in religious outreach toward

Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés, as is depicted in this scene from Petropolis. Sasha is

recounting an exchange with her friend Marina about American Jewish religious life after

hearing another émigré named Yulia read a Jewish prayer aloud at a fundraiser in Chicago:

Sasha couldn’t help but be impressed with Yulia’s oratory. She wondered if

Yulia really prayed, and to what. Suddenly nostalgic for Phoenix, she could almost feel

the heat rising from the Taco Bell parking lot where Marina had pompously delivered the

news.

“Jews have their own religion, Sasha.”

“What, they go to church?” Sasha had asked. She’d never seen a religious Jew.

“No, a synagogue, and the priest is called a rabbi,” explained Marina. “My grandma

remembers her grandma going to one. Now we go, too, with our benefactors. We sit

there, and then they give us food and stuff.”

“You pray to Jesus?”

“No, to God.”

“To a different god? What’s his name?”

“How would I know?” Marina shrugged. “It’s all in Hebrew. In their English

prayer books, they sometimes replace the o with the dash. So I call him Gd. Sounds sort

of Vietnamese.” (Ulinich 163)

Sasha’s disconnect and ignorance about the very existence of a Jewish religion, let alone

specific Jewish religious practices, is quite clear in this passage. While this lack of awareness is

37

partly a result of Sasha’s upbringing in the remote Siberian town of Asbestos 2, in which there

were very few Jews or religious institutions of any faith, Sasha still has an awareness of her

identity as being distinctly Jewish as reflected elsewhere in the novel, even prior to her arrival in

America. Because Sasha already perceives herself as Jewish prior to having encountered any

kind of organized Jewish community or Jewish religious life, she is illustrative of the unique

sense of ethnic identification among Russian-speaking Jews that essentially occurs in a vacuum.

Indeed, even American Jews who grow up without direct involvement in religious activities or

membership to a synagogue might still have some knowledge that such things exist, but they are

simply choosing not to partake in them, so their Jewish identity is something that they might

place on the lower range of a spectrum of observance. For Sasha and other Russian-speaking

Jewish émigrés, without any comparable framework for assessing religious observance or

participation, there is no way to see themselves as being more or less actively Jewish than those

around them. This represents one reason that outreach by American Jewish organizations and

synagogues toward this émigré population has proved so difficult—if they were raised with a

secular and ethnic understanding of Jewish identity and already consider themselves to be Jewish

by the nature of their existence, then why must they take part in additional Jewish activities?

For Marina, who is passing on the existence of this synagogue and system of religious

observance to her friend, these traditions seem to be equally perplexing. Her description of the

practice by some Jews of writing the abbreviated “G-d” rather than the full word “God” (in order

to avoid a situation in which prayer books containing the name of God would be destroyed) is

equally confusing to Marina, who humorously remarks that this abridgment reminds her of

Vietnamese—a language known for its monosyllabic words and consonant clusters. Marina’s

decision to describe this practice as suggestive of a foreign language reframes Judaism as

38

something exotic and unknown. In addition, Marina and Sasha both present Jewish religious

traditions in direct comparison to those of Christianity; Marina states that “the priest is called a

rabbi” and Sasha asks which “different God” Marina could worship at the synagogue other than

Jesus. Marina and Sasha’s perceptions of Judaism as an unfamiliar faith that exists through the

paradigm of Christianity establish the extent to which the Jewishness of Russian-speaking Jewish

émigrés is often quite divorced from actual Judaism. Because, as Remennick notes, many

American Jews “probably expected their Russian/Soviet co-ethnics to resemble Tevye and his

family, forgetting that for Soviet immigrants those times and places became remote history”

(Remennick 190-91), it is possible to understand the dissonance and disappointment on both

sides of this cultural and religious divide. These two very distinct understandings of what it

means to be Jewish have come to a head in an American context.

Many Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés in the United States feel that they are Jewish

simply by the nature of their ethnic identities, leading to a certain degree of freedom and

multiplicity in their thoughts and actions, even to an extent that many American Jews might find

illogical or, at the very least, unfamiliar. Kliger points out that a Russian-speaking Jewish

émigré can “simultaneously attend a reform synagogue because it is close to his home, invite an

orthodox rabbi to officiate at a Bar Mitzvah ceremony, put up a Christmas tree, admire the

Russian Orthodox architecture, and learn Buddhist meditation” (Kliger 6). Because Jewish

identity is something that is seen as innate by many Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés, it can, and

often does, lead to any number of actions or external behaviors that are expressions of

Jewishness, but this identity is not dependent on such actions.

Choices and attitudes that American Jews might find to be antithetical to typical Jewish

practices are acted upon by Russian-speaking Jews without any perception of such behaviors as

39

betraying their core Jewish identities. In the introduction to her book, Soviet and Kosher: Jewish

Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939, Anna Shternshis describes meeting an eighty-

two year-old Russian-speaking Jewish woman living in Brooklyn named Sara F., who shows

Shternshis how to prepare “kosher pork,” something that would seem contradictory at first, given

Jewish dietary prohibitions (the very definition of the word kosher) against eating foods such as

pork and shellfish (see Shternshis xiii). Shternshis explains how “in the vocabulary of the Soviet

Jews who lived through the government policies of the 1920s and 1930s, the word ‘kosher’

means something that ‘Jews do’… If a Jew prepares pork and eats it in the company of Jews, it is

‘kosher pork’” (Shternshis xiv). As a result, the idea of a practice becoming Jewish simply

because it is being followed by Jews or, at the very least, cognitive dissonance that prevents self-

stigmatization of “non-Jewish” behaviors, can be seen in the history of Russian-speaking Jews

both in the former Soviet Union and in America. This idea emerges in a conversation in The

Russian Debutante’s Handbook between Vladimir Girshkin and his mother about her recent

prayer habits:

Vladimir accepted a glassful of rum. Mother grabbed a post and hoisted herself

up until she was on her knees. “Jesus, our Lord,” she said, “please shepherd helpless

Vladimir away from his tragic lifestyle, from the legacy his father bequeathed him, from

the pauper’s flat which he calls home, and from this criminal Groundhog…” She put her

hands together but started to tip over.

Vladimir caught her by one shoulder. “That’s a pretty prayer, Mother,” he said.

“But we’re, you know…” He lowered his voice out of habit: “Jewish.”

Mother looked at his face carefully, as if she had forgotten something and it had

gone into hiding beneath one of Vladimir’s think brows. “Yes, I know that,” she said,

“but it’s all right to pray to Jesus. Your grandfather was a gentile, you know, and his

father was a deacon. And I still pray to the Jewish God, the main God, although, I have

to say, he hasn’t been helping much lately.

“I mean, what do you think?” she said.

“I don’t know,” said Vladimir. “I guess it’s all right. Do you feel good when you

pray like that? To Jesus and to… Isn’t there something else? The Holy Something?”

“I’m not sure,” said Mother. “I can look it up. I got a little brochure on the

subway.”

40

“Well, anyway,” Vladimir said, “you can pray to everyone you want, just don’t

tell Father. With Grandma losing her mind, he’s been more into the Jewish God than

ever.” (Shteyngart 2002 42-43)

Vladimir’s mother’s prayer to Jesus is less of an endorsement of Christianity or an

abandonment of Jewishness than an illustration of the agency that is an inherent consequence of

how Jewish identity is perceived by Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés. Because Jewish identity

within this community is specifically tied to a sense of ethnic and national belonging, rather than

a set of prohibitions or required observances, Vladimir’s mother is able to take part in a behavior

that many American Jews would consider to be extremely un-Jewish without seeming to feel that

what she is doing is improper or goes against her Jewishness. An American Jew consuming a

bacon cheeseburger (something that is decidedly un-kosher according to halachic standards)

might do so without any sense of guilt or regret. Indeed, a 2013 Pew Research Center Survey of

American Jews found that 78% of those surveyed did not adhere to kosher dietary rules (see

“Religious Beliefs and Practices”). But the American Jew might do this operating under a

recognition that such actions were either a rejection of traditional Jewish law, or in accordance

with the Jewish attitudes of modernity and change endorsed by the more liberal Jewish

denominations that are popular in America today, such as the Reform and Conservative

movements. In essence, for many American Jews, these behaviors might be explained as either

the triumph of personal desire over established rules, or as having been justified by

contemporary understandings of Jewish observance.

For Vladimir’s mother, neither of these reasons is needed to justify her actions. She is

not rebelling against her Jewishness, nor is she reframing her prayer to Jesus as an example of

being Jewish in a modern world with the backing of current-day theology. Rather, the ethnic

basis for her Jewish identity allows her to act in any number of different ways. In some ways,

41

this reality demonstrates the strength and adaptability of the Jewish identity of Russian-speaking

Jews, as they, like Vladimir’s mother, still think of themselves as Jewish regardless of their

actions, avoiding the limitations or self-judgments that many American Jews might place upon

themselves. At the same time, this definition of Jewishness often held by Russian-speaking

Jewish émigrés, tied so closely to a sense of ethnic and national identity, faces its own set of

risks for a population that, at least for its members who eschew Jewish religious and communal

life, would have to maintain marriages and families within the Jewish community in order to

perpetuate the existence of an identity based in large part on the notion of ethnicity.

The issue of intermarriage has hardly been limited to the Russian-speaking Jewish émigré

community; it has been something that the American Jewish community as a whole has

increasingly faced since the second half of the twentieth century. The 2013 Pew Survey “A

Portrait of Jewish Americans” found that 44% of presently married American Jews had a non-

Jewish spouse, and that there was a steady increase in the percentage of intermarried couples

depending upon the decade in which they had been married.6 Children and spouses from such

marriages will still have a place in many facets of the American Jewish community and an

identity as Jews that can be reinforced through religious observance, educational programs, and

community organizations. However, a Jewish identity based heavily on ethnic identity that lacks

ties to the organized Jewish community, as is often the case for Russian-speaking Jewish

émigrés, means that the effects of intermarriage will continue to pose a challenge for this

population in particular.

In his research on intermarriage within the Russian-speaking Jewish community in the

United States, Kliger noted, however, that the intermarriage rate was comparatively lower than

6 See “A Portrait of Jewish Americans,” < http://www.pewforum.org/2013/10/01/jewish-

american-beliefs-attitudes-culture-survey/>

42

for American Jews as a whole (see Kliger 5).7 In addition, he found that the rate of intermarriage

was higher for those aged between 35 and 54 than it was for those under 35, leading Kliger to

hypothesize that many of these younger émigrés were still acculturating to life in the United

States and wanted to marry within the Russian-speaking community in the United States (see

Kliger 6), which simply had a higher concentration of Jews than the cities in the former Soviet

Union that their parents had left behind. This also raises the question of what will happen as

these Russian-speaking Jews and their children become more acculturated into the mainstream of

American society, losing their accents and many of the cultural traditions that they and their

parents adopted in the former Soviet Union. In this sense, they will face many questions that are

already being confronted by the American Jewish community, with intermarriage as one of the

most important. This issue is raised in The Disappearance of Zalman, in which Mark, a Russian-

speaking Jewish émigré who has become well-adjusted into American society, is forced to

decide whether or not to marry Sarah, his non-Jewish girlfriend:

When he wasn’t writing, Sarah came into his thoughts, and he revisited their

many unresolved discussions about marriage and family. He hoped to find justification

for ending the whole thing. Sarah had told him they should let the kids choose their

religion. She believed she was meeting him halfway, and a part of him agreed: yes, it

looked as if neither one would have to give up their ancestral faith. But when Mark

reminded himself that after almost two years together Sarah still hadn’t figured out that

for a Jewish man the prospect of having to bargain for the identity of his future children

was terrifying, he became so angry that he wanted to run away and forget her….

It was already the end of October, a feverish Indian summer after a week of cold

rain and the first streaks of silver on the ground, but the old double-barreled gun still

hadn’t shot their love dead.

Mark didn’t know how to explain to anyone that despite the certainty of it all,

despite his knowledge that his time together with Sarah was nearing its ending, despite

the clenched-teeth endorsement of all fifty-seven centuries of Jewish history, he still felt

that he would be betraying something so precious that no words could describe it. The

Jew in him—the Russian Jew—rejected that which the lover in him still ached for.

(Shrayer 2-3)

7 Kliger’s data from a 2004 survey showed that 24% of Russian-Jewish marriages in the United

States involved a non-Jewish spouse.

43

Mark, like so many Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés living in the United States, is

finally becoming a part of the new country in which he lives. He is attaining a Ph.D. at an

American university and dating a woman who born in the United States. These issues of

acculturation have been accompanied by many of the same challenges facing other American

Jews who want to keep their Jewish identities, something that in this case is specifically framed

in terms of intermarriage. This is particularly important for Mark because while he might still be

Jewish, this identity is less certain for his children; he admits “the prospect of having to bargain

for the identity of his future children was terrifying.” This thought is so disturbing to Mark

because of what he believes is at stake if his children decide that this Jewish identity is not worth

retaining: “all fifty-seven centuries of Jewish history.” If they choose to reject this aspect of

their heritage and do not pass it on to their own children, then it will be even less likely that their

descendants will value the Jewish identity that Mark and his ancestors have preserved for so

long, often at great personal cost. Especially in light of the ethnic-based Jewish identity that

became especially salient in the Soviet Union, it is possible to understand how as a “Russian

Jew,” Mark finds the idea of intermarriage and the potentially resultant loss of Jewish identity so

troubling.

In balancing these different aspects of his identity, Mark also inadvertently raises the

question of whether or not the future identity of his children is something that he would even be

able to transmit. By specifically delineating his identity as being not merely that of a Jew, but of

a “Russian Jew,” Mark once again reinforces the differences between Russian-speaking Jews in

the United States and their established American counterparts. However, he also sets up an

identity that would be very difficult for his children to match in a context where exposure to the

Russian culture and language would be much harder to obtain than was ever possible during his

44

own childhood. Even if they were raised with exposure to both Russian culture and Jewish

values and practices, it would be a very different environment and paradigm from the one in

which Mark grew up, as they would lack the definitions of Jewishness fostered by anti-Semitism,

discrimination, and primarily ethnic (as opposed to religious or cultural) identity. As a result,

this passage is indicative of what may very well happen to younger Russian-speaking Jews living

in the United States or, at the very least, their children, over the decades to come: either the

maintenance of Jewish identity, but in a cultural and religious sense that is quite different from

the Jewishness developed in the former Soviet Union, or simply the abandonment of Jewishness

as a significant component of identity altogether.

This is the paradox of Jewish identity for Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés living in the

United States. Their Jewishness was a source of adversity and discrimination in the former

Soviet Union, factors that ultimately facilitated their immigration to the United States so that

they could live in a country where they no longer faced anti-Semitism or discrimination along

the lines of national or ethnic identity. However, in the absence of these hardships, one of the

major components of Jewish identity for this population must now be replaced with other aspects

of Jewishness that are less familiar and may prove less salient over time. The result may be a

diminished or even nonexistent relationship between these émigrés and their descendants to their

Jewish identity.

In all of their works, these authors present these challenges and questions about

Jewishness throughout the narratives and characters that they have created, threading these issues

into their prose in many introspective and challenging ways. In the process, they continue to

raise questions about their own identities as Jewish writers. To the extent that these writers fit

into the patchwork of Jewish-American literature, this is due in no small part to the fact that their

45

characters face unique issues of Jewish identity in transition. The explorations of Jewish identity

in their works have brought these authors to the attention of the literary mainstream and

distinguished them within the Jewish-American literary community. These are works written

about Jewish characters by Jewish writers, but perhaps more importantly for these authors’

inclusion in the category of Jewish-American literature, they deal with situations that are

fundamentally related to issues of Jewish identity.

By infusing their unique Russian-speaking Jewish émigré identities into their literature,

these writers have added a fresh perspective to the world of Jewish literature just as their

community has brought forth new discussions within the American Jewish community about the

nature of Jewish identity, especially in relation to other cultural, national, and ethnic identities.

In many ways, their role as writers who transcend established cultural and literary boundaries

mirrors the larger path that the Russian-speaking Jewish émigré community has followed since

arriving in the United States. It remains to be seen whether, as these authors become even more

deeply acculturated into American society, they too will become distanced from the unique sense

of Jewishness that has developed within the émigré community to which they belong.

Ultimately, however, this identity will likely be further adapted and reinvented in new cultural

and social contexts, as has occurred with their persistent and distinctive Soviet identity.

46

CHAPTER 3: HOMO SOVIETICUS IN EXILE:

THE DEPOLITICIZATION OF SOVIET JEWISH ÉMIGRÉ IDENTITY

Despite these authors’ own emigration from the Soviet Union, in large part as a result of

government-backed anti-Semitism and persecution, it is difficult to separate them or their

characters from the concept of Soviet identity, even in a post-Cold War, American context. As

Jews became involved in the creation of the Soviet state and even constructed a distinctive and

vibrant Soviet Jewish identity with the initial blessing of the Soviet government, a sense of

Soviet identity was something that became salient for many Jews in the Soviet Union. After the

Soviet government increasingly restricted participation by many Jews within the Soviet state in

governmental and political contexts, Soviet identity continued to remain relevant to Jews,

although increasingly along cultural, rather than political, lines. As a result, anti-Semitic

persecution and the subsequent emigration of many Soviet Jews to the United States, did not

inherently lead to an abandonment of Soviet identity. Rather, these challenges spurred the

creation of a depoliticized Soviet identity rooted in traditions and cultural practices. Those

aspects of a Soviet identity that did remain inescapably tied to politics, such as communist

ideology or propaganda art, were simply recast in an irreverent manner. This provided a means

for these writers and their broader émigré community to mitigate some of the potential conflicts

between retaining some notions of a distinctly Soviet identity despite widespread hostility toward

the Soviet state itself. This duality of detachment and continuity within their Soviet identity,

which has been further complicated by the dissolution of the Soviet Union and emigration,

presents many nuances that these writers explore throughout their works.

47

Much of the current academic literature on these authors and their works either

minimizes the presence of Soviet identity in their writing, or at least fails to elevate it with the

other components of identity by which these authors are frequently defined. In Out of Russia,

Wanner notes “all of the writers discussed in this book have at least a dual transnational identity,

combining a Russian origin with a French, American, German, or Israeli nationality. Most have

a triple identity, combining Russian and Jewish with American, German, or Austrian elements”

(Wanner 2011a 8). Similarly, Furman observes how in describing the “hybrid identities” of this

group of Russian-speaking, Jewish émigré writers, by utilizing the term “Russian-American,”

she is following “the accepted practice of using ‘Russian-American’ as a kind of shorthand for

‘Russian-Jewish-American’ with the understanding that all three are key components in the

identities of the writers and their texts” (Furman 2011 22). Such portrayals of a “trinity” of

essential core identities largely eschew the inclusion of a Soviet component.

When the Soviet identity of these writers is discussed by scholars, it is often either

portrayed as simply an extension of the role of additional identities, or raised in a historical or

biographical sense to provide past context to the authors’ current lives. Wanner observes how

these writers have benefited from and exploited “the totalitarian mystique of the Soviet Union

and its former status as a rivaling superpower” (Wanner 2011a 192). This statement is quickly

tempered, however, by the subsequent disclaimer that these Cold War-era memories have led to

“the continued appeal of Russian cultural products in the United States” (Wanner 2011a 192), as

well an earlier point that for many Americans, the Soviet Union “was often conflated with

‘Russia’” (Wanner 2011a 6). In a similar vein, Furman briefly mentions the role of the Soviet

Union in limiting the writers’ exposure to Jewish culture and religion, and the distinct Jewish

identity that emerged under these conditions (see Furman 2011 25). Rather than focusing on the

48

ongoing role of Soviet culture in the lives of these writers or their characters, the discussion is

framed in terms of how Soviet identity and culture affected other elements of their Russian,

Jewish, and American identities. Consequently, much of the discussion within existing academic

literature about the Soviet identity of these writers, as well as its manifestations in their works,

treats Soviet identity as subservient to the other identities at play.

This chapter challenges that prevailing narrative by addressing some of the ways in

which Soviet notions of identity do in fact play a major and ongoing role in the identity of these

writers. It also places these patterns along the larger trajectory of both Soviet and post-Soviet

history and culture. In the process, Soviet identity is presented as something that has proved

crucial to a sense of definition and belonging for the Russian-speaking Jewish émigré

community in the United States; historically in the Soviet Union, but also since their arrival in

the United States. Potential reasons why this argument has been largely omitted from most

existing scholarship are also addressed, in order to further contextualize why this discussion has

been framed in such a way by the academic community. In deconstructing a distinct Soviet

identity that has often been synthesized with and overshadowed by other identities, it is possible

to better understand how this identity has permeated the consciousness of these writers, their

literature, and their émigré community as a whole.

The development of this Soviet identity, on the part of both Jews and non-Jews alike, can

be traced back to the initial establishment of the Soviet Union following the overthrow of the

Tsarist government in 1917. As the old political order was replaced by a communist

governmental and economic system, so too was there a shift in the cultural and ideological

paradigm through which residents of the new Soviet Union—both elites and everyday citizens

alike—construed their values and priorities. Historian Dominic Lieven observes the fact that

49

“Soviet identity included some aspects of the pre-Revolutionary past,” such as “the rich

traditions of pre-revolutionary literature… a sanitised, populist and saccharine acceptance of

some elements of Russian history, above all in the military sphere… [and] Soviet work styles

and communal values [that] owed something to the old village culture” (Lieven 267).

Ultimately, however, Lieven notes “the new Soviet identity was rather far removed from the

Russia either of the villages or of the elites of tsarist days,” with its focus on “a world view that

was resolutely optimistic, materialist and scientific, and which gloried in man’s conquest of

nature” (see Lieven 267). As a result, much of the initial development of Soviet identity, which

did not occur in a cultural or social vacuum, was characterized by negotiating the balance

between the rejection of some attributes of preexisting identities and and the continuity of other

aspects that might prove useful in a new Soviet state.

Throughout the creation of this new Soviet identity, both Jewish and Russian Soviet

citizens played a notable role in seeking to manage this process of borrowing in ways that

stemmed from their own consciousness, yet still led to a sense of redefinition (as did members of

other national and ethnic groups). As Geoffrey Hosking states, the establishment of a new

Soviet identity that would both supplant and replace existing national identities was, in many

ways, an extension of messianic tendencies in both Russian and Jewish thought: “the messianic

impulse was not uniquely Russian, but also Jewish. The Soviet Union in its energetic early

phases was a Russian-Jewish enterprise…” (Hosking 406). This sense of progressive, even

messianic, change through redefinition would supposedly deliver the Soviet Union and its

residents from not only the economic and political backwardness of the past, but would allow

them to overcome barriers to cultural and ideological change. Yet these changes were also

driven by pre-existing strains of thought that were firmly rooted in other identities and

50

backgrounds. These simultaneous processes are reflected in this passage from The

Disappearance of Zalman, in which Mark constructs a fictional Jewish version of his Catholic

girlfriend Sarah to make her seem kosher to an ultra-Orthodox rabbi named Zalman whom he

has befriended—a story that is matched in importance by a revelation at the end of the passage

about his own Soviet identity.

With a few strokes of embellishment Mark created a Jewish version of Sarah

Flaherty. She and Mark had met in graduate school. Her family lived in California. Her

father was an ophthalmologist, her mother a social worker. (Before his death of liver

cirrhosis, Sarah’s father had operated a truck-leasing company in Sacramento; her mother

still worked as a bank teller.) She played the cello (at college the Catholic Sarah had

sung in an a capella group). The Jewish Sarah was working as a legislative assistant to a

senator from San Francisco (the real Sarah actually worked for a congressman from

Bakersfield). She had long copper hair and turquoise blue eyes (she did!). Zalman

nodded in satisfaction as Mark described this other Sarah.

Lying next to the real Sarah, Mark felt doubly the liar as he tried to ward off her

questions about Zalman and the yeshiva. Sarah was the only thing he wasn’t truthful

about with Zalman, that and the fact of his Russian—Soviet—origins. (Shrayer 10-11)

While the identities at play in Sarah’s imaginary transformation are from Catholic to Jew,

rather than from Jew to Soviet, the process of redefinition involved evokes the historical changes

at work in the formation of early Soviet identities. Mark decides to recast his girlfriend’s life in

terms that are a departure from many actual realities of her life, driven in part by the motivation

to establish her legitimacy in a new cultural context, even if only theoretically. His choice leaves

both Sarah and Zalman none the wiser and allows Mark to continue his relationship with both

parties on terms that he finds acceptable, despite the tenuous nature of such an arrangement.

This is not merely an invented reality or a myth, but the result of an active process of negotiation

to secure Sarah’s imagined existence within a different cultural setting; it is based on the act of

adapting some elements of her life to fit the circumstances, rather than abandoning them

completely.

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Similar to the process by which Mark recasts Sarah’s life for Zalman in Jewish terms,

rather than trying to conceal her existence completely, or telling the truth and threatening his

relationship with Zalman due to dating a non-Jew, a great deal of initial social activity by Jews

within the Soviet Union was focused on the sensitive task of bridging the gaps between different

realities and affiliations. As more Jews became involved in the creation of a new Soviet society,

they did so partly through active participation in mainstream Soviet political and military

institutions, often heavily over-represented relative to their numbers (see Slezkine 175). Other

Soviet Jews devoted their time to cultivating a Soviet identity and disseminating communist

ideology among fellow Jews through secularized, Yiddish-language institutions such as theater

groups, schools, and museums (see Salitan 15). To some extent, these efforts were a reaction to

the development of Soviet nationality policies during the 1920s that maintained both an

overarching Soviet identity, as well as other national identities within the Soviet Union,

including that of Soviet Jews (see (Salitan 14). If this new Soviet identity was inherently

political and ideological, but failed to completely dilute the role of national identities within the

Soviet Union, then those national identities would either have to also become politicized as well,

or consequently be seen as a threat to the existence of the Soviet state. This arrangement, much

like the “Jewish” Sarah which Mark constructed, proved tenuous because it required maintaining

ties within the context of preexisting relationships and paradigms in order to fully realize and

define these new identities, even if those identities might later come into conflict with each other,

as would soon prove true in the Soviet Union.

Mark’s disclosure that he has failed to reveal his origins to Zalman, as well as the

conflation (or confusion) of identities within the last sentence of this passage, when he denotes

his “Russian—Soviet—origins,” prove equally telling as a means of conceiving Mark’s choices

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for self-definition and affiliation and their implications for this community. One possible

interpretation of “Soviet” being placed directly after “Russian,” with a dash separating the two, is

that Mark had subconsciously confused the two and is simply correcting his mistake. More

likely, however, is the possibility that just as Mark had chosen to omit his background from

Zalman, he himself is uncomfortable with the fact that he holds Soviet origins, even if that fails

to change the reality that they are still there. For Mark, who has no trouble fraudulently

reconstituting his girlfriend’s background to Zalman, and is also described in the story as

culturally and linguistically Americanized, his ability to adapt and morph into new identities is

unable to shield him from the sense of shame that he feels about an identity that is still closely

tied to his origins and how he fundamentally perceives himself.

Because Shrayer has closely juxtaposed Mark’s internal conflicts over his innate Soviet

origins with the process of generating a fictional identity for Sarah, this passage further reveals

the challenges of adopting novel identities while also reconciling divergent ones. This mention

of Mark’s Soviet identity as a kind of latent burden that can never truly be overcome seems to

run contrary to the process of positive acculturation and adaptability that Shrayer seems so keen

on threading through the lives of his protagonists. Indeed, Mark is among the most assimilated

of any of the émigré protagonists created by the five writers, with his Soviet (or Russian, for that

matter) origins barely discussed at all, yet this issue of Soviet identity remains inescapable on a

basic level for Mark. Embracing his other identities as an American and a Jew cannot negate his

fundamental Soviet identity, even if Mark feels that there is a conflict between them. This

sentence at the end of the passage may also reflect one reason that these authors are rarely

classified as having Soviet identities: they themselves feel uncomfortable with this label and

much of the political and historical baggage that it carries for them as Jews. Because Soviet

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identity is something that exists in tandem with other identities, once the task of balancing

identities became more problematic for Soviet Jews, then they had to find ways to reconcile

these divergences if they could not completely disregard their other identities in the process.

Indeed, as the Soviet experiment continued onward into the second half of the twentieth

century, things became increasingly difficult for many Jews, even though many had not only

embraced a Soviet identity, but played a prominent and active role in developing Soviet cultural,

political, and educational institutions. This involved participation in mainstream entities such as

large Russian-language universities and Soviet governmental bodies, as well in Soviet Yiddish

cultural institutions that Shternshis describes as having worked “to transform Jews into new

Soviet citizens… to see reality “through ‘Soviet glasses’” (Shternshis 182). However, with the

arrival of heightened anti-Semitism in the late 1940s, the inability of the Soviet state to separate

itself from the question of nationality meant that Jews living in the Soviet Union faced scrutiny

that could not merely be avoided by their assumption of a Soviet identity. Slezkine observes:

“Being Jewish became a crime: those who claimed a separate Yiddish culture were ‘bourgeois

nationalists’; those who identified with Russian culture were ‘rootless cosmopolitans’” (Slezkine

298). The Soviet state, which had provided a means of social mobility for so many Jews living

in the Soviet Union, had now turned on its Jewish population, who, as Gitelman notes, were

being cast “as ‘rootless’ cosmopolitans, meaning they were unpatriotic and had no attachment to

the Soviet motherland” (Gitelman 91). This passage, from The Russian Debutante’s Handbook,

in which Vladimir pretends to be a Russian communist leader and passionately addresses a group

of elderly communist women in Prava in order to have them help defend him from the

“Groundhog” and his group of Russian mobsters, simultaneously evokes the processes of both

Jewish integration into and alienation from the Soviet state:

54

“Stalwart comrades,” he shouted and immediately stopped. Stalwart comrades…

Um, and then what? “First let me ask you, is it acceptable that I speak in Russian?”

“But of course! Speak, Russian eagle!” the audience said as one.

My kind of audience, Vladimir thought. He breathed in all his doubts once, felt

the pain of breathing, the dispelled them into the air, thick with the smell of groceries

going bad and cheap suits worn on a warm day. “Stalwart comrades!” he shouted into

the silence. “Outside it is a warm April day, the sky is clear. But over the mausoleum of

Vladimir Ilyich,” he turned for emphasis to the statue of Lenin, “the sky is a perpetual

gray!”

“Woe, poor Lenin!” moaned the crowd. “Poor are his heirs.”

“Poor indeed,” Vladimir said. “Just look what has happened to your beautiful

Red Prava. Americans everywhere you turn! (The crowd roared its opposition!)

Performing lewd sexual acts on the Emanuel Bridge as if to laugh at the sanctity of the

Socialist Family and to spread their AIDS! (Roar!) Shooting up their marijuana with

dirty needles in the Old Town Square, where once a hundred thousand comrades thrilled

to the words of Jan Zhopka, your first working-class president….

Oh, he was starting to like this! He paced before the lectern like an agitated

Bolshevik, even touching the cool marble of the Big Daddy of the Revolution for support.

“Look at my hand!” he shouted, waving the bandaged package in the air with his other

hand. “Look at what they’ve done to it, the industrialists! I spoke my mind at a rally of

Negro workers in Washington, and the CIA put it through a meat grinder!”

At the mention of the meat grinder, a comrade in a frumpy mink and floral

headscarf could no longer contain herself. She sprang to her feet and waved a segmented

string of sausages around her head, lasso-style. “I paid forty crowns for these!” she

shouted. “What do you think of that?”

“Yes,” the crowd picked up the rallying cry. “What do you think of that?”

“What do I think of that?” Vladimir pointed to himself as if he were surprised that

they would solicit his opinion. “I think that the store owner responsible for charging

forty crowns for those sausages should be shot!”

The entire crowd was now on its feet; its ovation must have been heard over at the

restaurant next door. “I think his family should be forced to leave Prava as enemies of

the people,” shouted the incorrigible Vladimir, “and his children never allowed to attend

university!” Hurrah answered the crowd.

“His cat should be turned into cat food!” Hurrah!

“And what do you think of twenty crowns for a carp?” another inquisitive

babushka wanted to know.

“Disgrace! Why have we let the labor camps of Siberia go idle? And what about

those nice Stolovan uranium mines? Comrades, when the Liberal Democratic Worker-

Peasant Alliance of Unrepentant Communists takes control, these new entrepreneurs will

really have their work cut out for them!”

The crowd lapsed into cheerful laughter and applause, gold teeth sparkled across

the room, and more than one hand reached to calm the overexcited beating of a faulty

heart. “We will take care of them one by one, dear tovarishchii. We will strangle the life

out of them with our own bare hands, those fat bourgeois pigs in their pinstriped Armani

suits!” (Shteyngart 2002 461-463)

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Through this passage, dripping with satire, Shteyngart alludes to the role of Jews in

developing Soviet society and perpetuating an ideologically-based Soviet identity, as well as the

resultant social mobility that this Soviet identity provided. Vladimir’s speech may not represent

his own sincere political beliefs, but it does match up with the ideology of his grandmother, who

had risen through the ranks of the Communist Party in Leningrad and become a successful

school principal, never fully recanting her communist ideology even after her arrival in America.

Even if he is merely acting, Vladimir’s fluency in the rhetoric of Soviet political agitation

reflects a sense of familiarity and knowledge with these beliefs and an ability to adapt them by

creating a bizarre parody of contemporary political issues in Prava, such as American expats

using drugs (“shooting up their marijuana”). In addition, the fact that Vladimir is essentially

using these communist women to fulfill his own goals of personal protection from the

“Groundhog” and his Russian mobsters reflects the ways in which the Soviet system and Soviet

identity served as a vehicle for social, vocational, and educational achievement for many Jews in

the Soviet Union. Just as his grandmother found her path through Soviet society made easier by

openly embracing this ideology and participating in Soviet political activities, Vladimir is able to

take advantage of this situation and ensure his own security by espousing the Soviet ideals that

she had once professed to him. The fact that he does not personally hold these beliefs is not an

obstacle to expressing them and being taken seriously by his audience, reflecting the fact that

Soviet identity, so firmly rooted in ideology and language, was so often defined by how it was

performed in public.

At the same time, this passage also humorously underscores much of the political

oppression that occurred in the Soviet Union. Vladimir issues a call for store owners perceived

to be overcharging for food to be shot, sent to Siberian labor camps, or forced to work in

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Stolovan uranium mines. The inclusion of these threats can be read not only as a mocking

indictment of an authoritarian Soviet state, but as an ironic allusion to the initial leadership of the

state security apparatus, including Soviet Jews such as Genrikh Yagoda, who served as People’s

Commissar of Internal Affairs prior to his dismissal by Stalin in 1936 (see Baron 451). Yagoda

had embraced a sense of Soviet identity to the extent that he was able to achieve such a high-

ranking position, yet he was also still a Jew, in the words of David Hollinger, “as much a child of

the Diaspora as Einstein” (Hollinger 600). Yagoda, whose leadership of the NKVD had included

efforts to prevent cases of “counter-revolutionaries” from being tried in regular courts (see Nove

536), was himself put on trial in March 1938 for “spying, sabotage, and treason” (Tang 231), a

partial victim of the system that he had once helped direct. Even if Yagoda’s fate stemmed more

from Stalin’s paranoia and propensity for violence than from his Jewishness, his story underlines

the very risks mentioned in Vladimir’s speech, dangers that all Soviet citizens—Jews and non-

Jews—faced in realizing their Soviet identities through achieving successful political and social

integration, especially during the Stalinist period.

There is also another aspect of this passage that can be seen as a reflection of challenges

that Soviet Jews in particular faced during this era, and which relates to both their integration

into a positive Soviet identity, and their later alienation from the Soviet state. When Vladimir

makes the farcical statement “I think his family should be forced to leave Prava as enemies of the

people… and his children never allowed to attend university!” he is invoking the very real issue

of academic quotas that were targeted at Soviet Jews as a means of political repression. As

Slezkine notes, by the late 1940s, Jews were often heavily over-represented in academic

departments throughout the Soviet Union, much to the resulting alarm of the Soviet government

(see Slezkine 301-302). After attempting to rise through the ranks of Soviet academia in

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disciplines that played a vital role in this communist society such as Marxism-Leninism and

centralized economic planning, many Jews were now being forced out. Minton Goldman

observes how even decades after Stalin’s death, during the Brezhnev regime “officials criticized

what they termed ‘the over-concentration of Jews in the scientific and academic professions’ and

restricted the admission of Jews to universities” (Goldman 338).8 While Vladimir incorporates

this threat into a much longer list of potential political repressions, it is particularly salient for

Soviet Jews, by referencing what became one of the major means of disenfranchisement from

assuming a politicized Soviet identity and contributing to Soviet intellectualism and ideology

through academic institutions.

These examples that humorously invoke Soviet repression are also relevant to

understanding why these authors have often not been classified as holding a Soviet identity

alongside their Russian, Jewish, and American identities. Discomfort by both American literary

critics and indeed, the writers themselves, with the act of potentially linking these émigrés, who

had fled from a repressive political system, with that system itself by assigning them a Soviet

identity is understandable. At the same time, this omission ignores the fact that many Soviet

Jews both believed in Soviet ideology and participated in its politicized institutions before either

becoming excluded from or disenchanted with the problems of Soviet society. In his analysis of

the Soviet Jewish writer Vasily Grossman, who fiercely attacked many of the foundations of

Soviet society, John Garrard notes “he [Grossman] had to give up the Soviet dream of a new

society when it had been his dream as well” (Garrard 270). For those Jews who continued living

in the Soviet Union, the ability to positively define this identity through leadership and

8 According to Goldman: “The number of Jews entering universities declined from 112,000 in

1968 to 105,000 in 1970, 88,500 in 1972, and an estimated 50,000 in 1980.”

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participation as elites in Soviet society had become far less possible or desirable than it had been

during the initial existence of the Soviet Union.

However, the necessities of life in an ideological Soviet society meant that Soviet Jews

still had to engage with a politicized Soviet identity on a daily basis, even if they no longer took

these political messages to heart to the extent that had been true during the early years of the

Soviet state. Soviet Jews were still exposed to political propaganda, occasionally joined the

military, and participated in many other aspects of Soviet life, even if they were no longer the

ones defining political messages or controlling the institutions of Soviet power. However, rather

than simply viewing these issues through a lens of disenfranchisement or political dissent, for

many Soviet Jews, as well as for these writers, the relationship with the more political aspects of

Soviet identity became something worth treating with apathy and irreverence. This passage from

Petropolis, in which Sasha is painting propaganda posters at her isolated Siberian high school,

helps to illustrate that reality:

May Day was approaching, and since Secondary School Number 13 still

obstinately celebrated Soviet holidays, the students were rehearsing their annual

Marching in Formations Competition…

The PE teacher, a tall woman in a tracksuit with a haircut that betrayed her secret

desire to have been born a hedgehog, tested her megaphone and called for silence. Not a

single person stopped speaking.

“Question number one!” continued the PE teacher. “Any artists out there?...”

“Who can help with the International! Workers! Day! Decorations?” the

Hedgehog barked, turning her head away from the megaphone to sneeze.

Sasha realized that in the past, the elementary military preparedness teacher

decorated the schoolyard for the competition. The EMP teacher had left the school last

spring, when his class got canceled at the end of the Cold War. Sasha raised her hand

and walked out of the formation to the middle of the asphalted square. The crowd behind

her quieted for a second, then resumed its commotion.

“Go talk to the principal,” said the Hedgehog, waving Sasha off.

The principal, a reptilian granny in a braided chestnut wig, seemed to awaken

from a thousand-year slumber to give Sasha the key to the EMP room, a note excusing

her from all classes for a week, and a touching request to make it like it used to be…

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She returned the gun to the cabinet and began to lift the paint cans onto the

teacher’s desk. It occurred to her that her first “serious” drawings had been works of

propaganda: produced in multiples, arranged for maximum impact. (Ulinich 32-34)

In many ways, this scene reflects a feeling of both indifference and continuity on the part

of Sasha and the administrators at her school toward adhering to Soviet ideologically based

practices. This moment actually occurs after the fall of the Soviet Union, yet in the relative

Siberian isolation of Prostuda, the routine established during Soviet days has not ceased.

Because the school no longer has an elementary military preparedness teacher or arguably any

legal need to continue these Cold War-era activities, their presence can be seen more through a

lens of harmless tradition to keep old habits and invoke the memory of the past to “make it like it

used to be,” than as part of any real connection to communist ideology. The endurance of this

politicized ritual after it is essentially no longer necessary also invokes how efficacious it was

even during the existence of the Soviet Union. In the process, Ulinich seeks to remove the teeth

from a once-powerful Soviet state and demonstrate what it has been reduced to, but also, in a

way, what it always was to her.

Sasha’s participation in the creation of this propaganda is not to say either that she

believes in the messages being produced or finds a politically-based Soviet identity helpful for

her own process of self-definition. For a teenager who is taking art lessons and enjoys painting,

this is simply another way to engage her talents, rather than an attempt to spread communist

ideology. Sasha has transformed her participation in a political activity into something that is

now apolitical. In the process, she—and Ulinich—are demonstrating that Soviet identity itself,

here being applied in one of its most common manifestations through communist propaganda art,

can also be embraced and practiced in a depoliticized manner.

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This transformation also unlocks the possibility of continued identification and dialogue

with a depoliticized Soviet identity in a post-Soviet world and often, a world of emigration,

where both larger geopolitical realities and more basic aspects of everyday life have

fundamentally changed. This is true both of how these émigrés relate to their own identities, as

well as their interactions with other inhabitants of their new countries. Markowitz describes the

challenges of identity that Jewish émigrés from the former Soviet Union have faced since

departure: “With their emigration and confrontation with new worlds, Soviet Jewish immigrants

not only faced the problem of re-adjusting their self- and group-identity but also challenged their

neighbors to alter their perceptions of them” (Markowitz 1995 410). For émigrés now living in

the United States, this has often meant having to deal with the fascination with Soviet identity

sometimes held by other Americans. This theme is explored in this passage from The Last

Chicken in America, in which the Russian Club at the University of Pittsburgh, of which Masha

is a member, is planning a party to mark Soviet Army Day, despite their conflicts about many

aspects of this situation:

The costume party, so lovingly planned for Soviet Army Day, turned into a

simple potluck and a meeting at Monica’s house. There were chips and salsa and a

couple of casseroles. No one had dressed up, except for Daria, who wore a green

soldier’s blouse. Monica said it felt wrong to dress up, in light of all the suffering in

Russia. To celebrate anything Soviet would be blasphemous. She’d done some studying.

She had statistics and photographs—patients in poor striped robes, linoleum hallways.

They all had been studying. It was all they could talk about the conditions in

Russian hospitals, the babies with AIDS and hepatitis C, the blankets and toys and

syringes. Hospital buildings with no hot water or heat. Was it true? they said. How

could it be? (Litman 97)

This costume party, which had been planned by a group of American students, reflects

both the simultaneous fetishization and discomfort directed toward Soviet identity in the United

States, something that Jewish émigrés from the former Soviet Union have had to confront since

their arrival. By the time that this scene takes place in the mid-1990s, the Soviet Union was no

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longer America’s principal geopolitical enemy or even a nation at all, for that matter. The fear

that Americans had of facing nuclear annihilation at the hands of the Soviet Union was gone, and

the Soviet Union had become a relic of the past, something to place on a shelf in the gallery of

past obstacles to American military and political hegemony. As a result, this fetishization of

Soviet identity and culture by Americans was now much more palatable than during a Cold War

context, and the idea of dressing up as Soviet soldiers can even be described as a means of

celebrating this victory. At the same time, this triumph did not negate the recognition that the

Soviet Union was an authoritarian state in which its citizens had lived very difficult lives, a

legacy that had also carried over to Russia and many of its successor states. Thus, there is an

innate sense of tension among Masha’s classmates about the extent to which displays of Soviet

identity like this costume party are acceptable.

In such a case, it is Masha, as the one-time resident of the Soviet Union within the group,

who is expected to provide the answers and context to her American friends. This represents the

unique phenomenon of a Soviet identity being assigned to Masha in an American context, where,

because of her origins, she is held responsible for not only knowing the realities of life in the

former Soviet Union after she had left, but explaining the moral context in which difficult

historical and contemporary events had even been permitted to occur in the first place (“How

could it be?”). Despite their conclusion that “to celebrate anything Soviet would be

blasphemous,” they are at the same time publically imposing a Soviet-based identity on Masha,

even as she seeks to achieve greater cultural assimilation within her group of American friends.

Still, this may represent another reason why these writers are not often described as possessing a

Soviet identity—they are simply tired of having to answer for ongoing politically-charged

problems related to the historical legacies of the former Soviet Union. In a sense, it is much

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easier to evade such questioning by claiming the mantle of being Jewish, part of a group that was

largely victimized during Soviet times, or Russian, which can be tied to a much broader cultural

and historical legacy, including a country that still exists.

These issues of agency in determining identity and how it is expressed are important as

well in approaching how these émigré populations construct and continue other Soviet traditions

in a context of emigration, where they no longer seem to fit as well as they once did in the

former Soviet Union. These émigrés have frequently been forced to account for public

manifestations of their Soviet identity that now seem to conflict with elements of the other

identities that they have more closely embraced in their new post-emigration lives. One such

example is the continued observance by many émigrés of New Year’s celebrations in a manner

that evokes many connotations of their Soviet past and has also occasionally provoked conflict in

the process, as this passage from What Happened to Anna K. reveals:

The Zavurovs always held their New Year’s celebrations (or post-Hanukkah, as

they called it, because the rabbi would hardly approve of celebrating this most secular of

holidays, this little piece of Soviet-invented nostalgia) in a minor Brighton Beach

establishment called Chagall, and this would have to be the site of Anna’s return to her

full premarital glory. (Reyn 63)

The Zavurov family’s continued observance of New Year’s, a secularized Soviet holiday

that replaced essentially Christmas, in their new American home represents not just continuity

with their lives prior to emigration, but also an example of depoliticized Soviet identity at work.

They have clung to this “little piece of Soviet-invented nostalgia” because it provides them with

an outlet to embrace their Soviet identities in a way that is not inherently political and can be

culturally transposed more easily than many other aspects of Soviet life might be. The Zavurovs

are setting up a New Year’s tree, singing Soviet-era holiday songs, and giving gifts to celebrate a

holiday that emerged during the Soviet Union, even after that country’s existence has ended and

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they are now living in the United States. This is a partial acknowledgment of the enduring

importance of Soviet cultural traditions in their lives and an accompanying sense of Soviet

identity. To the extent that Soviet identity was not always rooted in politics or could be

reworked to be made less ideological, this can still be seen in the lives of émigrés through

traditions such as New Year’s. For the émigrés in question, this holiday serves as an annual

reminder that their Soviet past is still a part of their lives and a tradition that they are keen to

continue.

At the same time, this experience is also marked by the recognition that observing this

Soviet holiday is at least partly incongruent with the new identities that these émigrés have

increasingly embraced since their arrival in the United States. The statement that “the rabbi

would hardly approve” explains why the Zavurovs have been forced to recast their observance of

this Soviet-era holiday as a “post-Hanukkah” celebration, through which they are still able to

continue this ritual, but must do so in an environment in which their Soviet identity and its

related traditions are being challenged. In an editorial published in The New York Times on

Christmas Eve 2013, Shteyngart describes his own relationship with the New Year’s holiday and

the fact that cultural pressure from American Jews had led his family to cease following some

New Year’s traditions, such as the pine tree in their apartment, after arriving in the United States.

Yet this does not prevent Shteyngart from deriving a tangible sense of meaning from this

holiday, or a recognition that the holidays provided by their other identities will never equal the

significance of New Year’s: “We can’t do Christmas because we’re Jewish, and we never really

get the full gist of Hanukkah beyond the candle lighting and the spiel about Jews conquering

Greeks. New Year’s remains our holiday” (Shteyngart 2013 A27). In this sense, a historically

and culturally based Soviet identity is still relevant in the lives of these authors and the characters

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that they create as they actively work to carry on some of the ways in which Soviet identity has

always been a part of their narrative, including in this example where this identity has been

largely depoliticized.

To the extent that this Soviet identity will remain present in both the authors’ characters

and their work more broadly, it will likely face many of the same challenges as their other

imported identities have in this new homeland. Because this Soviet identity is linked so strongly

to a sense of memory and a connection to many traditions that originated in a country that no

longer exists, with each passing year it will become increasingly difficult to justify the

observance of Soviet traditions to younger generations who lack the same degree of personal ties

to Soviet life that their parents held. At the same time, the fact that a depoliticized Soviet

identity has emerged in this community and in the work of these writers is reminiscent of the

broader narrative of transcultural adaptation that can be seen in these authors’ work, as they

navigate the processes of negotiation and change among their different identities. For all of the

challenges that these authors and their émigré community once faced as Jews living in the former

Soviet Union, the Soviet identity that they have retained even after moving to the United States,

has played a unique role in both their work and the story of their community.

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CHAPTER 4: “I CAN EASILY DOUBLE AS A FIRST-RATE AMERICAN”:

EXPLORING THE LIMITS OF AMERICANIZATION

For all of the success that emigration to the United States has offered these writers and

the broader émigré community to which they belong, depictions of American identity in their

literature reflect the profound challenges and shifts in identity that have occurred as a result of

life in the United States. Emigration has meant an end to the legal persecution and anti-Semitism

that adversely impacted them in the former Soviet Union. However, it has also forced these

émigrés to confront a complicated and ever-changing American identity that is permeable in

some ways, yet often seemingly difficult or impossible for outsiders to enter on a number of

other levels. As a result, the experience of these Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés has frequently

been characterized by having to assess the balance between alienation and integration, and

navigating the various limits and opportunities that they face in assuming this American identity

as immigrants. Perhaps the most important consequence of that process has been the inherent

shift in how these émigrés also relate to their Russian, Jewish, and Soviet identities, with

American identity facilitating the development of the composite identity that has been discussed

throughout the preceding three chapters.

This notion of a conflicted or partial Americanization is reflected in the literary careers

that these authors have pursued in the United States. By writing in English and publishing

exclusively on the American literary scene, these authors have developed what is, in many ways,

a distinctively American literary identity. They have achieved critical and commercial success

mainly with American audiences, and their work has largely focused on protagonists who live in

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the United States, with the caveat that these characters are typically fellow émigrés. However, as

Furman describes, the American identity that these writers have embraced has occurred largely

through the presence of a hybridized identity that is reminiscent of their experiences as

immigrant Americans. She reflects on how, for many of these writers, American identity is

understood as “feeling at home in a culture while simultaneously remaining foreign to it…

American identity, even for the most Americanized of immigrants, continues to a large extent to

be merely performed” (Furman 2011 24-25). To the extent that these émigrés have become

American writers, this action has occurred by simultaneously negotiating and accepting the

existential boundaries of their American identities relative to the other identities that they already

hold. Their American identity is presented as essentially only occurring in concert with other

identities, in part because of the persistent feelings of cultural alienation that they have often

experienced in the United States.

Other American literary scholars are more inclusive, perhaps in an attempt to claim credit

for this group of writers as a part of the accomplishments of the broader American literary

tradition. Dickstein, in one such example, observes: “by channeling the rhythms of another

culture (and of their own insecurities) into English, these writers have become fully American

yet have also added new wrinkles to the ongoing story of immigrants and American literature”

(Dickstein 130). While the hyphenated nature of American identity held by these émigré writers

does not disappear in Dickstein’s interpretation, it is simplified into a longstanding paradigm of

American immigration and cultural integration in American literature. Yet for these authors to

be considered both “fully American” and a part of “the ongoing story of immigrants and

American literature” would require parity between holding both American and immigrant

identities. The fact that so much of the discussion of American identity in their literature centers

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on feelings of marginalization, dissimilarity, and self-doubt, rather than a sense of having

become “fully American” seems to refute the portrayal of such a complete Americanization by

these writers and their community.

Instead, what emerges is closer to a hybridized, strained American identity that results

from both externally and self-imposed limitations, as well as a partial recognition of the

advantages of avoiding a non-hybridized, fully assimilated American identity. For all of the

obstacles that these writers may face on the path toward integration into American society, to

accomplish this in full (if this is even possible) would also deny them the composite identity that

has set them apart as a distinct and exotic presence on the American literary stage. Wanner

notes: “unlike Russian Jewish immigrant writers from the beginning of the twentieth century…

these writers show little desire to become ‘normal Americans.’ In part, such an attitude is

probably encouraged by the current fashionable status of ethnicity and ‘hyphenated identities’ in

publishing and academia” (Wanner 2012 171). As a result, the American identity that emerges

throughout this literature reflects the tension between the possibilities and limits of

Americanization, as well as a chance to turn the strain that their hybridized American identity

creates into an opportunity for literary individuality.

In many ways, the prospect of emigration to America represented a perceived solution to

many of the problems that these émigrés had faced in the former Soviet Union, an opportunity

for reinvention and redefinition through an American identity. Markowitz describes how these

Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés “came to America to become Americans, to enjoy a better life

than they had known as Soviet citizens. They came to America to stay, to reap the benefits of

their talents and expertise in the ‘free world,’ to escape the pain of anti-Semitism… to give their

children the opportunity to develop to the fullest” (Markowitz 1993 256-257). Having struggled

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to cope with many basic problems of daily life in the former Soviet Union and frustrated with the

apparent ceiling on their social, political, and educational mobility in that country, these émigrés

saw relocating to the United States as a solution to many of the identity-based challenges that

they had faced as Soviet Jews. In contrast, the prospect of life in America and the process of

becoming Americans seemingly offered many new opportunities, not merely by removing the

oppression and hardships that had arisen on due to their Jewish identity in the former Soviet

Union, but by facilitating the creation of a new American identity. This sentiment is expressed

in this closing passage from Yom Kippur in Amsterdam, as the protagonist Jake Glaz prepares to

return to the United States from a trip to Amsterdam:

He arrived at a plan—in the streets of Amsterdam: he would return to Baltimore,

where after seventeen years his immigrant family had rooted themselves; they had even

brought back from Moscow and reburied the remains of his father’s parents. In four

years, when Jake turned forty, he would have lived in America for half his life. Leaving

Russia at nineteen, he had carried with him on the plane baggage so heavy that it took

him years to unload it and so lofty that there were still times he couldn’t stand solidly on

American ground. That first flight over the Atlantic was also a flight from all the

demons, monsters, and sirens a Jew can never seem to escape. It had stopped raining,

and Jake Glaz could smell the sweet mixture of leaves, of rotting leaves and gasoline and

marijuana. As he stood on the lower deck of the hotel-boat, he gazed at flickering orange

lights on the Amstel, and breathed the night of Amsterdam, and gently stroked it. He

thought about tomorrow’s flight back home to Baltimore, and with delight he pictured his

American life that destiny held firm and tight and fondled in her deep blue pocket.

(Shrayer 141)

This passage portrays the adoption of a positive American identity as a beneficial means

of identification for Jake, himself an émigré who spent much of his early life in the former Soviet

Union. His emigration to the United States is depicted as an antidote to many of the existential

problems that he had faced as a Jew living in the former Soviet Union, with his first journey to

America representing “a flight from all the demons, monsters, and sirens a Jew can never seem

to escape.” Shrayer seems intent on framing the ability to take on an American identity as a kind

of optimistic solution to the challenges of identity with which Jake has had already to contend,

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noting how “he pictured his American life that destiny held firm and tight and fondled in her

deep blue pocket.” American identity is not only presented as an opportunity for transformation

from the painful memories of the past, but it is shown as something which Jake believes that he

has already assumed and has used to create substantive shifts in determining the narrative of his

life.

However, Shrayer appears to underestimate the problematic nature of featuring such a

claim alongside the presence of Jake’s continued demons. Indeed, to the extent that Jake has

been able to adopt an American identity and move forward into a new life as an American as a

means of resolving his past trauma, he still appears unable to separate his sense of self from the

other identities that to continue to torment him. It is difficult to see how Jake’s emigration was

as much of a catalyst for change as he claims to believe, both in this passage and in the other

portions of this short story, where Jake is constantly processing the meaning of his identities and

where they intersect and diverge. Shrayer’s attempts to construct a character who believes that

he has been rescued from his past by assuming an American identity, yet still remains so

seemingly and inescapably haunted by the legacies of his life and identities from prior to

emigration, is contradictory. This represents either an oversight in character development on

Shrayer’s part (quite possible, given Shrayer’s frequent emphasis on highly assimilated and

Americanized characters), or an intentional detachment of consciousness in Jake’s mind, that of

a character not fully in touch with the realities of his feelings and identities. Nevertheless, this

somewhat illogical nature of Jake’s thinking also helps to underscore the reality that integration

and Americanization, if achievable at all, are not an inherent means to establishing a stable and

consistent identity or sense of self, or of leaving the legacies of pre-emigration life behind.

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Similarly, many émigrés have realized since their arrival in the United States, that

Americanization not only fails to serve as an inherent path to resolving complicated, pre-existing

questions of identity, but that it is often inaccessible and out of reach to an extent beyond what

they had perceived would be possible prior to emigration. Remennick describes how many

émigrés found that the cultural knowledge of the United States they believed would assist in their

path toward integration, such as an appreciation for classic American literature (albeit in Russian

translation) or jazz were essentially useless toward that end (see Remennick 204-205).

Remennick’s conclusion about the possibility of émigrés ever achieving full integration and

Americanization is a skeptical one: “on a deeper level, even the most externally Americanized

former Soviets retain many salient differences from their American social peers” (Remennick

210).

One implication of this reality has been a tendency to further rely upon the performance-

based American identity outlined by Furman, acting within the bounds of some American

traditions and behaviors but still feeling alienated from others, especially on a deeper existential

and cultural level. This means of embracing American identity, by necessity somewhat

incomplete or partial, requires both a constant assessment of which manifestations of American

identity are possible, and what the consequences of failing to assume them will be for fitting into

American society. This tension around navigating the limits of Americanization can be seen in

this scene in The Last Chicken in America, in which Masha is arguing with her father and

reflecting on the extent to which her adoption of an American identity is possible or not.

“How can it be that everyone is so wrong? Or maybe it’s the other way around,

ah? Did it ever occur to you? Maybe it’s you who’s wrong? Maybe that’s what you

should think about.”

I told him to leave me alone.

“You’re already alone,” he said. “You can’t even talk to your parents. Is it the

Russians’ fault? Is it their fault you’re not good enough for Americans?”

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I said it wasn’t true….

And what if my father guessed the truth? What if there was something faulty in

me that made Tom reluctant? I watched CNN, I ate out, I read American books. I’d quit

my job and gone back to school, which was something most Americans admired. But I

lacked their boldness and fluency, their flippant resistance to gloom. My father said I’d

never be quite like them. (Litman 228-229)

In this passage, Litman demonstrates how the challenges of assuming an American

identity frequently create divisions along generational lines within émigré families, with younger

émigrés often more capable of transcending cultural and social barriers to cultural integration

than their parents or older generations. Indeed, in discussing the gaps in adjustment between

émigré children and parents, Orleck quotes an émigré child she had interviewed in Massachusetts

named Tim (Americanized from his birth name of Artëm), who observes: “I guess that’s the

hardest part, when you start learning more than your parents about this stuff. Because they were

trying, but they didn’t know what the right things were” (Orleck 174). Similarly, the tensions

between Masha and her father have been exacerbated by their differences along the path of

acculturation, with her father inquiring whether it is the “Russians” (here referring to her family

and fellow émigrés) who are to blame for her lack of Americanization. The fact that her father

believes Masha will “never be quite like them” also represents somewhat of a concession on his

part over the potential of ever becoming fully Americanized himself. He is content to be

“Russian,” achieving something that was never even an option for him as a Jew in the former

Soviet Union prior to emigration. Thus, the context of American society facilitates social change

and redefinition, but this does not inherently equate with a complete shift to becoming

Americanized.

Because Masha is taking part in many activities and behaviors that are a typical part of

American public life and culture, it must be said that she is actively working to assume some

semblance of an American identity. By watching CNN, reading American books, and eating out

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in restaurants, Masha is acquiring, or at the very least, performing, an American identity,

especially while in public. It is a less straightforward undertaking to overcome the more

abstract, existentially rooted barriers to Americanization, however, such as the native-born

Americans’ “boldness and fluency, their flippant resistance to gloom.” Masha seems relegated

to accepting that some of these differences will simply remain, and that there will always be

inherent limits to how Americanized she can ever become on this more internal, psychological

level. This reality frames one important means of defining the composite, hybridized identity of

these émigrés: no matter how much they act like Americans, on an existential level they will

always be set slightly apart from their native-born neighbors.

If a complete assumption of American identity is thus not merely a question of agency or

determination, then the day-to-day implications of such distinctions between émigrés and native-

born Americans emerge as an important issue as well. Since arriving in the United States,

Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés, especially members of younger generations, have sought to

reconcile or fuse some differing aspects of their identities, which can often come into conflict

with each other or feel irreconcilable on various levels. As Zeltzer-Zubida describes: “Although

most second-generation Russian Jews felt that they were part of American society—they

perceived the United States as home and intended to stay here—they were aware and proud of

the fact that their values and way of life marked them as different from most Americans”

(Zeltzer-Zubida 348). If many of these émigrés are thus conscious of the fact that some

underlying cultural differences do exist between them and native-born Americans, the issue

instead becomes understanding the ways in which they can frame such distinctions and allow

them to shape their interactions with other Americans. This challenge is raised in this passage

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from Petropolis, in which Sasha is brooding over the difficulties that have arisen in her

relationship with her American-born boyfriend, Jonathan:

Loving him could have been Sasha’s final conquest of America, its culture, its

geography as far as Michigan. If only she could stop picking fights.

When Jonathan mentioned reading Catcher in the Rye in high school, Sasha

called Holden Caulfield a brat. When he talked about growing up the only Jewish kid in

his town, Sasha hurried to explain that she had it worse. “But you aren’t Jewish!”

protested Jonathan, provoking a screaming, breathless lecture. Angrily, Sasha revisited

the subject again and again. She even used the phrase “the core of my identity,” though it

set her ears on fire.

She laid into him for his simple-minded delight in Communist kitsch. They were

wandering through a flea market one Saturday, and Jonathan bought her a Lenin pin.

“Don’t show me this thing,” Sasha snapped. “It reminds me of schoolyard

bullies.”

Was it a matter of their misaligned nostalgias? (Ulinich 294-295)

Sasha’s doubts about the sources of the problems in her relationship with Jonathan reflect

the paradigm of partial Americanization and its resultant challenges. It becomes readily apparent

that Sasha sees something advantageous in establishing a relationship with Jonathan, as though

he is a trophy who will mark her success on the path toward becoming an Americanized woman,

“her final conquest of America.” Yet their relationship emerges as problematic, in no small part

because of their differing points of cultural reference. Ulinich demonstrates how some of

Sasha’s reactions, such as her dislike for Holden Caulfield, the rebellious teenage protagonist of

the classic American novel The Catcher in the Rye, or her repulsion at being offered a Lenin pin

as a gift by Jonathan, occur at a level of intensity that might set her apart from other Americans.

Sasha explains such differences, and whatever negative effects they might have on their

relationship, through the context of their dissimilar cultural backgrounds. Yet she also seems to

feel there is a sense of innateness to these divergences, as expressed through her claim that they

have “misaligned nostalgias” and that she cannot “stop picking fights.” In the process, not only

does she, perhaps unfairly, take on the responsibility for the problems in her relationship with

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Jonathan, but she further reinforces the idea that cultural mindsets are not easily transformed, and

that assuming an American identity cannot be achieved as easily as she might have believed.

Yet this is truer in terms of some cultural attitudes and experiences than it is of a broader,

more inclusive American identity based on life in the United States and contributing to an

evolving American society. Such a definition recognizes a multiplicity of identity and the

presence of some cultural differences as a common reality. Indeed, Sasha’s disagreements with

Jonathan about which one of them has faced a more difficult life due to being Jewish reflect

some of the inherent issues that can arise in a context of an American identity that is more

pluralistic in its relationship with other identities once the necessity of fitting into specific

cultural norms is deemphasized. Even though Jonathan describes having experienced a difficult

childhood due to having been raised as the only Jewish child in his hometown, Sasha is able to

easily respond with her own trying experiences of having grown up as a Jew in the former Soviet

Union. Sasha’s subsequent declaration that she finds her Jewishness to be “the core of my

identity” is tempered by the admission that being forced to say this “set her ears on fire.” Having

to put herself into a box is not always a welcome process in the context of American multiplicity

that Sasha has grown to expect, where many intersecting identities are often embraced, as

opposed to merely having to emphasize a single core identity—something that even Jonathan, a

native-born American, is not doing.

Operating within a more pluralistic definition of American identity that encourages

“embracing the hyphen,” to use Furman’s terminology, then secondary, triple, quadruple

identities become easier to facilitate, if not the norm, in an increasingly multicultural America.

This reality also demonstrates the extent to which American identity encourages multiplicity of

identity, in a way that Soviet or Russian identities were not always capable of doing for Jews

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living in the former Soviet Union (although this relationship to Russian and Soviet identities

changed to some extent after emigration to the United States, as has been discussed in previous

chapters). It is in this context of pluralism that the more distinctively American identity held by

Sasha finally emerges, even if it is at times limited by a sense of cultural alienation.

The development of this American identity, occasionally marked by feelings of

separation and cultural loneliness, also means that these émigrés are in a unique place of contact

with multiple identities and the ability to emphasize and deemphasize them as deemed

appropriate. They embrace a degree of flexibility and adaptability that utilizes both their

knowledge of American society, as well as their identification with a distinctive émigré group to

embrace the role of Slezkine’s “Mercurians” and act as a unique bridge between multiple

“Apollonian” cultures (Russian and American). Slezkine’s pronouncement that “the Mercurians

may have known more about the Apollonians than the Apollonians knew about the Mercurians

(or about themselves)” (Slezkine 29), can be seen in the ways that many of these émigrés have

increasingly embraced this sense of pluralistic existence in an American (and Apollonian)

context. They are representing an American identity without forsaking a Mercurian

consciousness and utilization of their other identities. To whatever extent that assuming this

somewhat strained American identity positions the Mercurian émigrés as outsiders, it also allows

them an additional point of reference in their ability to navigate multiple identities for their own

advantage. This reality can be seen in this passage from The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, in

which Vladimir is discussing his plans for a Ponzi scheme directed at American expatriates

living in Prava with a group of Russian gangsters, headed by their leader, “the Groundhog”:

“Wait one minute,” the Groundhog said. “We don’t know any Americans.”

Kostya had set him up well.

“That, friends,” Vladimir said, “is why I’m here with you today. I propose that I

single-handedly infiltrate the American community in Prava. Despite my fluent Russian

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and my tolerance of drink, I can easily double as a first-rate American. My credentials

are impeccable. I have attended one of the premier liberal-minded colleges in the States

and have a profound appreciation for the dress, manners, and outlook of the disaffected

young American set. I have lived many years in New York, the capital of the disaffected

movement, have had many angry, disenfranchised, friends of the artistic persuasion, and

have just completed a romantic liaison with a woman who in both looks and temperament

personifies the vanguard of this unique social group. Gentlemen, with no intention of

conceit, I assure you—I am the best there is. And that’s that.” (Shteyngart 2002 201)

In this passage, Vladimir is able to use his simultaneous affiliations with both his Russian

and American identities to his advantage and negotiate a beneficial outcome in the process. By

emphasizing his connections and to understanding of American society to a group of Russian

criminals, while also playing up the Russian components of his identity that these gangsters find

desirable, Vladimir is able to put his feet in both worlds and fulfill his professional goals as a

result. Vladimir is later successful in targeting the American expats, in no small part due to his

ability to relate to them through his exposure to American culture over the course of his life in

the United States. As a result, achieving some semblance of an American identity, even if

manifested more through performance than anything else, becomes highly advantageous and

useful for Vladimir as a tool to span the gap between different cultural worlds and advance his

own interests in the process.

Yet there are inherent tradeoffs to such a multiplicity of identities as well. As Wanner

describes: “Ultimately, [Vladimir] Girshkin’s ethnic identity remains fluid, situational, and

dialectical: he is a Russian to Americans and an American to Russians. The only constant is that

he always plays the role of the Other” (Wanner 2011a 101-102). By emphasizing his partial

membership in and familiarity with both groups in order to achieve his goals, Vladimir is able to

transcend worlds to some extent, but this also means that he is viewed at least partially as an

outsider by all parties; someone who can, metaphorically, speak whatever language is

appropriate in the moment, but will always do so with a slight accent. For all the benefits that

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this multiplicity and permeability offers, it also presents a burden of always being on the fringes

and never truly feeling as though real belonging has ever been reached or is even possible.

A more complete assumption of American identity is presented as a kind of resolution to

this situation, although the writers make clear that this will not occur without its own set of

drawback and challenges. For all of its present distinctions and unique qualities, the long-term

individuality of this émigré community may just as easily become a casualty of the processes of

cultural integration and assimilation that have affected so many other immigrant groups

following their arrival in the United States. As Remennick notes of younger émigrés, who have

grown up transcending many boundaries between fixed notions of ethnic and cultural identities:

“In my experience, the majority of the children who came to America under the age of ten saw

themselves as Americans with an additional Russian streak (multiculturalism is cool these

days!)” (Remennick 217). To whatever extent that these uniquely defined Russian, Jewish, and

Soviet identities will continue in a context of emigration among a new generation that will have

greater agency in choosing which aspects of their identity they retain or discard will depend in

large part on the extent to which such identities remain desirable and relevant in the context of an

American society that is open to multiculturalism but often still engenders greater assimilation.

These writers seem to recognize the existence of this trade-off, something that represents both an

accomplishment as well as a loss. Near the end of What Happened to Anna K., the titular

character reflects on this outcome and whether it is truly what she and her community wanted:

In all these apartments, behind the same closed door, lurked identical immigrant

stories—dimming memories of war, of empty stomachs. Their inhabitants lived with

ghosts of people left behind, young sisters dead of malnutrition, of cancers that could

have been treated if only there had been medicine, aunts whisked away in the night, some

to return from Siberia half-blind, missing a finger. These ghosts immigrated with them,

shared their wonder at the resiliency of Bounty paper towels, disapproved of waste—

tomatoes allowed to grow soft and brown, a schmatte gathering dust in the closet.

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The people living in these apartments cooked from recipes committed to memory

but then, over time, relaxed the rigor of the original text, each serving becoming more

and more Americanized. Okra in baklazhanovaia ikra? Shrimp in Salat Olivier?

Chocolate chips in rugelach? Why not?

They spoke a new language, one not entirely digested, laden with chunks of

Soviet, dribbles of Yiddish, benevolent fragments of English. They put up with errant,

half-American mongrel children, who flung themselves away from their parents, who

called reluctantly every night. Kak dela, Mama? Okay. Bye-bye.

And so? What does that all mean? Isn’t that what they asked for when they

immigrated? Isn’t this state exactly what they deserve? Where’s the tragedy? one may

ask. Aren’t chocolate chips the ideal addition to rugelach, with its flaky, spiraling crust,

its walnuts, its plum filling? That’s the nature of the world—eventually chocolate chips

will be inserted into any rugelach. (Reyn 230-231)

This passage reflects the mixed feelings that Anna and many of these writers have toward

the effects of immigration and the seemingly unavoidable processes assimilation and integration.

The ghosts that have followed Anna and the other émigrés from the former Soviet Union,

representing the challenges and persecution that they once faced, can be seen in the continuation

of so many aspects of identity that have been merged into the composite American identity that

these émigrés now hold, an identity rooted to a large extent in memory and tradition. Yet the

influence of the past, so profound in shaping so many aspects of their consciousness, is depicted

as highly vulnerable to the forces of life in the United States and the cultural shifts that are

occurring. This is shown as especially true among younger generations of émigrés who have

grown up with their identities spread across so many different points of cultural, geographic, and

historical reference. By asking “Isn’t that what they asked for when they immigrated?... Where’s

the tragedy?” Anna invokes the competing narratives that this émigré community is processing

in attempting to resolve the efficacy of such an outcome. Indeed, the barriers to greater

acculturation and Americanization have often proved frustrating for members of this community.

Now that such a possibility is finally within reach, however, the potential for what may be lost as

a result becomes increasingly problematic.

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It is through the metaphor of chocolate chips being inserted into rugelach, a traditional

East European Jewish baked good, however, that the answer seems to more clearly emerge. The

identities of younger Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés (these writers included), have already

been intensely affected by significant cultural changes, as well as increasingly tied to mainstream

American culture. Yet their new lives in America have facilitated a process of cultural fusion

that has placed them firmly within the American cultural and literary landscape. Rather than

abandoning the identities that arrived with them in emigration, they have increasingly sought to

find ways to connect and interweave these identities, creating something utterly new in the

process.

For all of the questions that remain about the long-term future of this community in a

post-emigration context, assuming an American identity has also meant increasingly embracing

Russian, Jewish, and Soviet identities in new and transformative ways. As a result, emigration

and its effects upon the creative output of these writers are not simply about abandoning old

identities and assimilating into the American mainstream. Rather, this is a process rooted in

cultural discovery and innovation, facilitated by a pluralistic American literary environment. As

Markowitz, near the end of her monograph A Community in Spite of Itself, notes of Jewish

émigrés from the former Soviet Union after their arrival in the United States: “Although they had

no intention of doing so, they came to form a community” (Markowitz 1993 258). The same can

be said of these writers, who in the last few years have together created a distinct place on the

American literary scene by reflecting on many of the broader issues of identity experienced by

Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés living in the United States.

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CONCLUSION

The overarching theme that permeates this literature is an attempt to address the role of

identity in an increasingly interconnected world. Throughout each of these five works, the

narratives are largely shaped by how these characters—and by proxy, these writers and their

real-life Russian-speaking Jewish émigré community—relate to their Russian, Jewish, Soviet,

and American identities. In many ways, these writers have deliberately worked to emphasize

their identities, especially as émigrés and “others,” in order to find a distinct place in the

American literary community and highlight the challenges that they have faced as a result of

persecution, relocation, and integration over the last few decades. Like other immigrants before

them, these writers have had to deal with the pull of many competing identities. They emphasize

or minimize each of their identities as deemed appropriate, based on situational contexts of place,

community, and time. Many conflicts between different aspects of these identities do arise, and

these writers and the characters in these works are often forced to choose between different

aspects of who they are and how they express themselves.

However, it would be a mistake to simply place these authors into a box as “ethnic

writers” who depict their experiences as immigrants or members of a minority group in the

United States. It would be equally problematic to portray the internal and external conflicts that

are experienced by the émigré characters in this literature and expressed through differing

mindsets, behaviors, and affiliations as evidence of a kind of zero-sum game between different

identities. Rather, these writers should be seen as representative of a broader phenomenon of

hybridized, transcultural identity that cannot be compartmentalized into a few simple and

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isolated components. This is identity-based literature, but more importantly, it is literature that

reflects fluid, permeable, and intersecting identities that are constantly in transition.

There is a constant process of negotiation and dialogue between all identities involved in

this literature that ultimately rejects the dichotomy of complete assimilation or stubborn

adherence to pre-immigration norms. Rather, life in a new cultural context has empowered these

émigrés to perceive and define themselves as Russians more fully than was ever possible in the

former Soviet Union. They have continued to develop a Jewish identity unique from that of their

American counterparts, yet without having to do so through becoming religious or facing

persecution by the government. In addition, these émigrés have maintained and adapted a

distinctive Soviet identity that is not inherently tied to the Soviet state or political ideology.

Leaving the Soviet Union and living in the United States has indeed led to many cultural shifts

and adaptations, but it is much more reflective of a trend of hybridization than one of

assimilation.

In a way, this emphasis on the importance of multiple intersecting identities is a means of

deemphasizing the primacy of any one of them. As people have become increasingly

interdependent in recent decades, they have developed ties to more and more different groups

and identities. The idea of exclusive membership in or allegiance to a single ethnic, national,

religious, or cultural identity has not only become less common, but simply impractical in many

situations. Ongoing migrations and diasporizations, the declining influence of religion in many

parts of the world, and transcultural marriages and families are just a few of the factors that have

led to a further breakdown of the barriers between identities in recent years. If identification

with particular groups and identities remains an important part of human culture, then

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increasingly, this will be about negotiating how and where these identities intersect and balance

with one another, and how they develop into a composite identity.

Consequently, representations of transcultural identity have become increasingly

prevalent within the realm of contemporary literature. These Russian-speaking Jewish émigré

writers fit into a similar tradition of other recent British and American authors such as Hanif

Kureishi, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Zadie Smith, who have achieved mainstream success and critical

recognition by emphasizing hybridized and transcultural identities in their literature. It is

important to recognize that for all of their distinct accomplishments, the five authors analyzed in

this thesis do not exist in a literary vacuum. They are neither the first nor will they be the last

group of writers to stress the theme of transcultural identity, just as the Russian-speaking Jewish

émigré community is by no means completely unique in its transcultural experiences.

However, these authors have made an important contribution to furthering discussions of

this issue in the literary world and reflected a very real process of social and cultural change that

they and their émigré community have undergone. By presenting the complications of

negotiating so many differing identities in such a compelling way through humor, melancholy,

and situations that are both fantastical and easily relatable, these authors have effectively

represented the trend of transcultural identity and demonstrated the universality of what has

occurred among Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés to a broader audience in both the United

States and abroad. As cultural hybridization and fusion become increasingly common within

society, then these émigré writers—and subsequent generations of émigrés and their children—

will continue to play an important part in shaping the dialogue over the phenomenon of ethno-

cultural identities in transition.

83

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