If the Cruise Industry can revive in 2021, it will be a year of astounding values. It should be a great time to pick a premium destination and to book the trip of a lifetime. One of those great destinations would be Russia.
Whether
you choose a Baltic Sea Cruise or Moscow-to-St. Petersburg River cruise, this is a trip where preparation will pay off. Start getting ready now.
Life in Russia has never been easy. Begin with a vast, lightly populated territory stretching across 5,600 miles. Cover it with a hostile climate where the temperature is below freezing five months of the year. Add two hundred years of domination by the Mongol Horde. Throw in a smothering, conservative Russian version of Orthodox Christianity. Top it off with one thousand years of one of the most autocratic monarchies in history, followed by ruthless totalitarianism.
Winston Churchill famously described Russia as, “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside a dilemma.” It’s pretty easy to see why. There has always been a massive economic gulf between Russia’s very few, privileged “haves”, and its multitude of serfdom “have-nots”. Russians are distrustful, fatalistic, and superstitious.
These are people who have never known freedom. Optimism is too much to ask for. At the same time, they have created some of the greatest literature, theater, music, and dance the World has known.
I suggest you start with Peter the Great: His Life and World. This is the story of the man to bring Russia out of its isolation and onto the European political stage. He set his indefatigable energy to defeating Sweden and changing the stultifying Russian lifestyle. The hundred years from Peter to Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman are a Golden Age for Russia during the century of European monarchical excess that would lead to worldwide revolution.
Then, pick up some of its renown authors. Tolstoy’s War and Peace (Vintage Classics) is the beautifully written tale of Russia’s struggle with Napoleon. His Anna Karenina is social commentary and romance entwined. For the meaning of life, Tolstoy weighed in the with famous (and shorter) The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Bantam Classics)
.
For lighter satire on Nineteenth Century Romanov Russia, The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol are an excellent introduction to St Petersburg society. Every Russian school kid knows these stories. His Dead Souls
is great comedy with a message.
Another titan of Russian literature, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, wrote several masterpieces dedicated to the human condition. Pick one. They are all fantastic, including: Demons: A Novel in Three Parts (Vintage Classics)
, (also known as “The Possessed”), Crime and Punishment: Pevear & Volokhonsky Translation (Vintage Classics)
, a perennial favorite: The Idiot (Penguin Classics), and The Brothers Karamazov
. If time is a concern, find the much shorter Notes from Underground, the Grand Inquisitor
. They all challenge conventional values, (including yours), while telling compelling stories.
The plays of Anton Chekhov Plays: Ivanov; The Seagull; Uncle Vanya; Three Sisters; The CherryOrchard (Penguin Classics)
have always been popular and are frequently staged today. Most touch on the poignant aspects of family life and relationships, asking many questions and leaving the audience or reader to find their own answers.
As a shortcut to thousands of pages of glorious prose by these remarkable authors, you can pick up another accomplished Russian author, Vladimir Nabokov. After emigrating from the Soviet Union after WWII, Nabokov taught European and Russian Literature courses at Wellesley and Cornell. His, lectures, preserved in Lectures on Russian Literature, are great literature on their own.
We arrive in the modern era with three biographies and two towering novels. Lenin was the Revolution and the Revolution was Lenin. It is one of the tragic ironies of history that the Russian people overthrew their absolute monarchy in the name of the common man, only to have ruthless totalitarianism take its place. One man crafted the transition. His story: Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror
.
Lenin was the zealous ideologue. Stalin was the dutiful executor (and executioner). An excellent commentary on this Communist experiment is the Pulitzer prize-winning Khrushchev: The Man and His Era by William Taubman. It takes you through the Stalinist era and the Cold War. The undeniable insight is that these men and their staunch companions really believed they had a better mousetrap. They worked for the success of Communism. Their revolution was real for them.
Two magnificent novels about this dark time were both written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. They are One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
and The Gulag Archipelago Volume 1: An Experiment in Literary Investigation
. In the best tradition of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, they examine the human condition under the stresses of tyranny and hypocrisy in Soviet Russia.
Finally, Taubman returns with Gorbachev: His Life and Times, an outstanding biography of the faithful Russian whose reforms spun out of control and caused the amazing raveling of the Soviet Union. This is another instance in Russian history where one man had a unique and transformative impact on Russia and the World. Vladimir Putin has been trying to reverse these changes ever since he took charge.
Do yourself a favor. Clear aside an hour of quiet time. Put on Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 / Romeo and Juliet overture ~ Bernstein
. Crank it up and let it fill the room. You will experience the majesty, the power, the complexity, the beauty, and the soul of Russia, all in one session. By the end, you may be imagining yourself as the Great Sovereign Emperor of the All the Russia’s ascending the throne, in the comfort of your living room.
Bon Voyage!
