Post-Stalinist Dirty Laundry (Part 3)

About time I wrapped up this super-long review of The Noose and the Stone in the Green Grass, no? So here’s the last part (part 1 here, part 2 here), dealing with outcasts and lepers.

One kind of lepers referred to in the book are the institutionalised. Mental institutions do not escape the scourge of state control and are routinely used as political instruments. At the start of the novel, Alyosha’s sister in law relates how she’s damned because she is a nurse in a mental institution in the middle of Moscow where a very large number of inmates are perfectly healthy and have just been placed there to keep them out of the way. Later on, a key character (I’m trying to avoid at least the major spoilers!) becomes incarcerated there for this very reason.

Mental illness has always been about social control, and social consensus about what’s considered acceptable and what’s meant to be kept away. This isn’t necessarily bad of its own accord — but a mental health system tends to reflect wider society. If you’re in the USSR in the 1970s and you’ve been institutionalised because you’re not willing to go along with some social norm or other, from a certain sick perspective you really are crazy.

Onto the second type of leprocy. A lot of the book deals with the “Jewish question” of the Soviet Union. As Alyosha’s father, the former all-powerful special ops man jokes (paraphrased): “Anti-semitism is an insiduous uncommunist condition that goes against international solidarity. It is therefore suffered only by a few hundred million people in the USSR”.

A small but symbolic event is the doctoral dissertation Ula is working on for much of the novel. She is a literature major and is focussed on a little-known Jewish poet. And he’s not a poet who happens to be Jewish, he really is a Jewish Poet. Naturally, her dissertation is rejected (although some of it is for reasons other than her subject). As mentioned before, she sells the manuscript to an academic from another town who will rewrite it substituting a “native” Russian poet as the subject. The university will just see a brilliant analysis of an important cog within Russian Heritage and will give him the doctorate. The Jewish poet will be forgotten — almost nobody in the country other than Ula is interested in him. The best he can do is serve as the skeleton for a dissertation about someone else.

The novel deals with emmigration from the USSR, namely the Jews who started applying to move to Israel in the 70s. Throughout the book they are referred to as lepers. To fill out a form requesting to be “released” to live in another country is your first mark as a leper. Especially if that country is Israel, which is deliberately mispronounced by all government officials placing the stress on the second syllable (in Russian the stress is on the first). It is also the only country referred to by its full name in governmentese. France is called “France”, Greece is “Greece” but Israel must always be “the Republic of Isra-El” [wrong stress] to the officials.

The number of documents to be gathered is mind-boggling. You need to account for your entire life before you can begin it elsewhere. You must pay an administrative fee that’s pretty much a year of your salary. From the moment you apply you are a leper. Those who know what’s good for them will avoid you. Your friends risk being placed under investigation if they continue to socialise with you. Your life will be monitored, the surveillance on your phone that’s standard for all citizens stepped up, letters to and from overseas opened and read twice instead of once.

If you’re like Ula, a meeting will be called at work so that all your colleagues get the chance to publicly express their cricitism and outrage for What You Did. Some will be pretty much in tears — genuine tears — that a fellow worker and former friend, a member of the Saved, had Fallen so much with her Traitorousness. You will then be fired from your job for, yes, unethical conduct. In the meantime, the giant administrative fee will continue to beckon, taunting your leprocy. It will take many months, sometimes years, for a decision to be given. In that time, your entire life is in hybernation. In return for the possibility of release, all they ask is that you sit it out, cease participation in society, try to avoid contaminating others with your disease. And you comply, because you live in the country where everyone agrees.

I’m pretty wary of looking at accounts of oppressive regimes and trying to read too many lessons for today from them. When I bought 1984 in a second hand bookshop in about 2002, the checkout guy said something like “this book is more important than ever”. I looked at him funny. Sure, I think it was around the time the “PATRIOT” Act was signed in the US, but still, more important now than the last few decades?

And then there are all the slippery slope arguments — the idea that if X happens, it’s only a matter of time before we’re in a world like 1984 (or The Noose and the Stone). Of course books like these should serve as reminders of the importance of liberty and sanity. But I found the Noose to be similar to a story of, say, children in a war. In such a story the book is often more about suffering and resilience of people rather than some external message like “war is bad”. The Noose and the Stone would be belittled if all that’s extracted from it is “murderous dictatorships are bad”. It is about an all-pervasive non-supernatural hell and the myriads of ways that people have gone about surviving it — whether it’s writing novels, emigrating, becoming cynical and oblivious, profiteering or drinking.

Because I think it’s healthy to laugh at such tragedies, I’ll end with a very poignant transcript of a sketch from Episode #15 of the wonderful Geologic Podcast by George Hrab. I was listening to it whilst listening to this book on audio and it made it a lot more bearable:

RUSSIAN VOICE: Is new, from Ex-Soviet State Propaganda Films Registry. For to be marketing of movie film in home and to be using on deevd players.
GROUP: Nyetflix!
RUSSIAN VOICE: Making feature of best Soviet movies of all time.
GROUP: Nyetflix!
RUSSIAN VOICE: Available now on deevd.
GROUP: Nyetflix!
RUSSIAN VOICE: Nyeflix. Stay home. No talking. Watching movie.
USA VOICE: Wow, what a service. So I…get to choose the movie?
GROUP: No!
USA VOICE: But I can select when it gets shipped to me, right?
GROUP: No!
USA VOICE: Do I get to keep the movie as long as I want?
GROUP: No!
USA VOICE: Are these movies any good?
GROUP: No!
USA VOICE: So, why exactly would I wanna use this service?
RUSSIAN VOICE: Is Nyeflix. Stop asking questions.
USA VOICE: Ok ok, so how does this work?
RUSSIAN VOICE: Using secret timeline known only to select members of Party, we send you very perfect transfer of deevd version of most prestigious Soviets movie ever to be making. All pre-Berlin-Wall-tumbling. We sending you such famous Soviet supertitles like…
VOICE 1: Moscow Town
VOICE 2: Standing In Line In The Rain
VOICE 1: Mr Sementovich Goes To Leningrad
VOICE 2: BorschtWars
VOICE 1: BorschtWars Episode 5 — The Empire Is Totally In Control And Is Actually Good For You
VOICE 2: Cool Hand Gregory
VOICE 1: Butch Petrovich And The Pierogi Kid
VOICE 2: Night Of The Living Politburo
VOICE 1: Novosibirsk Jones And The Temple Of Zionist Propaganda
VOICE 2: It’s A Miserable Life
VOICE 1: ET, The Extra Toilet Paper
VOICE 2: The Failure Of The Great Escape
VOICE 1: 2001, A Date When You Will Get Your Car
VOICE 2: The Legend Of Voting
VOICE 1: The Magnificent Seven Year Plan
VOICE 2: Some Like It In Siberia
VOICE 1: It Never Happened One Night
VOICE 2: The Longest Line
RUSSIAN VOICE: All of these great titles and many many more. Well ok, two more.
GROUP: Nyetflix!
USA VOICE: Wow, can I get Nyetflix?
GROUP: No!
RUSSIAN VOICE: I-I mean, yes!
USA VOICE: How do I do it?
RUSSIAN VOICE: Is simple. Stand in kitchen and speak clearly into toaster saying: “I wanting Nyetflix and am agreeing to be member of Party”. And in 10 to 65 months, you will receiving first deevd. Watching this. Tell no-one what you are having seen. After viewing, go to living room and speaking clearly into ashtray saying: “the blue rabbit is in the cow barn”. And if all checks out, you getting next deevd within again 10 to 87 months. Is simple.
USA VOICE: Great.
RUSSIAN VOICE: Nyeflix. Stay home. No talking. Watching movie.