Sunday, May 12, 2019

Russia Spring 2019


"Get rid of national borders" --- Gorchakov in Nostalgia by Andrei Tarkovsky

Prologue:

For a few years I had been interested in watching 4 theater works at 4 different theaters in Russia. I thought I would have to make 4 separate trips to Russia for these, and when I learned almost one year ago that the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg was to stage Swan Lake in April this year, I went ahead and bought a ticket. This trip was originally conceived as just a two-nights trip to St. Petersburg to see Swan Lake.



During the course of one year after I bought the ticket, however, I luckily started noticing the 3 theaters in Moscow would stage the other 3 works soon after the Swan Lake in St. Petersburg, and for this reason the trip gradually expanded from 2 nights to 18 nights. This was a much less expensive option than making 4 separate trips to Russia, paying for Russian visas 4 times! (A multple-entry tourist visa is no longer available at least for the Americans.)

Between watching these theater works I had more than one week blank period in Moscow, so I added a trip out of Moscow to Yuryevets, where the Andrei Tarkovsky house-museum generated my interest a while ago. And to this trip within a trip I also added one World Heritage Site and two Tentative World Heritage Sites to visit.

This was my 5th time in Russia but 4th time in St. Petersburg and in Moscow.  Other cities I had visited before this trip were Kaliningrad, Veliky Novgorod, Staraya Russa, Vladimir, Suzdal, and Sergiev Posad.

The Trip:

18 days in Russia. This is the longest time I have spent in Russia at a time. Well, I might as well get the worth of the money I spent for the Russian visa - 500 USD. In fact I could have spent up to 30 days with this single-entry visa. 

I feel I got a little better grasp of Russia this time, perhaps due to the length of time I spent, the Russian people I spoke to during my stay and / or the fact that I now live half time in Ukraine. 

Russia is an intriguing country to say the least. Although I have only been to the western-most part of the country so far, it seems its vastness presents an incredible diversity of nature and culture. Exploring the whole Russia would equal exploring a whole continent like Africa or South America. 

But exploring the European Russia like I have been doing would mainly reveal only historical and cultural sides. After landing in St. Petersburg and moving to Moscow, I basically traveled on a loop from Moscow through Rostov, Yaroslavl, Yuryevets, Nizhny Novgorod, Gorokhovets and back to Moscow.  Yaroslavl, Yuryevets, and Nizhny Novgorod are all on the Volga River, the longest river in Europe.

The TWHS of the Rostov Kremlin visually wowed me.

Rostov Kremlin TWHS

Rostov Kremlin.
The WHS of Historical Center of the City of Yaroslavl was quite pleasant and has much to explore. Because the interior of 3 of the 4 main churches were not accessible until May, I missed them only by a few days, so I feel like going back there at one point.

The park to commemorate the millennium anniversary of the foundation of Yaroslavl.
With the Volga River in the background. 

Annunciation Cathedral is supposed to be the main church of Yaroslavl
and overlooks the area in the photo above. 

Church of Elijah the Prophet is located at the epicenter of Yaroslavl. 

But this monastery is supposed to be the most historic in the city. 

And this Church of St. John the Baptist appears on the 1000 Ruble note. 

So it's difficult to say which church is the most important in the city. All I have to say is that this city is pretty historic.

Nizhny Novgorod is the 5th largest city in Russia with 1.3 million people.

The Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin wall 
with the Volga River in the background.

Gorokhovets is located on the eastern edge of the Vladimir Oblast.  The Historic Center of Gorokhovets appears to be any center of a small city in Russia.  But this TWHS is supposed to be "hidden under mountain" and therefore has played an important role in defending the region. The photo below was taken from the top of the "mountain" where Kremlin used to stand and shows the most area of the Historic Center with two monasteries on each side of the river.

Historic Center of Gorokhovets.

Russia has given us many great pieces of art. Think of Dostoevsky or Tarkovsky, although it is not immediately clear how many Russians today read Dostoevsky or watch Tarkovsky. I had visited Staraya Russa in 2009 where Dostoevsky spent summers and set and wrote "The Brothers Karamazov" and during this trip visited Yuryevets where Tarkovsky spent his childhood as reflected in "The Mirror."  Yuryevets turned out to be hands down the #1 highlight of this trip.

It wasn't so easy to figure out how to move from Yaroslavl to Yuryevets in one day.  I had to go through Ivanovo and take two Matryoshikas (Minibus).

Yuryevets on the Volga River.

Since 2007 the Andrei Tarkovsky Film Festival has been held annually in Yuryevets in honor of Tarkovsky. In the film strip behind the monument (in the photo below) I found a photo of who appeared to be Theo Angelopoulos, which stunned me.  This probably means that Angelopoulos had visited Yuryevets for the film festivel.  I have never heard of any relationship between these two cinematic giants of the 20th century, except that the Italian poet Tonino Guerra worked with both on their screenplays.


The Tarkovsky Monument

Tarkovsky, his sister, his mother and his grandmother shared this house with other families and occupied just one room for 3 years during the WWII.

Tarkovsky House-Museum

The room where the family of four lived. 
Tarkovsky later went to Moscow and attended one of the most prestigious film schools in the world, VGIK, which I visited for the first time. His enormous talent did not bode well with the Soviet authority, resulting in his exile in the 1980s, but today his statue stands near the main entrance of the film school.

Andrei Tarkovsky in the middle. 


Oh, I shouldn't forget about the 4 theater works, two Tchaikovsky/Petipa, one Chekhov and one Pushkin!

The original 1895 Marius Petipa-choreographed production of Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg has been considered to be the definitive version of Swan Lake. This is the version against which all other Swan Lakes are assessed. This production had one incredible Alina Somova as Odette/Odile.  Act 1, Scene 2 was completely absorbing.


Swan Lake at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg.

Actually, the Marius Petipa-choreographed production of The Sleeping Beauty that I watched at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow also premiered at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg in 1890.  This is not surprising considering the fact that St. Petersburg was the capital of Russia at that time and until 1918.

The Sleeping Beauty at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.

At the Moscow Art Theater, which is sometimes called Chekhov Theater, what I really wanted to watch was Cherry Orchard. But for unknown reason they did not revive this most famous play by Chekhov during the 2018-19 season, so I actually had to compromise with Three Sisters.

But it was not such a good idea. The Moscow Art Theater is known historically for initiating realism in theater in the first decade of 20th century, and what I wanted to watch was a Chekhov play rendered in realism.  But this production of Three Sisters was decidedly modernist. The director placed 2 video cameras with 2 camera operators on the stage, right by the characters, and those operators were shooting close-ups of the characters that were then projected in the various areas on the stage.

This photo from MAT shows different actors from what we watched. 

The director's purpose in doing this is to prevent audience from getting involved emotionally with the characters by making audience be aware that this is just a theater show, not a reality. And the reason he wants to do this is because he would rather have "the audience objectively observe what is happening on stage." This is one of the main concepts of modernism in theater and is exactly what Bertolt Brecht started doing with the Berliner Ensemble in Berlin in the 1930s, initiating modernism in theater.

Although admirable for what it was, this production of Three Sisters was just not what I had in my mind.   Later I learned that MAT's Cherry Orchard was archetypally rendered in realism...


Chekhov's Three Sisters at the Moscow Art Theater in Moscow.

On the other hand Robert Wilson is the world's foremost post-modernist in theater.   Pushkin's Fairy Tales, conceived and directed by Wilson, has been playing at the State Theater of Nations in Moscow every few months since 2015.

Pushkin's Fairy Tales at the State Theater of Nations in Moscow.

It is not possible to see exactly what's going on in Russia today just by visiting Russia 4 times in the last 15 years. I have only some general or even sketchy knowledge of the history of Russia. And this knowledge tells me that Russia was rather well-integrated in Europe up until the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. For example, the Scandinavian Vikings established the state of Russia in the 9th century to begin with, the Romanovs apparently tried to "keep up with the Bourbons" and a German woman named Catherine once became the Great ruler of Russia. And even after the Bolshevik revolution, Russia under Stalin was hand in hand with the US, Britain and France during the WWII, the reason behind the fact that Russia sits permanently on the Security Council of the United Nations. 

Then, my question is, why is it that today's Russia is so at odds with the rest of Europe? I simply asked the following question to a Russian person I met in Moscow:  "Why doesn't Russia join the European Union?" I also pointed out that a country like Poland doubled its GDP after joining the EU. Her answer was succinct but predictable. Basically, going it alone to protect its national interests. Well, I sincerely wish Russia good luck! 

She also said she admired the courage of the British people for Brexit. I said to her Brexit showed the weakness rather than the strength of the UK because if they have strength, they would try to lead the EU like Germany is doing. 

Although Moscow appears to be doing well, it is well known that Russia needs to overhaul its oil based economy. I don't even know how Russia ended up basing its economy on oil, when they have such superior technology to send the first human to the space! It's perhaps just a matter of time when Russia would be able to create a solid capitalist economy.  For this I would say Japan would serve as a good model. Japan has no natural resources whatsoever and has slightly less population than Russia, but its GDP is more than 3 times as much as Russia's.

Having stayed in Russia for 18 days, I have noticed something new that I did not notice in my previous visits.  Here are three of them: 1) It seemed like more and more Asians from Siberia and / or east Asian countries are now in St. Petersburg and in Moscow, either as residents or as tourists. 2) Considering the bad relationship between the USA and Russia, I was surprised that so many American fast food restaurants are allowed to do business here.  I was particularly surprised at the ubiquity of KFC. 3) Japanese cars or electronics equipment have been sold around the world, but not necessarily Japanese daily goods, which seem to be pretty popular in Russia.  Not only Japanese vending machines stand here and there in Moscow, but even pharmacies have Japanese medicine section. 

I hardly think about this, but during this trip I started realizing that my Japanese family had strangely had some ties to Russia.  My grand mother was born in today's Dalian, China, during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, but the city of Dalian was originally established by the Russians, and she used to make Russian dishes when I was little in Japan, although I didn't know that they were Russian dishes until I visited Russia for the first time!  My grand father spent 2 years in a Siberian labor camp after being captured by the Russians a few days AFTER the WWII ended. And ... my grand mother is today buried in Sergiev Posad outside Moscow.

Epilogue:

I have been writing this in a bus from Moscow back to Ukraine without doing any researches, as there is no internet connection.  So it may include some inaccuracy, especially with regard to the history of Russia. I shall probably keep revising this blog after getting back the internet connection. 

In any case this will conclude my trip to Russia this time. Flights from Budapest to Moscow or St. Petersburg cost only 20-30 USD, but the difficulty and the cost of getting the visa would prevent me from coming back here very often. 

I wish there were no borders, therefore no need for visas, but I am uploading this from the Russia-Ukraine border. Hopefully the Russian officials will let me out after posting this blog ... which could be misconstrued as a disparagement about Russia. :) 

Make Russia Great Again!

Millem Nishikawa

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