America: Stereotypes, Legends, Consequences

America, that distant continent across the ocean, always beckoned the unfortified, average Russian soul with an excess of mystery, legend and riddle. And it still beckons. Here are some anecdotes that resulted from this beckoning.

This is what happened: Fatkullo Hudoberdiev, the son of the distinguished vegetable farmer, Davlitali Massov, in childhood read a certain richly illustrated book of verse. In one of the pictures in the book, frightening white-hooded people lynched a half-naked dark-skinned boy with thick, extremely red lips. The keen conscience of a modern-day schoolboy might have led one to suspect this boy of some other strange, villainous sins that we are now aware of, but the book said that in fact, all he had done was kiss a white girl. The beastly Ku Klux Klansmen were crazily tightening the inevitable noose around his skinny neck. Torches burned and bonfires blazed all around. Fatkullo Hudoberdiev, upon reading the last words of the book: “How lucky I am not to live in America,” rejoiced and went off to find a white girl. The whitest of all was the daughter of the local secretary of the Regional Party Committee (the village folk called him rais--captain, or chief, in their language). Of course, they didn’t string up Fatkullo, but his neck hurt him for a long time anyway.

From this same illustrated book, you may also remember the ordeals of Mister Twister^[1], who, on account of his dislike of colored people, was unable to settle into a hotel in Leningrad. Well, here is another story: The former free-lance correspondent of the newspaper The Whistle^[2] Semyon Vladimirovich Gooddeev, upon arriving in Leningrad, decided to conduct his own journalistic experiment along the approximate route of Mister Twister, “the owner of factories, newspapers, steamships.” However, Semyon Vladimirovich owned only newspapers, two in all, with his own articles in them. He dragged them along everywhere, investigating all the Leningrad hotels. There were absolutely no vacancies anywhere, despite the fact that Comrade Gooddeev enthusiastically appraised every administrator of his love for “blacks, Malaysians and all other rabble.” Many years of searching somewhat moderated the investigative ardor and even fundamentally changed the color of the face of the said specimen of humanity, in the general direction of the abovementioned ethnicities. Leningrad also changed, its very name changed, and vacancies appeared, but Semyon Vladimirovich didn’t find out about them, because he was no longer permitted to enter hotels at all. As always, he keeps his papers with him. He still owns them--both copies. They function as table and bed in the moist underground passageways of Petersburg. And towards representatives of foreign ethnicity, his enthusiasm has rather cooled.

To the list of romantic American legends we should add the tales of the American Indians, thanks to many a filmmaker’s efforts. In connection with this, the following story: Kuzma Ivanovich Suslo, a young bank employee from the city of Bui, once stole a small souvenir axe from the bank’s vault. He started to color his hair with green and red paints and concluded that he had everything an American Indian would have, except a horse. So he traveled back and forth to Moscow, where there was a racetrack, but they never let him close to the horses. Then he ran away to the Gypsies, where, it was rumored, there should be horses. Unfortunately, that was only a rumor. They searched for Kuzma Ivanovich for a long time. They asked the television show Wait for Me, specializing in just such cases, to find him. Eventually they ran into him on a suburban electric train where he sang to a bunch of unsuspecting holiday-goers. His terrifying song was about a valiant native kid who rode his mustang headlong into a stagecoach full of children. The horse team scattered, dragging the coach to the edge of a cliff, where the kid saved the children, and met his early death…

And everyone also knows that Americans are very patriotic. Hearing this, the organic chemist from an old family of organic chemists, Shmuel Moishevich Srulevich^[3], also fell in love with his native land.

By all means necessary, he gathered an enormous collection of miraculously preserved archival tapes of the program The Village Hour focusing on “News from the Land” and the like. A trailblazer among organic chemists, he turned over a new page in the study of chemical elements on Earth, emphasizing, in particular, the percentage relationship of humus to acid-alcohol. His extremely gentle attitude towards his native land was similarly expressed by his habit of cutting the treads off new, good footwear. Then, on an outing to collect potatoes, he killed a mole once. Over time, Shmuel Moishevich’s face turned an earthy color. His legs got heavy. Twice a year, usually in the fall and the spring, he seriously considered suicide.

And there was also this: Eduard General-Secretaryev, the physical education teacher of Specialty School number 3, read Eduard Limonov^[4] on one occasion and realized that there was not enough love in his life, either. He started to dress funny and often stopped by at the square^[5] near the Bolshoi Theatre. There were many colorful people, but Blacks, if sighted at all, were rare. So, as before, there was not enough love in his life. And now it would be logical to ask: what does this actually have to do with America? Well, basically nothing—it would be logical to answer. But we are not answering logically. We’re keeping hush.

P.S. All the names have been changed. Any coincidences should be considered intentional.

^[1] Mister Twister is S. Y. Marshak’s ubiquitous Soviet children’s verse about an American capitalist, “the owner of factories, newspapers, steamships,” who visits Leningrad and refuses any hotel that admits “blacks, Malaysians and all other rabble.” He is forced to spend a night on the street before finally accepting a room in the hotel.

^[2] In Russian, gudok--train whistle—was a popular newspaper in the 20s and 30s, published under the aegis of the Railroad Transportation Ministry.

^[3] This character is a Russian Jew, and officially does not have a Native Land. He therefore takes the phrase literally and falls in love with his native earth.

^[4] Eduard Limonov is a Russian-born writer who lived in exile from 1974 to 1992. His first book, It’s me, Edichka, a harsh criticism of America, was published in France under the title, The Russian Poet Prefers Big Black Men, and was subsequently translated into fifteen languages.