Metro Stop Dostoevsky
Travels in Russian Time
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A Russian American writer catapults herself into the maelstrom of Russian life at a time of seismic change for both
The daughter of Russian émigrés, Ingrid Bengis grew up wondering whether she was American or, deep down, "really Russian." In 1991, naïvely in love with Russia and Russian literature, she settled in St. Petersburg, where she was quickly immersed in "catastroika," a period of immense turmoil that mirrored her own increasingly complex and contradictory experience.
Bengis's account of her involvement with Russia is heightened by her involvement with B, a Russian whose collapsing marriage, paralleling the collapse of the Soviet Union, produces a situation in which "anything could happen." Their relationship reflects the social tumult, as well as the sometimes dangerous consequences of American "good intentions." As Bengis takes part in Russian life-becoming a reluctant entrepreneur, undergoing surgery in a St. Petersburg hospital, descending into a coal mine-she becomes increasingly aware of its Dostoevskian duality, never more so than when she meets the impoverished, importuning great-great-granddaughter of the writer himself. Beneath the seismic shifting remains a centuries-old preoccuption with "the big questions": tradition and progress, destiny and activism, skepticism and faith. With its elaborate pattern of digression and its eye for the revealing detail, Bengis's account has the hypnotic intimacy of a late-night conversation in a Russian kitchen, where such questions are perpetually being asked.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"What has socialism... killed in the Soviets, and what has it created?" wonders Bengis (Combat in the Erogenous Zone, 1972) at the opening of this episodic memoir about her life in Russia in the 1990s. Bengis, the American-born daughter of Russian migr s, searches for an answer during a series of trips she takes to St. Petersburg between 1991 and 1996. During her visits, which often last many months, Bengis shares an apartment with her Russian friend B, a seamstress recently separated from her husband. Bengis observes the shifting mood as the Soviet Union collapses and B's crowd encounters new freedoms and insecurities. A group of Bengis's Russian friends, well educated and in their late 30s and early 40s, find themselves working as unofficial taxi drivers and illegal smugglers, or not working at all. By the mid-1990s everyone has a half-baked money-making scheme, including B, who cajoles Bengis into bankrolling an operation to sell handmade silk and cashmere shawls in the West. B is a memorable figure proud, elegant, alternately protective and cruel and alongside the story of Russia's transformation, Bengis traces the deterioration of her relationship with B, who ends up effectively stealing thousands of dollars from her. This relationship is both the most fascinating and the most frustrating part of the memoir. Bengis doesn't fully examine her and B's friendship. She seems to take for granted B's sudden, intense currents of hostility, which come as a surprise to the reader, and her calm acceptance of B's attacks can be baffling. Still, Bengis is a fine portraitist who creates wonderfully vivid and intimate scenes pulsing with the suppressed frustration, passion and fragile hope of the people whose lives she chronicles.
