dressed casually in a snug-fitting black pullover and a pair of blue
jeans. Her pale hair was pulled straight back from her forehead and secured by a clasp at the nape of her
neck. Her suede boots made her appear taller than she had the previous evening. Their heels tapped
rhythmically along the pavement as they walked slowly past the graves.
The musicians Rostropovich and Rubinstein…
The writers Gogol and Bulgakov…
The Party giants Khrushchev and Kosygin…
Kaganovich, the Stalinist monster who murdered millions during the madness of collectivization…
Molotov, signer of the secret pact that condemned Europe to war and the Jews of Poland to
annihilation…
“There’s no place quite like this to see the striking contradictions of our history. Great beauty lies
side by side with the incomprehensible. These men gave us everything, and when they were gone we were
left with nothing: factories that produced goods no one wanted, an ideology that was tired and bankrupt.
All of it set to beautiful words and music.”
Gabriel looked at the bouquet of flowers in her arms. “Who are those for?”
She stopped before a small plot with a low, unadorned stone monument. “Dmitri Sukhova, my
grandfather. He was a playwright and a filmmaker. Had he lived in another time, under a different regime,
he might have been great. Instead, he was drafted to make cheap Party propaganda for the masses. He
made the people believe in the myth of Soviet greatness. His reward was to be buried here, among true
Russian genius.”
She crouched next to the grave and brushed pine needles from the plaque.
“You have his name,” Gabriel said. “You’re not married?”
She shook her head and placed the flowers gently on the grave. “I’m afraid I’ve yet to find a
countryman suitable for marriage and procreation. If they have any money, the first thing they do is buy
themselves a mistress. Go into any trendy sushi restaurant in Moscow and you’ll see the pretty young girls
lined up at the bar, waiting for a man to sweep them off their feet. But not just any man. They want a New
Russian man. A man with money and connections. A man who winters in Zermatt and Courchevel and
summers in the South of France. A man who will give them jewelry and foreign cars. I prefer to spend my
summers at my grandfather’s dacha. I grow radishes and carrots there. I still believe in my country. I don’t
need to vacation in the exclusive playgrounds of Western Europe to be a contented, self-fulfilled New
Russian woman.”
She had been speaking to the grave. Now she turned her head and looked over her shoulder at
Gabriel.
“You must think I’m terribly foolish.”
“Why foolish?”
“Because I pretend to be a journalist in a country where there is no longer true journalism. Because I
want democracy in a country that has never known it-and, in all likelihood, never will.”
She stood upright and brushed the dust from her palms. “To understand Russia today, you must
understand the trauma of the nineties. Everything we had, everything we had been told, was swept away.
We went from superpower to basket case overnight. Our people lost their life’s savings, not just once but
over and over again. Russians are a paternalistic people. They believe in the Orthodox Church, the State,
the Tsar. They associate democracy with chaos. Our president and the siloviki understand this. They use
words like ‘managed democracy’ and ‘State capitalism,’ but they’re just euphemisms for something more
sinister: fascism. We have lurched from the ideology of Lenin to the ideology of Mussolini in a decade.
We should not be surprised by this. Look around you, Mr. Golani. The history of Russia is nothing but a
series of convulsions. We cannot live as normal people. We never will.”
She looked past him, into a darkened corner of the cemetery. “They’re watching us very closely.
Hold my arm, please, Mr. Golani. It is better if the FSB
jeans. Her pale hair was pulled straight back from her forehead and secured by a clasp at the nape of her
neck. Her suede boots made her appear taller than she had the previous evening. Their heels tapped
rhythmically along the pavement as they walked slowly past the graves.
The musicians Rostropovich and Rubinstein…
The writers Gogol and Bulgakov…
The Party giants Khrushchev and Kosygin…
Kaganovich, the Stalinist monster who murdered millions during the madness of collectivization…
Molotov, signer of the secret pact that condemned Europe to war and the Jews of Poland to
annihilation…
“There’s no place quite like this to see the striking contradictions of our history. Great beauty lies
side by side with the incomprehensible. These men gave us everything, and when they were gone we were
left with nothing: factories that produced goods no one wanted, an ideology that was tired and bankrupt.
All of it set to beautiful words and music.”
Gabriel looked at the bouquet of flowers in her arms. “Who are those for?”
She stopped before a small plot with a low, unadorned stone monument. “Dmitri Sukhova, my
grandfather. He was a playwright and a filmmaker. Had he lived in another time, under a different regime,
he might have been great. Instead, he was drafted to make cheap Party propaganda for the masses. He
made the people believe in the myth of Soviet greatness. His reward was to be buried here, among true
Russian genius.”
She crouched next to the grave and brushed pine needles from the plaque.
“You have his name,” Gabriel said. “You’re not married?”
She shook her head and placed the flowers gently on the grave. “I’m afraid I’ve yet to find a
countryman suitable for marriage and procreation. If they have any money, the first thing they do is buy
themselves a mistress. Go into any trendy sushi restaurant in Moscow and you’ll see the pretty young girls
lined up at the bar, waiting for a man to sweep them off their feet. But not just any man. They want a New
Russian man. A man with money and connections. A man who winters in Zermatt and Courchevel and
summers in the South of France. A man who will give them jewelry and foreign cars. I prefer to spend my
summers at my grandfather’s dacha. I grow radishes and carrots there. I still believe in my country. I don’t
need to vacation in the exclusive playgrounds of Western Europe to be a contented, self-fulfilled New
Russian woman.”
She had been speaking to the grave. Now she turned her head and looked over her shoulder at
Gabriel.
“You must think I’m terribly foolish.”
“Why foolish?”
“Because I pretend to be a journalist in a country where there is no longer true journalism. Because I
want democracy in a country that has never known it-and, in all likelihood, never will.”
She stood upright and brushed the dust from her palms. “To understand Russia today, you must
understand the trauma of the nineties. Everything we had, everything we had been told, was swept away.
We went from superpower to basket case overnight. Our people lost their life’s savings, not just once but
over and over again. Russians are a paternalistic people. They believe in the Orthodox Church, the State,
the Tsar. They associate democracy with chaos. Our president and the siloviki understand this. They use
words like ‘managed democracy’ and ‘State capitalism,’ but they’re just euphemisms for something more
sinister: fascism. We have lurched from the ideology of Lenin to the ideology of Mussolini in a decade.
We should not be surprised by this. Look around you, Mr. Golani. The history of Russia is nothing but a
series of convulsions. We cannot live as normal people. We never will.”
She looked past him, into a darkened corner of the cemetery. “They’re watching us very closely.
Hold my arm, please, Mr. Golani. It is better if the FSB
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