Reader Crystallizing Chaos asks a question I love:

What did the soviet public think of India (if at all)? Growing up we also heard so many stories about our friendship with the Soviets – how they liked Bollywood movies and how Russian and Sanskrit had common roots.

In the 1960s and 1970s, there was something of an India-craze in the USSR. There was an enormous curiosity towards all things Indian. In what I consider to be the greatest Ukrainian novel of the second half of the XXth century The Cathedral by Oles Honchar, there is a plot line that exemplifies the curiosity towards India in those decades (the novel was published in 1968).

In the novel, a group of characters from the Ukrainian country-side travels to India to assist in a massive construction project. This is considered a great honor but there is one character who uses the freedom of India to behave in a non-Soviet way. The rest of the characters, however, manage to behave appropriately. The protagonist has a dream that when his little son grows up he will marry the non-white daughter of an Indian colleague. There is a lot of orientalist exoticization with a racist flavor in the novel, as I now understand, but we can get a good understanding of how Soviet Ukrainians were trying to process the information about the subcontinent.

At the time when I was reading that novel, I also read many British novels set in the subcontinent, and I remember how hard it was for me to process the idea that this was the same India as in the Ukrainian writer’s novel. With all its flaws, Honchar’s description is nowhere as dehumanizing and vicious as that which these British writers created casually and matter-of-factly.

Bollywood movies were insanely popular in the USSR. I loved them passionately and still do. I pick Bollywood over Hollywood any day of the week because it’s simply better. I have definitely watched more Bollywood films than Holywood in my life. It isn’t for nothing that I did a Minor in the post-colonial literature of the subcontinent during my graduate studies. The Minor didn’t inform my own research in any way but it was exceptionally enjoyable. Of course, I don’t presume for a second to be any sort of a specialist on India. My knowledge is extremely limited, and I wouldn’t venture to offer any opinions on this very complex country. What I can say for sure is that the future of the British culture, literature and art is in the hands of the people from the subcontinent. It is highly possible, as well, that one day it will be up to Ukrainians to decide whether to keep the Russian literature and culture in existence or not. And I hope that Ukrainians are as generous and kind with the culture of their colonizers as the people of the subcontinent are with the culture of theirs.

P.S. The posts about the USSR seem always to end up being posts about me. I hope nobody minds. I have my own USSR, just as everybody else has theirs.

I’m getting really good, interesting questions on the USSR. Thank you, everybody, for participating.

Reader Pen asks:

“Is there a cursive form of the Cyrillic alphabet?”

Yes, there is. And it’s a total bitch. I recently tried to write a note to my husband and discovered that I don’t remember how to write cursive Cyrillic any longer. That was embarrassing.

Also, you’ve talked a bit about the schooling conditions in the USSR while you were growing up. I know you said you went to a fancy expensive school where they taught you English. What were the schools like for students whose parents couldn’t afford something like that? Is this in any way similar to the schooling situation now?

Now, the schools in the USSR were free. We didn’t have to pay anything to the government or the school to attend. However, at my fancy high school, bribery was rampant, shameless, and pervasive. Teachers extorted bribes very openly. They simply refused to give you a passing grade – irrespective of the quality of your work – unless you gave them a bribe.

All of the students who were from really poor families were squeezed out of this school by the 8th grade. Those who remained either gave bribes or accepted low grades. But it isn’t like anybody had to stay at that school. People could choose to go to regular schools where everybody was equally poor and unable to offer bribes.

That school didn’t teach me English because my English was already better than that of all the teachers combined and multiplied by 11 by the time I came to that school (at the age of 11, actually.) Once, back in 1988, we had a delegation of British doctors visit our school. I was invited to serve tea and coffee to the group. The British doctors suffered through an hour of the teachers’ broken English until one of the doctors dropped something and I picked it up, saying, “Here you go, ma’am”, or something of the kind. After that, the British doctors started yelling, “Oh my God, look at the little one! She speaks English!” And I was the center of attention of that encounter until it ended.

And two years later, I was able to visit two of the nicest among these doctors at their house in Kent. The house was more like a mansion, and I remember being very confused as to how somebody of such a lowly, unprestigious profession could live like that and have a collection of antiques at home. When I brought photos of the doctors’ (actually, they were a doctor and a nurse) mansion back home to the USSR, my Soviet relatives and acquaintances kept persecuting me with questions of the “Are you really sure he is a doctor???” variety.

I love these questions. We should do this more often.

This is the longest day of the semester for me. I have a meeting, my office hours, three overview lectures, and then the presentations of my research students that will go on until at least 7 pm. So I decided to do something for myself and went to a vigil in honor of Michael Brown.

At the vigil, we stand in silence for 4.5 minutes, which, of course, symbolizes the 4 and a half hours that Michael’s body was left lying in the street after Michael was murdered. We are gathering to do this every day this week. There were only 12 of us there today, and there was a moment when we were approached by a belligerent student who wanted to express his disagreement. However, the belligerent student soon got so impressed by our dedication to the cause (it is quite cold and windy outside) that he bought cookies for us and distributed them among the group.

And then I went back to class with my “Black Lives Matter” badge on my chest. I don’t think this can be considered a political opinion because it isn’t like there is a political party in this country that espouses the belief that black lives don’t matter. Right?

The recent poll showed that the readers of this blog have an overwhelming preference for posts about the USSR. I’m very ready to satisfy this curiosity. If there is anything specific you want to know about the Soviet Union, Ukraine, or Russia, please leave your questions in the comment section of this post.

Remember that there are no stupid questions or questions that are too basic for me to answer. I will stick this post to the top of the blog for a while. Please scroll down for new posts.

“There is no need to worry about anything now or do any testing because you are so YOUNG,” the doctor said. “What are you, 38? That is very YOUNG. For somebody so YOUNG, there is no need for any of this testing. At this YOUNG age, there are just minor issues. Of course, when you become OLD, meaning after the age of 40, it is crucial to do a lot of testing. Because when people are OLD it’s really not the same as when they are YOUNG, as you are right now.”

So I’ve got 16,5 months left until old age. Good to know.

I want to share with you a single instance – out of hundreds similar ones – from the Russian -Ukrainian war of 2014.

As you know, the Ukrainian city of Donetsk fell to the invaders several months ago. However, a group of Ukrainian soldiers managed to hold on to the Donetsk Airport. These soldiers have been sitting at that dark, unheated airport for months.

First, Russia sent Chechens to take the airport. Ukrainians beat them back. Now the Pentagon is studying the brilliant military strategies Ukrainians used in that combat.

Then Russians sent regular troops. As you can imagine, the weaponry and the supplies these troops have access to are incomparable to those of the stranded and exhausted Ukrainian soldiers. Still,  Ukrainians beat them back.

The Russians grew very annoyed and sent their famous special ops battalion to take the airport. This elite battalion had fought in Afghanistan,  Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, etc. Throughout its entire existence  (since 1982), this special ops force lost only 28 combatants. And this week they came to the Donetsk Airport.

In one day – just one – the starving, exhausted Ukrainians who are fighting literally half-naked beat back the Russians, killing 32 soldiers of the special ops battalion. This is more people than the battalion lost in its entire history.

A Russian lieutenant -general came to the airport yesterday to beg the Ukrainians to release the bodies of the dead Russian combatants so that they can at least be buried. Of course, he will get back the corpses. And of course, more Russian soldiers will come to Donetsk to lay down their lives at the Donetsk Airport.

Meanwhile, the support for Putin is growing both at home and abroad.