Can you ever go home?

My Russian in-law family, six of them, stayed with us for a while. We had a lot of fun, and some very good, very Russian conversations. A visit like this always brings forth questions of identity. This country versus that country, where one should live, how do we lives, what makes one Russian, and what makes one American. The precarious bridge to the old country has been briefly reestablished, and at least in imagination, crossed back and forth. Svetlana and I have always considered going back; we have been held back because of practicalities such as lack of good jobs in Russia, kids that went native and the large American debts. There are other considerations though. In 16 years we were gone, Russia has changed dramatically, not once but twice: from crumbling Soviet Union to the deepest economic depression imaginable, back to oil revenue-prompted relative prosperity and stability. From the excitement and hope of Glasnost era to despair of chaotic democracy and lawlessness, it then became a semi-authoritarian, but stable and mostly functional state. I watched two coupe d'etates on CNN, have seen and heard tragic and uplifting news from what seems to be an intensely familiar, but also more and more mysterious country. I traveled back five or six times, each time struck by how little have changed, and how completely different the country has become.

Like all immigrants, I am caught in this interesting space in between two cultures. People like me are foreigners everywhere. With virtually non-existing English, I came to Indiana at the ripe age of 29, thus the accent that is impossible to eliminate. Moreover, the accent itself becomes a part of one’s identity; you become known as the Russian guy with an accent. Even if it were possible, I would not get rid of it. I could have become a generic Alex, but instead insisted on remaining an exotic Sasha for the same reason: Russian Alexes whose number is a million are too eager to blend in; they are afraid of remaining foreigners fearing discrimination and sometime wishing to forget. Anyway, foreigner I am, which is a mixed blessing. The American Academe tends to be remarkably tolerant to foreigners (especially to White Europeans); tolerance matched only perhaps by that of the business community and unparalleled in the world. As a foreigner, one can always claim the bogus authority of an outsider, of someone with a different perspective; the Academe values that. At the same time, people often expect you to be naïve and know nothing about simple things, and having little facility with the English language. Especially touching are complements on the comprehensibility of one’s accent, and on the fact that I can actually write. I had a very hard time getting my first teaching job, chiefly because of the obvious foreignness. But this was a long time ago, and now my job is great, and at least some people in the field claim to respect my scholarship. All’s good.

Of course, the Russians treat me like a foreigner, too. Their attitude varies between patronizing to hostile, but the message is always the same: you did not go through this with us, so you wouldn’t understand. Or, you have been away for too long, you forgot how this is. The deep seated anti-Americanism of many Russians stems from the wounds to the national dignity. The wounds are mostly self-inflicted, but when it hurts one must hate someone, anyone. The Russian Americans will always get some flack on behalf of the entire American nation for everything from obesity to the Iraq war. One sure sign of becoming a foreigner is this: you cannot criticize Russia anymore. What is perfectly allowable to a real Russian (for example, criticism of Putin’s slide to autocratic rule) will not be permitted to you, the emigrant, because you are no longer one of us. Americans do not always understand this sensitivity, because their tolerance to criticism of America is rooted in implied assumption of own superiority. What a sentence… My writing has been ruined by the practice of philosophy. Anyway, back to the point: People like me are foreigners everywhere, and we end up always defending Russia in America, and defending America in Russia. In both cases we are basically defending ourselves, the parts of our identity that do not sit easy with people around us. It is much easier in a third country, where you’re simply a tourist, and no one gives a damn about your identity.

This place in between has been described many times by dozens of immigrant writers. They all try to make people appreciate how rich and complex the creatures of cultural border crossings are. So there, see how complex I am? Can I get some respect for this? The truth is, our experiences are not at all unique, and are a variation on the universal human story of going away from home; the home to which one can never return. It is a story of nostalgia, of growing up and betrayal of one’s youth, of embracing new things but longing for the old. We are all immigrants from home; even those who have never left the home town.

I feel sad for people who have a hang up on national culture, and cannot see past it. I doubt the very notion of culture, especially applied to such large entities like the Americans or the Russians has any usefulness. In other words, one can always make some generalizations: Americans are that, Russians are this, and Chinese are something else. But how would you use such generalizations? For what? If you try to apply them in any kind of real-life situation, they will turn out wrong more often than right. In my pragmatist epistemology, that means national cultures do not exist; they are fiction, myth useful to manipulate people, but useless to do anything good. But that’s another blog.

We could go back one day, when the practicalities of such a move are resolved. Russia is so much more unpredictable than the US, it is so much more frightening and exciting, it is hard to resist.