George Enteen
July 2009
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"Sukhumi," I said, "I’m planning a trip to Sukhumi, capital of Abkhazia." "Gesundheit," he replied. And I thought everyone knew that Abkhazia was a former republic of the Soviet Union, located in the north Caucasus, along the east coast of the Black Sea. I departed Kennedy airport on July 1 and arrived in Sochi, a Russian city just a few miles from the Abkhazian border on July 2. To my utter delight, my friend Lolla, of great literary fame, awaited my arrival. It was she who had invited me to visit her and her family in Sukhumi. Lolla was there at the airport but not my suitcase. She helped me to cope with the airport bureaucracy, and then we taxied to the border. That’s where the fun began.
The Russian side was easy enough. Then a number of checkpoints on the Abkhazian side had to be crossed. The first official who looked at my passport nearly exploded. "Georgia," he shrieked. As not everyone knows, some ill-informed officials, including our president, deem Abkhazia a break away region from Georgia. Abkhazians and their friends deem their country an independent nation, and in 1992-93; they fought a war of independence to prove it. What had upset and confused the uneasy official turned to be my given name. Lolla managed to clarify the matter, “George, not Georgia; they’re not the same thing.” (Praise heaven my passport didn’t reveal that I was raised in Atlanta.) She urged (with a half smile and not even blushing) that I was a friend of Abkhazia, having written articles on its behalf in the New York Times. Then she informed him and his equally skeptical colleague that in Sukhumi I would be investigating the situation of the Jewish community. I winced; in my experience to raise the Jewish question is never wise. But she was right. Abkhazians, like Georgians, have a friendly and respectful attitude toward Jews and have no place for anti-Semitism.
The second border official, tall and angular, was still not pacified and took up the matter of my letter of permission from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which gave July 1, not the second, as the date of entry. The letter itself did not constitute a visa. In the end, he telephoned the Ministry and --What Luck! The very woman who had written the letter on my behalf was at her desk and re-authorized my entry. Then on to another check point. "Are you American," I was asked. "Yes," I croaked. "Great, we need support from America. Please enter and have a great time."
In that eternal interval, my heart had stopped, stomach sank, cold sweats, then palpitations, hot sweats, nausea (not really). Had I been refused entry, I would have been stuck on the Russian side without my suitcase, without living quarters and with only my despair. My plane ticket to Moscow was valid only a week later.
On the Abkhazia side, we mounted a small crowded bus, waiting for it to fill up before the driver would begin the 60-mile trip to Sukhumi. His income depends on the number of passengers. The next day, Lolla called the airport and learned that my suitcase had arrived. Jubilation rang out over the mountains and across the Black Sea. We drove back to the border. I couldn’t cross for reasons too complicated to explain. Lolla said she would return after three or four hours. In fact, she appeared, dragging my suitcase, after just an hour and a half. I was so pleased I could have hugged her. So I did.
After that everything went well. I spent most of the time with Lolla and her family, her husband, her eleven-year-old son and her one and a half year old daughter, smitten with separation anxiety for her mom. We swam in the Black Sea and sometimes picnicked in an inland valley surrounded by steep green mountains, some of which still retained winter snow atop glaciers. We settled in to grill shashlik next to an extraordinary riverbed. It was about forty or fifty yards wide, probably full during the spring runoff, but by July it ran through three or four cold-water channels, knee-deep but running swiftly, and carving out a few swimming holes along the way. Horses and cows and an occasional pig grazed along the banks. If you don’t drive far enough into the valley, you’re overtaken by the rock and roll sounds of celebrating youth, celebrating probably themselves and their youthful energy.
As to the Jewish question. I had requested support from the Jewish Studies program and promised I would learn what I could about Jewish life in Abkhazia. I guaranteed them that it would result in a series of articles in the New Yorker, then a best-selling novel, to be followed by an award-winning film starring Angelina Jolie and me. And can you believe it! They fell for it hook, line and sinker. Joking aside, I’m very grateful to Penn State Jewish Studies for helping me with the purchase of my ticket.
I visited the synagogue twice, once for conversation on the Sabbath, and a second time to take some award-winning photos. I also met separately with the rabbi. His day job is as a dermatologist. A good-looking guy, 35 years old, looking for a wife – must be Jewish, seriously religious. Know anyone? Would she like to live in Sukhumi? It’s a cross between Miami Beach and Tel Aviv on a good day and with enough sweet Passover wine. Oh yes. The tap water runs only until mid-morning and then again in the evening. Make sure the bathtub is full plus assorted buckets and pans. Also, a significant number of bombed-out buildings, a result of the war with Georgia, continue to mar the cityscape.
Regarding Jewish life. At the present time there’s not much of a story. – A handsome synagogue (the mikva destroyed by fire a few years ago) but very few people, two hundred fifty to three hundred or so in the city, mostly old, with some material support from Western Jews. It’s a story of emigration and assimilation. The surviving remnant is mostly seniors, what we used to call old folks. I chatted with some of them Saturday morning, waiting in vain for a minion to form. “How many Jews in Sukhumi?” I asked. “It’s a military secret,” was the joking reply. Then a dark-haired young woman, about forty, arrived, who was greeted warmly. She, in turn, chatted with them individually, mostly, it seems to me, consoling them about their aches and pains. She runs the afternoon day school for the children, about thirty of them. She enlarges them with knowledge of their traditions, while she lightens the burden of the old folks. Her name is Elvera. Blessed are her mother and father.
For the Georgian Jews in Abkhazia, a significant demographic component before the war with Georgia, it’s a story of forced exile, loaded onto buses and airplanes and sent hither and yon, as far as Israel and Brooklyn. If the present situation is bleak, the history exhibits a rich communal and religious life – Georgian Jews, Ashkenazim (Chassidim and Misnogdim), Crimean Jews, Mountain Jews, Karaites, and probably some Bokharskii Jews, who had emigrated to Central Asia long before the destruction of the second temple and the scattering of our people and the development of the talmud. What a tsimis! Can you imagine the spectacle, the disputes, the gestures, the clash and resonance of legends? On the other hand, perhaps they turned their backs on each other –‘Good Shabbas’ and let it go at that. God knows. But that’s a story too. Let’s find a linguistically gifted graduate student to sort out the dynamics of rivalry and cooperation. A major obstacle to such a study is that fact that during the war, Georgians plundered the Abkhazian National Library and destroyed the National Archives. For me, as an historian, this hateful act of vandalism reveals a genocidal intent.
I tried to learn something about the Abkhazian case for independence, and I became increasingly sympathetic as I talked and read. It disturbed me to hear President Obama speak about the territorial integrity of Georgia, lest that become a façade for the suppression and possible destruction of a small and ancient nation. No more than torture should America have a role in such an endeavor.
Moscow days, Moscow nights. I arrived in Moscow late on the 10th. On the 11th the city was cold and rainy, windy enough to turn my umbrella. I did some shopping and got wet through my jacket. “What am I dong here?” That night some friends organized a dinner for me – tons of food and even more to drink. Then I recalled what Russia is all about. Next day sunshine, birds chirping, just about perfect, except for the hangover.
I managed to visit with some of my friends and with some colleagues, but with difficulty. I had only a week and on weekends everyone is at his or her dacha. It was July, vacation time for many. In addition Moscow has just ‘reformed’ its telephone system, resulting in the fact that many numbers were suddenly changed. They changed the cell-phone number of one friend without even informing him. When a friend despaired of reaching him, he called the telephone company to retrieve the new number. Only in Russia!
Positive impressions – the cultural enrichment of Moscow, more ballet, more concerts and exhibits than I have ever seen in the summer. The look of the city has improved – more flowers, more areas secured for pedestrians. In the realm of politics, it is sometimes overlooked that Putin reestablished a significant measure of order in the streets. He has ,moreover, played a role similar to that of Reagan in the wake of the war in Viet Nam. His words and stance allow Russians to feel good about themselves. It’s difficult for us (except for Civil War veterans) to empathize with loss of country and a sense of vulnerability. Accompanying this were revelations about the terrible black spots in the nation’s history, then the plundering of the nation’s wealth by oligarchs. ‘Freedom arrived some muse, freedom for bandits.’
On the negative side of politics, freedom continues to contract under the leadership of Putin and Medvedev. With the overthrow of communism, now almost two decades ago, the domain of freedom triumphed. The victory was bound to be short-lived, denied as it was an anchor in a sound, or even semi-sound legal system. For this reason, it did not warrant the term, democracy. Nevertheless, a strong array of free institutions was created or reborn at the time. Second, repressive institutions were destroyed or defanged, only to reemerge under the nurturing care of Putin. I hasten to add that the power of the secret police remains far less than what it was in its heyday. A tendency toward dictatorship is, nevertheless, evident. At the same time, there is growing intolerance on the street. Extremists are organizing themselves, raising their banners and raising the level of violence, at the same time propagating, sometimes in scholarly guise, fantastic and hateful ideologies. In short a tendency toward anarchy is evident. To what extent these groups can destabilize society is an open question. I think the Western press exaggerates their influence, but perhaps I’m whistling in the dark.
But that is not the worst of it. Just a month or so ago, President Medvedev created a historical commission (containing just a few professional historians) charged to combat historical falsification and to penalize the malefactors. Behind this chilling proposal lies the assumption that there can be and is a single correct interpretation of historical events. Those in power have the obligation to uphold this truth, which because it is singular, borders on the sacred. Truth does not argue with error, it crushes it. In short, a whiff of Stalinism. I don’t wish to blow it out of proportion; the stinking rot of Stalinism is still off scene. I pray that historians can keep it there. It is present, nevertheless, to my mind, the first sign of a totalitarian impulse.
Have a good day.