Vadim Belov. Americans through the eyes of a Soviet child

Americans through the eyes of a Soviet child
Vadim Belov

Publication date: March 22, 2000

As a child, I saw America in black and white. Literally and figuratively. All Americans were divided in my mind into blacks and whites. The blacks were: Uncle Tom and his hut, Angela Davis and her fight for world peace, Louis Armstrong and his saxophone, Marilyn Monroe and her “Happy Bestday, Mr. President,” Lyubov Orlova and her son, Van Clyburn at the piano, the only one good President Kennedy, who was assassinated. That's all it seems.

The white Americans were: Uncle Sam, Mr. Twister, the American military, Dean Reed with his guitar, Mikhail Taratuta, Dr. Haider, who starved for a whole year at the White House, but never died, but was terribly tired of him, the Ku Klux Klan.

At first I loved all the blacks very much. Especially Angela Davis for her amazing hairstyle and the fact that she always celebrated March 8th with the entire Soviet people. I really liked it when Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev congratulated her. But the blacks were not entirely Americans, since it was known that they were brought from Africa, where they worked on plantations, and when they got to America, they remained slaves. This was known from the film "Children of Captain Grant". How they were oppressed in America was not entirely clear. Most likely, there were some plantations there too. At best, blacks were allowed to work in the kitchen. I was almost sure that Angela Davis, returning to her home, immediately fell into the hands of her exploitative master, who terribly oppressed her as a woman and as a person. Surely he often pulled her by the hair and slammed her muzzle against the door frame. Only on March 8, at the personal request of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, the poor woman was released into the USSR so that she could rest a little here and feel like a real woman, who is also, in general, a person. For which she received a lot of flowers and sweets. Angela Davis was loved by all Soviet people and pitied her very much for her difficult life in the USA. Everyone thought that Angela Davis had it even worse than Soviet women, and this was a consolation.

Louis Armstrong fared no better. He was not allowed out of the kitchen at all. Only on weekends were they allowed to play the saxophone. And he played his melodies full of sadness, telling them about the difficult fate of a black American. They say that Louis Armstrong, even when he became famous and fabulously rich, remembered the behest of his father, who once told his son: “Louis, son, every black man, no matter who he becomes, should always have a white friend, so that in difficult times he can Put your hand on your shoulder and say: "This is my Negro!"

As for Marilyn Monroe, she was a repainted black woman because she was kind and beautiful. She had a difficult fate in her own way. At first she was a circus performer and gave birth to a black child. She had to leave for the USSR and give the child to be raised by Lyubov Orlova, and return back to the USA herself, because she loved President Kennedy. So the film "Circus" did not tell the whole story truthfully. And Marilyn Monroe didn’t have a boy, but a girl. (The presenter of a program about sex is now well-known to everyone.) Well, of course, Marilyn Monroe and Lyubov Orlova corresponded, they say that they were even sisters. But this is already gossip. Marilyn Monroe wanted to take her daughter back at the end of the Cold War, but she died from anxiety. This is such a sad story indeed.

As for Van Clyburn, it was more my aunt than I who had a liking for this pianist. It always seemed mediocre to me, albeit touching. The fact is that my aunt was also a participant in this competition. P.I. Tchaikovsky. She turned over the notes for her friend, who, in turn, suffered a fiasco already in the first round. Although my friend played no worse than Van Clyburn. Well, as you know, my aunt had a crush on Van Clyburn. True, then many fell in love with this pianist. I think an important reason, again, was his unusual hairstyle, almost like Angela Davis. So Van Clyburn was an American with black genes. Van Clyburn's portrait always hung in my aunt's house. She didn't even take it off when she got married. Even when I found out that Van Clyburn was homosexual; She did not take down his portrait and continued to love him, but probably with platonic love. And now she won’t even take this portrait off, because everyone has already forgotten who Van Clyburn is and mistakes him for her aunt’s husband in his youth. Because my aunt’s husband is Armenian. He still has beautiful curly hair. And Van Clyburn, they say, has gone bald. Probably from troubles. This is such a sad story.

It was known about white Americans that they were all monstrously rich and very proud of their wealth. Mr. Twister, a former minister, owner of factories, newspapers, and steamships, seemed especially disgusting. It was completely incomprehensible how a former government employee could end up with such a variety of private property. Well, it would be nice if he owned a factory there, of course. And even he has steamships. And why he needed newspapers was not at all clear. What's the use of them? In addition, Mr. Twister in this poem by Marshak was a rabid ethnophobe.

His daughter aroused great sympathy. Eccentric and a bit of that, but with love for Russia. I persuaded my dad to travel around the USSR. Although her ideas about Russia, where there is plenty of black caviar in every home, seemed naive. In general, a typical stupid American girl.

Apparently, the Americans, due to their remoteness from civilization, were quite extravagant simply due to the lack of good upbringing and education. There was a well-known poem about Americans:

One American stuck his finger up his butt.
He probably thought it was a gramophone.

An obvious idiot, a representative of the working class, dulled by abundance and degraded. These are the ones they sent to Vietnam.

The extravagance of Americans was manifested in the constant smoking of thick cigars, and in wearing ridiculous white hats, and in putting their feet up on the table.

The Americans were also characterized by disgusting hypocrisy and insincerity. It was known that Americans always smile, hiding their spiritual coldness and indifference behind a smile. I always thought Dean Reed was one of the most disgusting hypocrites, who inspired the builders of the Baikal-Amur Mainline with his songs. I had personal reasons for not liking the BAM builders. One of my distant relatives moved from Ukraine to the North to Neryungri in search of a long ruble. Crossing the endless expanses of our vast Motherland, she always stopped in Moscow. I had to give up my room to this distant relative, and sleep on a cot in the hallway. It seemed to me that I, too, would eventually be sent to the North on a Komsomol trip to lay sleepers, which I really didn’t want. Therefore, the enthusiasm of the successful singer made me feel furious.

The hero of constant television reports from Washington, the bearded, shabby man Dr. Haider, also seemed hypocritical. He protested at the White House against injustice, refusing to eat or drink. His protest was unbelievable. He was supposed to die of hunger on the third day. Reports about him were broadcast for almost a whole year. So they fed me. From the cheerful appearance of the Soviet journalist Taratuta and his hero, it was clear that after reporting they were going to an expensive restaurant. It was a shame to be deceived so cheaply.

I also did not like the American military with its constant saber-rattling and unleashing an arms race. The American military threat seemed real, especially after the stories in NVP (basic military training) lessons about how to behave in the face of an atomic bombing. It was a pain to put on and run around the school in a gas mask. After that I had nightmares. And in reality I was haunted by depression and fears generated by atomic psychosis.

The view of New York that was shown on TV also caused horror. I was sure that all cities in America were exactly the same. It was clear that the people living in such houses were clearly sick and capable of anything.

The 80th year has come - the year of the Moscow Olympics. This year I became disillusioned with blacks. Rumors spread around Moscow that blacks who came to the Soviet Union brought a lot of infectious diseases. They said that some black man walked around Moscow and injected everyone with a syringe with some nasty thing and people died in agony. Another black bastard gave chewing gum poisoned with syphilis. The third was ballpoint pens and children's toys that exploded. In general, the blacks with whom I sympathized so much turned out to be quite insidious. Together with the entire Soviet people, I fell into the trap of my own consciousness, when you hate racism and blacks most of all.

In a word, from childhood I developed a negative, albeit blurred and internally contradictory image of America and Americans. It was built on the principle of absence. In spatial terms, it was not clear where America was and how one could get there? Traveling to America was associated with serious danger (Titanic) or, at best, with heroism (Papanin). In terms of time, the Americans also seemed to be antipodes: when in all normal countries, for Americans, day is night. The Americans had no history (the European Middle Ages seemed to be the true history), so they were all uncultured, poorly educated and corrupt. Weak sympathy for the black population of America coexisted in the Soviet consciousness with a stereotype about their marginality and inferiority. White Americans seemed not to be a real nation - since they were all emigrants and could return to their historical homeland at any time. From all this it followed that America, as it were, did not exist. But on the other hand, it was the United States that posed a certain threat to the inhabitants of the USSR, a threat all the more dangerous because it was not clear where and from whom it came. This threat was also actualized by Ronald Reagan's Star Wars program, which later turned out to be a myth. In the minds of the Soviet average, America and the Americans were finally located somewhere in space.

That is why during the era of perestroika it was so easy for ideologists to write that Americans were supposedly very similar to Russians. That is why it is so easy today to blame Americans for all imaginable and unimaginable troubles.

When I met my first living American woman, I could not immediately identify her. She didn't put her finger up her butt, she didn't put her feet up on the table, she didn't smoke cigars, and she didn't have an atomic bomb in her pocket. She spoke excellent Russian, read Tolstoy and loved Matisse. The combination of ice cream in Coca-Cola, which was familiar to her since childhood, seemed extravagant to me at first, but they only drink coffee with lemon in Russia.