Opinion | Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky Will Survive, but Putin Has Tainted My Idea of Russia

Many years ago, in the 1980s, I went to Brighton Beach, then in its heyday as a district of newly arrived Soviet Jews, to celebrate the first year (there would not be many more) of the lively local Russian-language weekly, The New American. It was a grand event, rich in humor and tinged with nostalgia. I asked a middle-aged partygoer for his thoughts on his lost homeland, and his reply has stayed with me: “I hate Russia, for forcing me to leave her.”

It was an apt summary of what waves of émigrés from Russia and the Soviet Union since the early 20th century have felt: a sorrowful sense of loss for a motherland — what Russians call “toska po rodine” — coupled with resentment at the autocratic powers that forced them out. My grandparents were among the “White” Russians who fled the Revolution and moved to Paris in the 1920s. A second wave of emigrants left in World War II. The third, Soviet Jews, started leaving in the 1970s. Vladimir Putin has now created another wave of people fleeing Russia, and many of them may still believe, as my forebears did, that they will one day return to the homeland.

Most probably will not.

It’s hard to say precisely where Russian exiles stand, politically or in their sense of attachment to Russia. The waves of emigrants differ widely one from another, and in the United States, they have not behaved like immigrants from Italy, China or Poland who formed hyphenated-American communities and organizations that have persisted over generations. Russians immigrants to America have, by comparison, melded quickly into the general population. Brighton Beach is one of the few places with any Russian flavor in the United States.

Still, the prevailing attitude I’ve encountered among Russian émigrés is the love-hate expressed by my interlocutor in Brighton Beach. It’s the love of an extraordinary culture, a deep attachment to the expanse of steppes and taiga, along with contempt for the chronic misrule, adventurism, imperial illusions and corruption of the leaders.

At least, that was the attitude before Feb. 24, 2022, when Mr. Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Now, I more often encounter, and feel, a new attitude: shame.

The émigrés I grew up with, and those I came to know in America and as a reporter in Israel, rarely felt troubled by the sins of their motherland. Why would they? There were no politics in the usual sense in the Russia they came from, no sense among the vast majority of the population that they had any say in what their self-perpetuating leaders did for them or to them from behind the Kremlin ramparts. The Gulag was not their doing; their Russia was the culture, the scramble for scarce goods, the anecdotes told around vodka in steamy kitchens, the shashlik by a lazy river. Most Russians concentrated on protecting their lives from “them,” as people in the Soviet Union would refer to the leadership and its secret police, a finger pointed to the ceiling, and to survive. Or leave.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine — so cruel, so pointless, so devastating — has changed all this, at least for those not mesmerized by Mr. Putin’s recidivist claptrap. It’s hard not to feel shame at the evidence of Russians killing and raping people who did them no wrong, people who share so much of their history and culture.

And it has become difficult to feel pride in all the things that Russians can genuinely boast about — the great books, the Bolshoi, the hockey stars, the spirituality — when Mr. Putin is dispatching waves of boys to kill and die for his false version of Russia’s manifest destiny and his personal grievances against the West.

This is not necessarily a logical reaction. Tolstoy or Tchaikovsky are not to blame for Mariupol. And most Russians are not directly complicit in Mr. Putin’s malice. But Mr. Putin rose to power pledging to restore greatness to Russia, and the key to that is the desire among ordinary Russians to feel, again, a sense of belonging to a globally respected power. Russians may have been too caught up in Mr. Putin’s chimera to recognize that the seizure of Crimea or the incursions into Donetsk and Luhansk were a precursor of much worse.

When the Russian tanks began their grim parade toward Kyiv on Feb. 24, 2022, Russians, too, were in shock. “We, the Russians living inside and outside of the country, will have to bear the shame of this situation for years to come,” wrote Anastasia Piatakhina Giré, a psychotherapist in Paris, shortly after the invasion. She grew up in Soviet Union, and many of her patients are displaced Russians. “We can do very little to turn down the volume of this feeling, no matter how many Ukrainian flags we display on our social media feeds or either publicly or privately in our daily lives.”

A year later, another expatriate, Anastasia Edel, author of “Russia: Putin’s Playground: Empire, Revolution and the New Tsar,” wrote a syndicated column about trying to come to grips with the shame and confusion: “As someone who was shaped by Russian and Soviet literature, I have been made to feel like an unwilling partner to Russian crimes. That is why, since last February, I have abandoned any pretense of being a cultural envoy. I have been an envoy of nothing — just another immigrant who came to America in search of a better life.”

That is the tragic irony of Mr. Putin’s war. His attempt to “restore Russian greatness” through violence and hatred has tainted Russia’s real greatness for years to come, just as his attempt to quash Ukrainian nationhood has steeled its foundations. We know from the Germans’ postwar history that restoring a battered national identity is a project of decades, maybe more.

In the end, Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky will survive, as did Goethe and Bach, and Ukraine will be rebuilt and incorporated more closely in the West. But for Russians and those of us who identify even a little bit as Russian, something elemental has been destroyed, and a lot of painful soul-searching lies ahead.

Visited 1 times, 1 visit(s) today

Related Article

Celebrity Reactions to Winner of Game

The crowd at Super Bowl LIX was unsurprisingly filled with plenty of celebrity guests. There were the expected attendees, like Philadelphia Eagles superfan Bradley Cooper and Kansas City Chiefs fanatic Paul Rudd, along with Taylor Swift, Miles Teller and Pete Davidson. The Eagles led the Chiefs throughout Sunday night’s game before triumphing over the reigning

Bill Gates: Apple founder Steve Jobs was great at design but not a good …

In a recent interview, Bill Gates shared an interesting anecdote about his relationship with the late Steve Jobs, revealing that Jobs once suggested he should have taken LSD to improve his design sense. Gates recalled Jobs saying, “Steve Jobs once said that he wished I’d take acid because then maybe I would have had more

Who Is Aravind Srinivas, CEO Who Has Challenged Elon Musk Over USAID

New Delhi: Aravind Srinivas, the Indian-origin CEO of the AI search engine Perplexity AI, is not new to controversies. Recently, he challenged his Tesla counterpart Elon Musk to “stop” him if he can from raising a mammoth sum from the federal agency. “Considering raising $500B from USAID. Funding secured. Stop me if you can @elonmusk

Commercials Try to Shake Up Celebrity Formula

Celebrities may no longer be winning at the Big Game. An array of Super Bowl advertisers turned up with creative ideas that shunned the typical famous faces making quick-paced jokes in favor of concepts meant to inspire. Nike burnished a host of female athletes backed by the Led Zeppelin chestnut “Whole Lotta Love.” Pfizer took

How Elon Musk’s Company Starlink is Involved in a Super Bowl 2025 Commercial

By Olivia Bellusci is a Newsweek writer based in New York. Her focus is reporting on entertainment news. She has in depth knowledge of the pop culture landscape. Olivia joined Newsweek in 2024. She is a graduate of Pace University. You can get in touch with Olivia by emailing o.bellusci@newsweek.com. You can find her on

Taylor Swift, Blue Ivy Carter, and All the Celebrities at Super Bowl 2025

It’s Super Bowl 2025 time, and while many are glued to their screens for the Super Bowl LIX showdown between Taylor Swift and Gigi Hadid — sorry, we mean the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles — others are just in it for the celebrity sightings. And the celebs were out in full force in

Photos: Biggest Celebrities At Super Bowl 2025

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA – FEBRUARY 09: (L-R) Kevin Costner and Pete Davidson attend the Super Bowl … [+] LIX Pregame at Caesars Superdome on February 09, 2025 in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Roc Nation) Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Roc Nation Kevin Costner, Pete Davidson, Taylor Swift, Jay-Z, Adam Sandler, Bradley

All the Celebs at the 2025 Super Bowl LIX

Celebrities are flocking to New Orleans faster than I flock to a table full of cheese dips, wings, and tiny football stadiums made out of deli meat. In other words: Super Bowl LIX is upon us, and A-listers have arrived to watch the Kansas City Chiefs go up against the Philadelphia Eagles. Obviously, Taylor Swift

Celebrities at Super Bowl 2025

Dozens of Hollywood notables and celebrities are in New Orleans on Sunday to witness the Kansas City Chiefs take on the Philadelphia Eagles during football’s biggest night. Jay-Z, Adam Sandler and Bradley Cooper were among players, coaches and thousands of fans inside the Caesars Superdome to watch Super Bowl LIX. The Grammy-winning rapper was spotted on the

Vance Accuses Judges Who Block Trump’s Executive Orders of Acting Illegally

Vice President JD Vance attacked federal judges on Sunday for blocking several of the Trump administration’s sweeping executive actions, characterizing their recent decisions as “illegal.” “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” Mr. Vance wrote on social media. Mr. Vance’s post raises questions about whether the Trump administration will abide by federal rulings

President Donald Trump Super Bowl pregame interview: How to watch

President Donald Trump prerecorded an interview with Bret Baier that’s scheduled to be aired on Sunday, ahead of Super Bowl 59. Part of the interview with Baier, Fox News Channel’s chief political anchor, will air at 3 p.m. ET during the Fox Super Bowl Sunday pregame show, according to Fox News. The rest of the interview

3 memoirs illustrate the peculiar lives of celebrities

Throughout the 1990s, I was a music journalist in London. I profiled hundreds of rock bands at the start of their careers, including Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails and the Foo Fighters. I can’t imagine a better way to have spent my twenties. But I witnessed a downside. For many

Which Celebrities Are Eagles and Chiefs Fans?

With Sunday’s Super Bowl LIX pitting the Kansas City Chiefs against the Philadelphia Eagles once again, viewers must decide who to root for — and if they want to jump on a bandwagon fanbase, there are plenty of celebrity fans they can get behind. The most famous and obvious fan is Taylor Swift, who has

Has WWE’s Use Of Streaming Celebrities Gone Too Far?

There has been an influx of celebrities getting involved in wrestling over recent years to varying degrees of success, with the general quality of their in-ring performances actually being pretty good. This has certainly been a feature of WWE in recent times, as they have welcomed the extra exposure that booking famous people from other

Trump says he has spoken with Putin about ending Ukraine war | US foreign policy

Donald Trump has said he held talks with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, over a negotiated end of the three year Russia-Ukraine war, indicated that Russian negotiators want to meet with US counterparts. Trump told the New York Post that he had spoken to Putin, remarking that “I better not say” just how many times.

Donald Trump’s FBI nominee Kash Patel under fire over Shein stake

Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s nominee for FBI director, has come under scrutiny over his business ties, including holding stock in a group that owns Shein, the Chinese fast-fashion retailer accused of using forced labour. Patel stated in a financial disclosure form that he held $1mn-$5mn worth of shares in Elite Depot, a Cayman Islands group

I understand why families are divided and friendships are disintegrating over Trump

Quick Take Donald J. Trump’s rhetoric, manner and needs are so abhorrent and terrifying that retired attorney Peter Gelblum understands why talking about him causes rifts in families. He fears this state will only get worse as the Trump presidency advances. Trump supporters will just have to accept why friends and family don’t want to

Trump’s sanctions against the ICC are disgraceful | Kenneth Roth

Donald Trump’s executive order reauthorizing sanctions against international criminal court (ICC) personnel reflects a disgraceful effort to ensure that no American, or citizen of an ally such as Israel, is ever investigated or prosecuted. Quite apart from this warped sense of justice – that it is only for other people – the president’s limited view

0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x