I have a mild obsession with Russia. I don't know anything about Russia because I am an ignorant American, but I love it anyway. I love their funny fur hats, I love their weird dance moves and I love that the Kremlin looks suspiciously like King Kandy's castle at the end of Candyland. I think Boris and Natasha stole the show on Rocky and Bullwinkle, vodka is my favorite type of alcohol, and the mystery surrounding poisoned Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko is easily the best news story of the past 20 years. Russia is dark and cold and corrupt and scary. I think it's just swell.
My unfounded love affair with Russia is well documented. At age nine, I wrote my first book, a twenty-five-page novel about a small Russian orphan named Katrina who travels to America to become an Olympic gymnast and finds a box of newborn kittens along the way. I drew upon my extensive knowledge of Russian history, incorporating the word “babushka” into every major scene. This novel is one of the great, undiscovered masterpieces of our time. I have no idea why it was never published.
Ever since the kitten/orphan story – a timeless epic, really - I have continued to support Russian culture in a number of ways. I always root for the Russian team during the Olympics, I try to meet as many people named Vladimir as possible, and the other day I attempted to eat lunch at a Russian restaurant but it was closed.
I don't know much about Russia because I never studied it in school (I was too busy learning about Abraham Lincoln over and over again) and while I've always wanted to learn about the Siberian wonderland, I've never bothered to make that happen. Something always comes up – school, work, my job, Wayne's World playing on Comedy Central. But right now I'm in the fabulous limbo between work and school, and I'm taking a break from Mike Meyers movies, so I bought a few books on Russia and decided to fix my ignorance. I started reading Peter the Great: His Life and World by Robert K. Massie. Yes, I realize that I just recommended a biography about a 17th century European ruler and now I sound like a 65-year-old history professor in need of a new tweed coat, but let me tell you, this book is fascinating.
The first thing I learned was that in 17th century Russia, when peasants left the house to run errands, they carried what little money they had around in their mouths. That's right, their mouths. They stored their coins under their tongues so that no one could steal them. I think this is an excellent idea. The next time I buy a diet Coke from the gas station and the attendant rings me up and says, "That'll be $1.49 please," I'm going to open my mouth and unfold a wet and wadded up dollar bill from my mouth. Then six months later, I'll die of hepatitis. But it'll be the most culturally aware bout of hepatitis you've ever seen.
The next thing I learned was that when Peter was 10-years-old, an angry mob of soldiers and guardsmen stormed the Kremlin and tried to kill his family. Peter lived, of course, and so did his mother, but his personal guardian Mateev was not so lucky. They dragged him by his hair, threw him over a railing onto upturned sword blades, then hacked him to pieces and ground them into the dirt. Later, they did the same thing to his uncle. So I read this, and I immediately felt ridiculous for complaining that life was unfair when I woke up this morning and discovered I was out of coffee.
When I read about Peter the Great, I realize that I just don't have anything to complain about. I mean, sure, he was enormously wealthy and bought himself a navy even though he ruled a landlocked country, while I worry about fluctuating gas prices, but you know what? He didn't have central heat and air. Or television. Or a fleece bathrobe. Peter's half-brother was a cripple and his other half-brother was almost blind, and before Mateev was hacked to pieces he had the extreme displeasure of being banished to Siberia for six years. Or was it seven? Either way, the life of a 17th century Russian was really hard. If Peter the Great were alive now, he'd probably be in therapy.
I can just see Peter sititng in a semi-circle with a bunch of strangers who are sipping coffee out of Styrofoam cups and talking about their relationship problems. One man claims that he suffers from emotional distance and that when he gets too attached to a woman he puts up a "wall," and that's why he's still single at 45. Another man has trouble staying faithful in relationships and he blames that on his parents' poor relationship and the fact that his father never loved him. A small man with glasses stirs his coffee and discusses his feelings towards women, his relationship with his sister, and the time his mother locked herself in the bathroom and took an overdose of chewable vitamins. "That's interesting," says Peter, "because when a hoard of soldiers seized my uncle and beat him until his limbs hung from his body at strange angles, then chopped off his hands and feet with axes, impaled him with spears and, as a final act, trampled his bloody remains into the mud, I felt exactly the same way."
And then he'd write a book about his life called "A Million Little Pieces…Of My Uncle" and Oprah would read it and then he'd make millions of dollars and he would store all of it in his mouth.
And people wonder why I love Russia.
