Basically, I’m taking this month off, but I couldn’t resist a comment on the anniversary. In August 1991, I was back at home in the States on a summer break between two academic years teaching in Slovak high schools. I was about to fly back there when it was announced that hardliners had seized power (to some degree) while Mikhail Gorbachev was on vacation at a Crimean dacha.

Back then, the Soviet Union bordered on the easternmost part of Czechoslovakia. A little antsy about the consequences for my stay in that former East Bloc country, I spoke with a friend on one of those scratchy trans-Atlantic phone calls of the day. She and others were a bit apprehensive about matters, she said, but, after all, the last Soviet soldiers had already departed Czechoslovakia that spring.

And I recall Christmas Day, 1991, sitting in an armchair in my Slovak landlady’s apartment, watching the Soviet flag being lowered from the Kremlin for the last time. The dissolution of the behemoth was a major consequence of the failed coup.

I’m also reminded of my first time in Russia, in St. Petersburg in the summer of 1995. As my date and I were seated, waiting for a performance of Swan Lake, she told me about the ballet’s famous “Dance of the Little Swans,” in which four ballerinas lock arms and step in unison: “Shortly after the coup, a TV channel produced a parody with faces of the four main coup leaders superimposed on the dancers. Because, you see, all they showed on TV during the coup was Swan Lake.”

As I later learned, such broadcasts were typical of the Soviet era during times of turmoil or uncertainty. I posted about a similar reference to Swan Lake a year and a half ago (it's a few "short takes," so you'll have to scroll down a bit).

Russian Life has just published a good re-hash of the events of August 1991. (I once wrote an article on medieval Russia for them, by the way, but it’s not available online.)

I’ve searched diligently for the Swan Lake parody, with no luck, but here’s a video of the “Dance des petits cygnes” from YouTube.

Portrait of Anton Chekhov 1898 by Osip Braz - [1], Public Domain, from Wikipedia

Last week I said I was taking August off—then I ran into this poem referencing a Chekhov estate I visited in 2001 and recently featured in a post. It opens:
​
          They say you may have caught
          tuberculosis from the peasants
          who came to Melikhovo
          …
 
You can read the full poem—and hear it in the voice of author Austin Smith--at the New Yorker.

Russia's indisputably most important monastery, the St. Sergius Trinity Lavra is often said to be the spiritual heart of the land. It’s named for the fourteenth-century Sergius (Sergei) of Radonezh, one of the country’s most venerated saints.
In addition to chartering the monastery and arranging for its construction, the monk blessed Prince Dmitry Donskoi as he left on his 1380 campaign against the Tatars, who had raided and dominated Russian territory for 140 years at that point. Dmitry’s victory at the battle of Kulikovo Field didn’t completely overthrow the “Tatar Yoke,” but it did mark a turning point. According to medieval records, St.Sergius otherwise stayed out of politics and only blessed Donskoy after assuring that he had exhausted all peaceful means.
The site was for centuries home to the Old Testament Trinity, the best-known work of Russia’s most famous iconographer, Andrei Rublev. The original now hangs in Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery, but a copy is in its place in the iconostasis of the monastery’s Cathedral of the Assumption.
The monastery also holds the tomb of Boris Godunov—and others of his noble family—who ruled Russia as regent from 1585-98, then as tsar until 1605. He was the brother of Ivan the Terrible’s wife, and his regency followed the death of that ruler, whose eldest legitimate son, Ivan the Bellringer, was mentally incapable of running the country. It was long rumored that Godunov murdered another son of Ivan the Terrible, causing the first line of Russia’s tsars, the Rurikids, to die out, thus leading to uncertainty about the succession in the Time of Troubles. The idea of the murder became the subject of Modest Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov.

IF YOU GO
The site is about an hour northeast of Moscow, on the main route to Yaroslavl, easily accessible by road or rail. You’re likely to find many more pilgrims than tourists. Please remember the dress codes for visiting religious sites in Russia: Men, no shorts or tank tops; women are additionally advised to bring a scarf to cover head and shoulders.


ALSO

My recent series of postings on Russia is no indication of sympathy for the trend of gushing over Putin/Russia from certain American political circles. The timing is mere coincidence.

I'm taking the rest of August off. See you September 1!