Alexander Kuprin (d. 1938) is less widely known in the West than his friends Chekhov and Bunin. However, he’s still venerated in Russia, and in the early twentieth century Kuprin rivalled his friends’ popularity. His 1905 novel The Duel sold 45,500 copies, which was remarkable in a country most of whose 126 million denizens either couldn’t read or didn’t have Russian as their first language.
At about that time, Kuprin wrote a sketch of his visit to Finland, displaying a true writer’s ability to convey a compelling picture with a few fleeting observations and images.
Now, if someone wrote a sketch like that today, he’d be branded as an inveterate Russophobe. If English, he’d be accused of being a narrow-minded Little Englander. If Russian, he’d be castigated for venting his personal grievances. If he happened to be of Jewish descent, the accusers would have that smug say-no-more expressions on their faces.
Well, Kuprin was neither a Russophobe nor a Jew nor, definitely, a Little Englander. He was an immensely popular Russian writer, whose vision was sharpened by his talent for unerring observation and understanding of human nature.
In this case, Kuprin put those qualities to good use by outlining with a few masterly touches a Russian type that still exists, and has always existed. Moreover, expertly goaded and guided by middle-class revolutionaries, it came to the fore in 1917 and has been ruling the roost ever since, if in different guises.
Now imagine what would happen to England if all her educated and business classes were wiped out in a matter of months, either murdered or driven into exile (as Kuprin was in 1919). Taking over would be today’s tattooed louts, with their feral energies channelled into xenophobic and murderous conduits by people like Jeremy Corbyn and Ken Livingston.
Are you getting the picture of an instant catastrophe, social, cultural, moral and economic? With those people in charge, try to imagine the country’s evolution over the next century, try to fathom the genetic damage done to the nation, visualise blown up churches, mass nameless graves, ruined cities, fields overgrown with weeds, millions of children growing up in diabolical orphanages after their parents disappeared, decades of nauseatingly xenophobic propaganda…
Have you done that? Good. Now imagine all the same things happening in a country that has never had centuries of our legal tradition and intuitive civility to fall back on, one that for most of its history has been at war with its neighbours, has always discouraged business or cultural contacts with foreigners, treated as a crypto-traitor anyone who has as much as visited the West, had most of her population enslaved for much of its history.
Go through this exercise, and you’ll understand Putin’s roots and those of a Russia he’s moulding in his image. You’ll see the nature of his much vaunted public support that the likes of Trump and Hitchens dare highlight as proof of virtue.
Kuprin didn’t have to go through such mental exertions, nor was he necessarily capable of them. His job was to refract through his artist’s brain what he saw with his artist’s eye. That’s exactly what he did in this Finnish sketch:
“As I recall, some five years ago I happened to join the writers Bunin and Fyodorov for a day trip to Imatra. We were coming back late at night. At about eleven the train stopped at Antrea station, and we got out to have a bite.
“A long table was laden with dishes, hot and cold. There was freshly smoked salmon, fried trout, cold roast beef, some kind of game, very tasty tiny patties, things like that. Everything was incredibly clean, appetising and gorgeous. Along the edges of the table, bread baskets surrounded piles of small plates and heaps of knives and forks.
“Everybody picked whatever he liked, ate as much as he wanted, then went to the counter and of his own goodwill paid exactly one mark (thirty-seven kopecks) for his supper. No monitoring, no distrust.
“Our Russian hearts were overwhelmed by this mutual trust, used as we were to IDs, police stations, concierges forced to spy on us, universal thievery and suspicions.
“But when we returned to the carriage, we were treated to a lovely picture in the indigenous Russian genre. The thing was, we shared the compartment with two masonry contractors.
“Everyone knows this type of tight-fisted upstart from Meshchov county in the Kaluga province: wide, glistening, slant-eyed red mug, red hair curling from under the cap, thin beard, shifty eyes, a penny’s worth of piety, fervent patriotism and contempt for everything non-Russian – in other words, a perfectly familiar, truly Russian face. You should have heard how they mocked the poor Finns.
“ ‘Now that’s what I call stupid. Bloody idiots they are. Hell, add it all up, what I scoffed at those bastards’, that’d be three roubles seventy, at least… What scum! Haven’t been beaten enough, sons of bitches! Savages, that’s all I can say.’ ”
“And the other one agreed, gagging with laughter:“ ‘And I… smashed a glass on purpose, then went and spat on that fish.’ ”
“ ‘Way to go, with those bastards. Freedom, my arse. Must stamp on them good and proper!’ ”