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  • The Trappist Monk and Pasternak's Tree
  • Kathleen Tarr (bio)

My first, most vivid impressions of Russia were formed when I happened by chance to see Doctor Zhivago alone at the age of fourteen. The film's sounds and images—the panorama of the snowy Ural Mountains, the crowded and whistling trains, the clanking streetcars similar to the ones I always rode in Pittsburgh, and the mystery and scale of the wind-swept Siberian steppe with its fluttering golden birch trees—lodged into my subconscious. I could only understand the film emotionally because the rest of the storyline— especially the cruelty, the bloody fighting, and the confusing politics—made little sense to me at the time.

Russia, a country of great contrasts and contradictions, at once a cold cellar and a warm hearth, was artistically interpreted by David Lean, the acclaimed British director. Lean, who also directed Lawrence of Arabia and [End Page 449] The Bridge on the River Kwai, brought all his cinematic powers to bear in his film treatment of Boris Pasternak's novel. Upon its original release in 1965 the American public was mesmerized by the film rendition of Doctor Zhivago and equally captivated by Maurice Jarre's musical score; "Lara's Theme" played on American radio stations everywhere. Omar Sharif and Julie Christie starred in the film, and though it earned five Academy Awards, it lost the 1965 Best Picture award to The Sound of Music.

Like many others around me from humble economic roots, without the privilege of a sophisticated education and upbringing, I was uninformed and detached from the real cultural and intellectual history of Russia. In public school and in my family we only understood Russia as a global threat and superpower: Russia as a red Soviet machine, Russia as domination, Russia as everything opposite of freedom-loving America. We thought their men and women were robots, obviously brainwashed to march in step, to salute their communist leaders, and to despise all foreigners from the West. I was conditioned to believe that countries with stupid communists running around couldn't possibly offer the world anything of material or cultural value.

As a schoolgirl I remember learning world history as a long unbroken timeline, notched and intersected by all the important discoveries and conflicts—a string of dates to memorize. This was linear chalkboard history— void of tone and short on meaning, but an expedient way to introduce the subject of history to developing young minds, until later when a possible university classroom might offer more perspective and complexity.

The divisive, paranoid, and absurd reality of the Cold War spanned my entire childhood in Pittsburgh and reached well into my adult life. When attending public schools, I found that my teachers couldn't or wouldn't devote classroom time to the details of the Russian Revolution—or to educating us about any of the country's greatest poets. There were simply too many prescribed subjects to cover, and the Soviet Union was our mortal enemy—not worth talking about unless it was to offer the usual blanket criticisms.

But, by the time I was twenty-two, and holding my newly minted official certificate of higher education, my curiosity about the Soviet Union was dramatically reawakened—because I had moved to Alaska. Both countries were still trapped in the choke hold of the Cold War. Military forces along the Russian and Alaskan borders stood ready to launch weapons from secret missile silos. This geographic proximity to our Soviet menace naturally drew my attention to Russia. As an Alaskan I live in a Russian-soaked land and hear Slavic names all around me: Shelikoff Strait, Baranof Island, Kalifornsky Road, Mt. Veniaminof, the Pribilofs, Nikolaevsk, Strogonof Point, the Samovar Hills, and many more from all corners of the state. Alaska, rich in marine resources, was claimed and occupied as a colony of the Russian Empire from 1741 until 1867—the only state among fifty that shares this unique long-term historical connection. Russians hunted sea otters and [End Page 450] built fur trading posts on Alaska's bluffs and rivers. They introduced Russian Orthodoxy to Alaska's native peoples and first recorded their languages into written forms...

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