Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story

Interlude: Facts and Arguments

155 INTERLUDE Facts and Arguments My positi on at th e Sc hool of Soil Scienc e remained shaky, especially following my failed defection to art history. Throughout the autumn of 1985, as poetry-writing, Lyuba, and my parents’ persecution had all taken center stage, I had been neglecting my studies. Something had to change in the new semester, or else I would face more problems. When classes resumed in January, I plunged myself into exploratory research, spending long hours at the library. By the end of the spring I needed to build up a research agenda. It was a challenge to search for research ideas that would excite me enough to keep me going. About once a week in January, February, and March I went to see Professor Rozanov, the brightest academic star at my school. We brainstormed about topics for a research term paper and a senior thesis I was going to write under his mentorship. What if we measured the impact of the decreasing salination of the Black Sea on the fertility of soil in the coastal areas? (I wanted a pretext for doing field work in the environs of Odessa, the home of my beloved writers from the “South-Western School,” Isaac Babel, Eduard Bagritsky, and Yury Olesha.) Has anyone studied the relationship between the changing pattern of massive bird migrations and the soil content in the areas of natural habitat where large numbers of migratory birds congregate, molt, and leave their droppings? (I could already picture myself traveling to the Volga delta, the largest in Europe.) Rozanov listened approvingly and specifically asked for bibliographies of articles published in Western journals. I ended up perusing almost the entire run of Soil Science at the university library. Unwittingly, I must have been searching for some compelling 156 | The Expediti on travel narrative, a story, even a fantasy, to shape my research in a more or less literary or artistic direction. As I was trying to distill my ideas down to a list of two or three topics with bibliographies, to present them to Rozanov, a historical event was taking place in Moscow. The Twenty-Seventh Congress of the Communist Party convened at the end of February and the beginning of March 1986. There was talk at the Congress about “acceleration” of the Soviet economy. The terms perestroika (“restructuring”) and glasnost (“openness”) were not spoken of directly, but a new, reformist economic course was guardedly publicized, and “democratization” was hinted at. In this atmosphere that augured a new political Thaw, another fiasco occurred at school. In the middle of April, after months of listening to my research ideas and encouraging me, Professor Rozanov unexpectedly turned down the formal request to serve as my advisor. This happened at a public meeting of the students with the entire faculty and research staff of the Department of General Soil Science. At such annual meetings students presented research ideas and advisors were formally assigned and announced. As the chair of the department, Rozanov presided over the meeting. Going down a typed list of about a dozen of my classmates, he would pause to say something about each student and identify their would-be advisor. I was always nearly at the bottom of the alphabetical list, not an easy thing for someone born to be on fire with impatience. Finally Rozanov had reached my named and cleared his throat. Imagine my shock when he muttered something to the effect that “Shrayer had come by once or twice with some raw ideas,” and that “Shrayer would benefit from working with one of our junior research colleagues.” I was so shocked I couldn’t contain myself. I jumped up and addressed Rozanov in front of the whole gathering: “But Boris Georgievich, I don’t understand. Just a few days ago you and I had firmed up a research plan for next year, and you acted as though I was already your advisee.” Some of my classmates turned toward me with strange looks. Neither hostile nor unsympathetic , their looks rather made me feel like a condemned man. With his tobacco-stained fingers, Rozanov tied a loop in the air and only said this: “Shrayer, I shall please see you in my office, privately.” And he moved to the last person on the list. In te rl ude: Fa ct s a n d Ar gumen t s | 157 Why did Rozanov wash his hands...