An ironic journey past Red Square in a red Albea

MOSCOW – Even on a 60-hour first trip to this dome-bedecked city there is still much to surprise the uninitiated. Descending toward Sheremetyevo airport, I scanned the landscape in search of my expectations about “Stalinist architecture.” Yet last weekend, all that ultimately conformed to my prejudices was the new British Embassy.

The first irony of many. Irony is in the water here, in the air. Largely impenetrable to outsiders such as myself, the deep sense of irony struck me as among the strongest of bonds between Russians. That sense all but defined my brief trip.

My first visit to Russia was belated. Embarrasingly so. I have turned down many an invitation to visit, most recently two years ago. Too busy, I told myself. But a more honest explanation is that first visits are intimidating. And as I found myself on the defensive, explaining this to 25-year-old Sasha Kapitsa on Tuesday afternoon at “Coffee Mania” a block from Red Square, I seized on the metaphor of Potemkin.

Sasha, in between trips to the Arctic and Malawi, became my accidental tour guide after my principle hosts, fellow Californians Michael and Dulce Murphy, had to rush off with Moscow State University’s Masha Kapitska to a meeting. As we polished off breakfast, I suggested I could entertain myself, perhaps fill my final few hours in the city with a trip on the fabled metro. But that would not do. Sasha had a few hours to spare, her mother explained. And so minutes later she wheeled up in her red Albea, made in Turkey she later pointed out. We sped off alongside the Moscow River.

The intimidating factor in any first journey, I told this descendent of a dynasty of physicists, is the risk that it will become a “Potemkin’s Village,” a contrived set of illusions as those staged by the minister Grigori Potemkin to fool Empress Catherine II. How to actually learn something on a visit to Moscow?

The answer came a few weeks ago, on a visit to the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, founded back in 1962 by the writer Michael Murphy. He is the author of many books, including a best-seller on the mysticism of golf, “Golf in the Kingdom.”

Michael’s wife Dulce, meanwhile, founded through Esalen the Center for Track II Diplomacy in 1980. Originally, this was a U.S.-Soviet-focused forum for cultural exchange aimed at preventing World War III. Early participants included a then little-known Russian named Boris Yeltsin. The state of today’s world suggests Dulce’s task is incomplete. She was coming to Moscow for her 63rd visit in October. Michael was joining her. Why not fly up?

No Potemkin in this offer. Born into this extended family of the Murphy’s, Sasha agreed with my point.

Sunday morning I boarded a flight that’s not much longer than a journey to Kars. My hosts quickly walked me through the obvious: past Lenin’s tomb, around the Kremlin, across Red Square and through Nikita Khrushchev’s Gum Department Store. Irony stared down from every building.

Then it was back to the hotel to be trundled into a Mercedes the size of a barge. Dazed by the pace of a visit then just six hours old, I soon was ushered into the famed Soviet Writers’ Union, now the Writers’ Club. Some around the table would be shy about quotations in this newspaper. One who would not sat next to me: Victor Erofeyev, author of eight books including “The Good Stalin” of which I now have an autographed copy. He also contributes to the New Yorker and magazines in Europe. Much talk at the table was evidence that if there is a country where America is in more disrepute than Turkey, it is Russia. NATO’s bombing of Belgrade in 1999, the recognition of Kosovo in July of last year and support for Georgia in the war with Russia that followed. This is the short list that stirred passions over cold vodka and hot borsht. Victor, thankfully, pulled me into a discussion of Turkey, which he visited last year. From that visit he produced an essay, “Brother Turks,” published in a recent book.

“To me it is fascinating that if you look at the relationships of Russia.., with America, with China, with Poland, so much is written. I am sure you could find at least 1,000 books on the Polish-Russian relationship even though the Poles hate us,” he said. “But Russia has a relationship with Turkey that is at least as old, as deep and as complex. But neither country is particularly conscious of it.”

Victor advanced this argument through the Ottomans and numerous wars, through Lenin’s financing for Atatürk’s revolution, to the introduction of feminist thought to Istanbul by Russian emigres fleeing the October revolution. It went on through the Cold War and into today’s burgeoning trade. All I could contribute was the observation that the equipment in my biology lab at a Turkish state high school in 1973 was Russian made. “You see,” Victor responded, pouring me another vodka. I am not sure my anecdote of Russian microscopes earned me redemption for my Americanness. It did send Victor’s driver off to return with a copy of the essay. In Russian, it is now being translated at the Daily News and he gave me permission to publish it. This task is being carried out by Marzena Romanowska, one of our editors. Marzena is Polish. So along with this bit of irony I left on her desk, I must share with her a bit of the duty free caviar I brought home as well.

On Monday, more meetings. A banker. A television producer. A Tatar who advises President Vladimir Putin on matters Islamic. But the evening had been set aside for dinner with someone approaching a childhood hero of mine. Not childhood really because I was in my early 20s when a sophisticated Soviet appeared on ABC News Nightline, passionately challenging the premises of private property in perfect New York English. Initially, Americans took this as evidence of Soviet propaganda, training so perfect he could pass for one of us. It was much later that I and other Americans learned that Vladimir Pozner in fact was one of us. His parents members of the American Communist Party, the family migrated to the Soviet Union in 1952.

This story has always held my fascination. For the same year that the Pozners moved to Moscow, the head of the Judson family was swept into the madness of McCarthyism. Our story was different, for my father has rejected communism and “named names” before the Washington tribunal. Pilloried by both right and left, the Judsons’ exile was ultimately to the coastal town of Cayucos where I grew up. Two communists, two families and two very different journeys spawned by the same witch hunt. A few years back, Pozner wrote a book, “Parting with Illusions,” that called the Soviet Union for what it was. That book was, for me personally, a kind of exoneration of my father and his decision.

So ironically (again) these two middle-aged sons of socialist solidarity bit into an Italian meal that included seasonal white truffles from the island of Alba. Our discussion included his own hero, New York Yankees center fielder Joe DiMaggio. Is it ironic that as I began this column, a bulletin came over that the Yankees just took the pennant? I am not sure. But I do know that Vladimir is cheering the victory in Moscow. But one observation in particular became the segue to Victor’s thesis of the night before, the bond between Russia and Turkey.

Russia, Vladimir argued, is a “female country.” Germany, by contrast, is a “male country.” Go to Germany, he suggested, and over time the men seem to gain vitality, strength and authority. Straight-backed, confident men in their 60s or 70s will be a common sight at the airport in Munich or Berlin. Hardly the case at Sheremetyevo. In Russia, it is the women, he said, who form the core of social vitality. As Russian men grow more sickly and weak, the strength of society is the growing dynamism of women. This, he suggested, is the untold story of Russia.

“You know,” I told him, “what you have just argued could well be a description of Turkey.” And then I shared Victor’s theme. And Vladimir promised to come to Istanbul as soon as I can arrange it.

I shared all this with Sasha as we circled around a bend in the river road, past the monstrosity that is the British Embassy toward a high point to gaze back upon the magnificent city. Her response was ceaseless laughter. She said she would have to think more about “female countries” and “brother Turks.” But she also sought to help me out.

“Look,” she commanded as we stepped from the car to a bluff above the pavilion built for the 1980 Olympics. She drew my attention to a series of finished and half-finished skyscrapers visible on a distant edge of the city. “We call it ‘Enkaland.’” This was reference to the Turkish Enka Group, responsible for much of new construction in this city.

A last irony before the rush back to Sheremetyevo.

David Judson is editor-in-chief of the Hürriyet Daily News