Moscow, February 1, 1999, 2:30 p.m. It was cold and snowing lightly under a gray, unflinching sky. The weather matched the chill of the basement of the gray, five-story building that housed the psychological institute. That temperature contrasted with the warmth of the enthusiastic students who greeted us with cups of hot instant soup, bread thickly spread with liver-wurst, and “red fish” eggs, as they called salmon caviar. “Hurry up, we'll be too late to see the Kremlin,” Gary Goldsmith said, as our group stepped back out into the cold.
“The Kremlin?” I said to myself with disbelief, excitement, and a feeling of dread that came from some place deep in my marrow. Because I was born in Czechoslovakia, my father often warned me, “Don't forget, Axel, there was a lapse in international law when you were naturalized as a United States citizen. If you go to Czechoslovakia, you could end up drafted into the Russian army.” I often heard his voice as a familiar echo. I was afraid to return to my birthplace until 1990, only when I was reassured the Iron Curtain had really come down. But that was Czechoslovakia. “Now I'm in Russia, in Moscow, and I'm going to the Kremlin?” I mused, still disbelievingly.
We took the subway. It was clean but gray. People were silent and in a rush. It could have been New York, save for the uniformity of the black heavy coats and the fur hats. In the corridors, people sat in a quiet and orderly fashion offering their wares. A woman held out a plate with two dead fish. Another offered three potatoes. Sheldon Roth sat next to an old lady on the subway and gave her a piece of candy. She burst into tears. Gary translated what she said: “I haven't had candy in ages. I can't afford it on my $24-a-month pension.” Shaken, we followed our guide up a fast escalator and found ourselves looking at a large brick fortress, with an arched gate. Through the gate we could see the colorful conical domes of St. Basil's Cathedral. On the left was the GUM department store; on the right, Lenin's tomb and the Kremlin.
“We have to see Lenin,” Sheldon stated matter-of-factly. I agreed. As we entered the dark, silent, cold low-ceilinged room, with uniformed Russian soldiers in each corner, we could see clearly the body and face of Lenin lying on his back, as though he were sleeping. I was struck by feeling the enormous power this one man had over the destiny of so many people. And I was struck by how familiar he appeared to me. I hadn't realized how many times I had seen his picture, just as he looked now, since my childhood, in Life Magazine and in posters as the Communist military celebrated May Day in Red Square. Transference can be understood as a general phenomenon by which we seek, and find, familiarity in new situations, able to appreciate differences by anchoring our view to something in our past. Lenin looked familiar to me; I didn't know I had a transference to Lenin.
That night we went to the Bolshoi Ballet. Giselle is a fairy tale of a beautiful peasant girl who died of a broken heart when a nobleman to whom she was betrothed betrayed her. Having tragically died in this way, she joined a vast number of “wilis,” brides who die before their weddings. They are enraged and seek revenge. With their white dresses flowing, they dance murderously in the woods at midnight. Giselle, the heroine, however, forswears her sanctioned revenge.
Giselle was typical of what we were privileged to see and hear. We found in the rich Russian culture — expressed in ballet, theater, opera, and concerts, and on ornate painted boxes — a reverence for fairy tales. Everywhere there were beautiful heroines, dashing heroes, and dark villains from Morocco. We were struck by the Russians' deep appreciation for art and the artist. One of our guides asked a six-year-old girl who was passing by to recite something by Pushkin to demonstrate how deeply poetry is embedded in the Russian soul. Undaunted by us gawking Americans, little Sofia recited a poem with spontaneous pleasure.
In St. Petersburg, we stayed in a large apartment with Yelena and Mischa, mother and son, who greeted us with warm hospitality and friendly curiosity. Yelena is a pediatrician who runs a hospital ward of disturbed children ages four through nine. Mischa is a string-bean, a high-strung sixteen-year-old, proud of how big everything is in Russia, yet wearing an American sweatshirt. He seemed embarrassed that a missile was lying on its side outside of St. Petersburg and felt personally ashamed that heavy machinery is rusting in the countryside.
Axel Hoffer, M.D., is a training and supervising analyst with the Psychoanalytic Institute of New England, East (PINE). He is an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
Mischa helped us get around St. Petersburg. He didn't use taxis. He simply hailed any passing car, negotiated a price in rubles, and quickly got us to where we were going. I couldn't get my mind around this phenomenon. Can commuter traffic serve as our taxis? Would we stop a car at random and offer five bucks for a ride to the Shubert Theater in Boston? Was the friendliness of the drivers a holdover from communal living?
We met with psychologists and a smaller number of psychiatrists in three institutions. The first one was in Moscow, and there were two in St. Petersburg. Our days were similar with each group. A tight schedule began in the late morning with lecture-seminars followed by assigned individual supervision lasting an hour and a half each. We met in small rooms with able translators who contributed to the comfort of the situation.
I began the supervision asking about the background of the presenter. Typical answers: “I received my Ph.D. in psychology at the University of St. Petersburg and have a small private practice since I left my government position in a mental hospital.” When they told me where they were from, it often felt momentarily surreal. That feeling was enhanced partly by my ignorance of the vast reaches of eastern Russia and largely by the exotic associations these names evoked in me. “I'm from the Urals” or “I'm from Siberia” or “I'm a Mongol,” they would say. “I'm from Czechoslovakia by way of Boston,” I volunteered, feeling a bit apologetic for being so pedestrian.
The case presentations began in a controlled, formal manner reminiscent of a Ph.D. thesis defense. Soon, however, the student's candor and eagerness to learn brought affectively laden countertransference responses into the session. The supervisions then became very animated and the discussions far-ranging. They had carefully read, discussed, and seemingly memorized the papers Gary had sent them. I was impressed by the level of dedication to the patients and the integrity of the students.
As in Prague, I found the case histories, in outline, remarkably similar to patients we see in Boston. The universality of human conflict, unbearable affects, and the struggle to live with and defend against them again impressed me. Differences between New England and Russia predictably included the impact of the economic crisis. Consequences included the observation that more adults were living with parents, often a single mother, and that most struggled hard to earn a living and pay their therapists. Divorces and absent fathers seemed particularly frequent in the histories.
Since there are no trained psychoanalysts living in Russia at this time, Gary plays a central role with his frequent visits. They love him, not only because his Russian is so fluent—with his humor spilling over in whatever language he speaks — but also because he brings his enthusiasm along with his teaching colleagues. Our group — Sheldon, Gary, and Leon Wurmser, and myself — was particularly compatible, and the students were appreciative and responsive to our enthusiasm for teaching and our humor.
Leon, who is Swiss by birth, commented on the basic similarity of our approach in both psychoanalysis and teaching. “Wir kommen alle aus der selben Küche,” he said, quoting a German expression: “We all come from the same kitchen.” I think the consistency of our individual approaches was helpful to the students' learning process.
On the ride to the St. Petersburg airport, our driver, a friend of one of our hosts, spoke with us about the 900-day siege of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) by the Nazis in the early 1940s. The starvation and suffering in this city remains beyond our comprehension. Leningrad's heroic stand marked the turning point, the beginning of the end, of Hitler's thousand-year Reich. Russia is a country of such extreme contrasts. They stopped Hitler in his tracks. For that, we are grateful to our Russian allies. Yet countless people were killed in pogroms and in Siberian gulags. During the cold war, missiles were pointed at New York City, and for many of us the Cuban missile crisis is a vivid memory. Mother Russia is a country whose long-suffering people are beautiful in their warmth and their humanity, their art and their culture; yet she can be bestial in the unspeakable atrocities she has committed.
Our Swissair flight was delayed in arriving to pick us up. My immigrant's anxiety, present since my arrival in Moscow, could no longer be ignored. I found myself quietly singing a song from Safam, an Israeli folk song group. “We are leaving Mother Russia, we have waited far too long. We are leaving Mother Russia. When they come for us, … we'll be gone.”
As we stepped on the plane, which finally showed up, my entire body relaxed as my anxiety dissipated. In Zurich, Sheldon and I had dinner with an old friend of mine, Kurt Jenny, a professor of law at the University of Basel, and his wife, Beatrice. Kurt had spent some time teaching law in Siberia. “The problem with Russia,” Kurt said in his delightful Swiss-German accent, “is if you buy a vacuum cleaner, take it home, and it doesn't work, there's nothing you can do about it.” He explained that without an infrastructure based on enforceable contracts, laws that are generally obeyed, taxes that are paid more often than not, and a modicum of predictability, Russia “won't work.”
As I look back on our trip to Russia, I am left with a disturbing question: Can a proud but bankrupt Russia survive political chaos, bordering on anarchy, without imposing governmental control through either a fascist or a Communist dictatorship?
Our colleagues in Russia are eager to learn. They are extremely grateful for the efforts of Gary Goldsmith and Homer Curtis and their colleagues, to teach psychoanalytic understanding of human conflict and conflict resolution in depth. We were happy to participate. While we don't usually think of psychoanalysis itself as a political force, respect for the individual, for responsibility, and for freedom of choice seems to me to be a basic tenet of our belief system. We found that our Russian colleagues also hold these values close to their hearts. We can only hope that what the groups of teachers sent by the American Psychoanalytic Association will offer them over time will be enough to make a difference.