Witness to Disintegration: Provincial Life in the Last Year of the USSR

An American scholar's first-hand story of provincial life in the USSR just before the coup.

The first Fulbright Scholar at Kazan State University in the Tatar Autonomous Republic, Hixson, who teaches history at the University of Akron in Ohio, and is the author of George F. Kennan: Cold War Iconoclast , wanted to experience the society "from the bottom up." So, during his 10 months in the former Soviet Union, from October 1990 to July 1991, he "went native." Or so he thinks. Like the people among whom he lived, he may have suffered from the defitsit (lack of goods), but with a monthly salary of 705 rubles, which allowed him to shop in the private sector, and with his American passport, which permitted him to jump to the front of the queues at the state stores, he was less taxed than his colleagues, whose monthly salaries averaged 300 rubles. Hixson's biggest problem, however, seems to have been with women. As he tells it, he had a dreadful time disengaging from female pursuers who viewed him as a ticket to the West. Sounding smug and self-congratulatory, Hixson remains self-absorbed throughout this memoir, even as he discusses rationing, the people's turn toward religion and the racism he found.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An unusual, engaging, and perceptive look at life in the Soviet Union in its final year of existence, by Hixson (History/University of Akron; George Kennan, 1989--not reviewed). Hixson spent ten months lecturing in Kazan, some 460 miles east of Moscow, an area previously closed to foreigners. Here, he gives a different perspective, from the bottom up, of what his life was like there. He lived in his own apartment, bought what food could be found at the local store, waited in long lines, and-- though helped greatly by the enormous generosity and deference offered to Americans--lived the life of an ordinary person. Hixson writes of the people's ``love affair'' with the West, particularly with the US. Even scholars at the Academy of Sciences believed that ``the United States was a model society whose conduct in the cold war could hardly be faulted. The U.S.S.R. alone was guilty.'' A typical contrast Hixson draws is between the hundreds waiting outside the McDonald's in Moscow and the five people sitting in a thousand-seat auditorium watching a scratchy old film of Lenin's life. In the course of his travels, the author encountered the incredible generosity of ordinary Russians; their embitterment about the collapse of their own society; the religious revival sweeping the country; the collapse of higher education; and the ``beaten-down mentality'' of many. He went to village weddings; talked to prostitutes; dated local women--and describes it all with pleasant humor: Visiting Lenin's mausoleum, he says that ``the story that one of Lenin's ears once fell off while a tour group filed through the mausoleum is no doubt apocryphal, but Vladimir Ilyich was not looking too well.'' Hixson concludes that, in certain fundamental respects, ``the West had indeed conquered the East.'' A thoughtful and sensitive description that provides a prespective so often lacking from more conventional accounts. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Hixson (history, Univ. of Akron) spent ten months from September 1990 until July 1991 as a Fulbright scholar at Kazan State University, located 450 miles east of Moscow in the Tatar Autonomous Republic. This nonacademic account of his experiences in the Soviet Union is full of familiar stories of the petty Soviet bureaucracy, the hazards of communal apartments, and the agonies of standing in endless lines to obtain the daily necessities. Upon his arrival, Hixson could see that the country was in complete disarray and could sense the deperation of the people: the elaborate Lenin Museum in Kazan was virtually empty every day, while the lines at McDonald's stretched as far as the eye could see. Throughout his year, he met many Soviets who displayed both the best (sharing in adversity) and worst (seeing him as a ticket to America) sides of the Russian character. Recommended for general international affairs collections.
- Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.