All About My Motherland - By Vadim Dubnov

Essay

ALL ABOUT MY MOTHERLAND

By Vadim Dubnov
September 2006
Source

One's Motherland is a God without obligations

I first met a woman pretenciously named Motherland in our house-management office. Tatyana
Ivanovna Motherland turned out to be a nice and cheerful middle-aged woman who was talking
over the phone when I entered.

"Comrade Vaintraub?" she asked addressing someone at the other end of the telephone line and,
without waiting for an answer, greeted her collocutor: "Good morning, this is Motherland
bothering you ..."

It was of no account that Tatyana dialed the wrong number because comrade Vaintraub had
safely left (as it developed later) for his historical and faraway homeland a couple of years
earlier. Motherland's chance collocutor must have had friends fond of practical jokes and, so, he
said: "No, no, you are mistaken. My Motherland does not bother me at all." But he added, to be
on the safe side: "My Motherland is in reliable hands."

A laughing sphinx

I don't remember when I first heard the word Motherland. I must have been five or six years old
then and I suspected that "she" was an incredibly big and moody woman and, therefore, entirely
different from all women I knew at that time: teachers in the kindergarten, my mother's
colleagues and the fairies, witches and sorceresses whose acquaintance I had made by then. So,
our relations immediately took the form of an odd race. In my attempts to fathom her mystery, I
would trail her, stealing up on her, like Achilles on the turtle, and almost catching up with her
sometimes. Later I realized that Motherland was not a woman but a conglomeration of birch-
trees, the mother tongue, the film Alexander Nevsky, the norms and standards of the GTO
physical-culture complex and the proud predominance of the colour red on the geographical map.
And Motherland would look back at me instantly, nod sarcastically and rush forward leaving me
wondering why I was duty-bound to lay down my life for all those unfathomable things, if the
need should arise.

It was in 1991. A teaspoon was rhythmically clinking in a glass with a glass-holder; a bottle of
wine was open, and there was the atmosphere of comfort and contentment which develops in a
compartment a couple of hours after the departure of the train from the station. And even a
frowning conductress did nothing to dispel that atmosphere. A great country was breathing its
last breath, the Baltic republics were breaking away, and my casual companion was upset. I
asked him why he cared. He said: "Because 'all that' is my country." He seemed to be confused
for a moment but then added vehemently: "This is my Motherland, if you will!"

But if, I said, we had not 15 but 16 republics constituting this country, and Mongolia were,
maybe, the 16th republic... I said "maybe" because I did not want to hurt Mongolians, and that
set him to thinking. On the one hand, he had never been to Mongolia, nor did he know anything
about that steppe country, except that Ulan Bator was its capital and that it had its own
cosmonaut whose name he had tried to commit to memory but failed. On the other hand, neither
did he know anything about Moldavia and/or Uzbekistan which made the prospect of the
hypothetical bringing of Mongolia into the great family of Soviet peoples not exactly fantastic.
"Mongolia?" he echoed. And then he made up his mind. "Yes," he said; "Mongolia would also
have been my Motherland". I had eagerly waited for that "yes" of his, searched his face shedding
doubts. I so longed for that clarity, for a miracle could be born in our cramped compartment...
But the fellow sleeping on an upper berth was still snoring as if nothing had happened, and the
entire Motherland, from the Baltic area to the Mongolian border, having all the earmarks of a
sphinx, seemed to query acidly to the accompaniment of the clinking teaspoons, "Have you
lumped it?" The sphinx laughed boisterously, looked at me with a touch of disappointment,
turned away and rushed off. Truly, if God wants to deprive one of peace He deprives him of his
Motherland...

A rooster's speech in his own defence

Sociologists from the All-Russia Centre for Public Opinion Studies asked Russians whether they
considered themselves patriots. Seventy seven percent of all respondents said "Yes", 16 percent
— "No". To 58 percent of the respondents "to be a patriot" means to "hold high my Country", to
35 percent — "to work for its prosperity". Twenty four percent see "defending my country
against any attacks and accusations" as an expression of their patriotism; 17 percent are confident
that "my country is better than other countries."

Naturally, the poll was conducted not among activists at anti-NATO demonstrations outside
Western embassies who, together with all heirs to the Pamyat (Memory) society and readers of
the Nash Sovremennik magazine, will never make up 17 percent of the total population, even
given a most vigorous national upsurge. I suspect that an overwhelming majority of the
respondents who believe themselves duty-bound to work for the prosperity of their Motherland
do not repent before going to bed of having judiciously concealed, part of their incomes from
their dear Motherland the day before. Meeting occasionally in a close circle of friends, we all are
apt to tell anecdotes about our Motherland but only up to the point beyond which we stop
cracking jokes because we realize that our Motherland is part of our system of values which is
bashfully concealed, and we begin to look serious and alert. And we are ill at ease, because our
jokes about our Motherland are not infrequently in bad taste...

I have always had a secret fear that my Motherland would dart a fleeting and disapproving glance
at me and query sarcastically: "Weren't you, miserable cosmopolite, proud when a Nobel Prize
was bestowed not just on anyone but on our Gores Alfyorov despite the fact that he is a
communist? And, in general, why did not you, who are so inquisitive, ask anything the other day,
but only yelled at the top of your voice when our team scored a goal? Answer me that, you
rooter!" But my Motherland did not look at me and I was secretly grateful to it for that.

Well, I admit that I was proud that our man had been given a Nobel Prize. And that I am a rooter.
I know what it means to dissolve in a warm one-hundred-thousand-eyed crowd and shout in
unison with it in a frenzy of intense excitement. It was in 1983, if I remember correctly. The
Luzhniki stadium was jampacked, and the goal of the Portuguese team seemed to be widened
from time to time by an invidible magician. In short, our team was winning the match 5-0, and it
suddenly occurred to me that I had never before seen the red flags on the stands of our stadiums.
I wondered where my somewhat tipsy neighbours, who did not look like Young Communist
League activists at all, had obtained those streamers and flags. We were already about to fuse
with you Motherland, and you contemplated with favour our joint triumph, yours and ours, when
a platoon of militiamen swooped down on our sector. "Take away that rag, you **************!"
one of the attackers yelled trying wrest a flag of victories and achievements from our
sacrilegious hands.

The flag, which was in the process of being torn to bits, was making a vicious and very "anti-
Soviet" sound, while the fans occupying the nearby stands were asking, bewildered: "What are
you doing, guys? This is our flag!"

Did you, brothers and sisters, ever fight to save a red flag from the militia in those days? Well,
the cops gave up eventually. We defended you, our Motherland, although you, perhaps, do not
feel like recalling that episode today. But I have recalled it. How very adroitly have you,
Motherland, outwitted all of us!

The notion of "Motherland" exists in all countries

The theme of Motherland was not, for some reason, central for Thomas Aquinas or Saint
Augistine who preferred proving the primacy of God. Having called upon poets to serve and
celebrate it in verse, the Motherland skilfully gave theologians the slip, although it has had no
less grounds for being an object of the latter's interest. In revealing the material manifestations of
its existence, it has been no more generous than the Lord, and insists on its sacral essence no less
resolutely. One God and one Motherland – they are much alike in some respects. They are above
the law, and it is with invocation of their names that the flock and citizens carry out or perpetrate
such things which, should they be done under other laws, would be condemned most
vehemently.

But there is one difference between them, and herein lies the real intellectual chef d'oeuvre of the
Motherland. The Gratitude to God for being the Creator of all things and a fear of Him because
He is the almighty, as well as the actions connected with that designed to propitiate Him are all
phenomena of a normal egotistic character: a covenant is entered into with God which the
Scriptures do not conceal in the narration of the historic meeting between God and Moses. And
no Torquemada will exorcise the devil of pragmatic client expectations from anyone.

In short, God is the supreme embodiment of human egoism. Things are totally different with a
Motherland. No one expects anything from their Motherland. It must only be served devotedly.
A Motherland is a God without obligations.

But originally there was a covenant, better known later as a social contract. The first social
contract must have been arrived at under the following circumstances. Sick and tired of the
prehistoric anarchy, cave-dwellers residing each in his own individual abode, decided to delegate
part of their sovereign personal rights which, what with the then rampant lawlessness, were not
worth a bearskin fragment, to certain representatives or members of their elite. The latter would
assume responsibility for the organization of a "happy life", while the rest of the tribe would
obey and feed their supposed benefactors and, maybe, provide them with other privileges, when,
for instance, it came to mates. That it was much more attractive to lie in a separate rock niche
making strategic decisions than to chase a unicorn through the local forests must have become
clear to the two sides almost immediately. Mutual irritation may have been given vent to in
rather unseemly or indecent forms, and upon analyzing the outcome of another revolution, some
of the more "advanced" leaders could have shouted in desperation: "To hell with you! You don't
like us but we don't give a damn!" That leader could possibly have come from "the lower
depths" and, therefore, he could have added, with an awareness of being doomed historically:
"You cannot and must not like us." He might even have had the grounds not to count on an
appeal to the totems etched in the rocks and cliffs, smiling lewdly and, therefore, he must have
called upon his tribesmen: "But are you not ready to protect our native cave like you would your
own loving mother? So, brothers and sisters, let us rally to the defence of our sacred dwelling
place!"

"The cave is a different matter, we have to live somewhere after all," the people must have
decided. "For our cave we shall not only cut any body's throat but will even put up with these
spongers."

Alas, no written sources have survived to this day to bear record to the just-described episode
and to the real names of the people. The world history of the Motherland is, perhaps, the only
intrigue not documented in any form. How refreshing it would be to be able to quote someone of
the initiated, to discover diaries or notes and to "expose" the Motherland on the strength of
convincing evidence. But the provident Motherland never kept any diaries. Although "tables and
tablets" miraculously retain some information.

All languages in the world have the word "country". One can say in any language "my country"
or "mon pays", or "moya strana". But that is not sufficient for any language. The word
"Motherland" has established and asserted its right to a singular linguistic signification. Rodina,
Batkivshchina, Samshable, Motherland, Airenik, Ojczizna, Patrie, Tevine, Vatan. But
Motherland failed to keep track of some of the Slavic brothers. Rodina in Czech means "family".
The Czech people also have the word "vlast" which is, properly, Motherland.

All relationships in the world can be divided into two categories. In the family, whatever it might
be, relationships are based on mutual trust. And what untoward or detrimental could Churchill
have discovered in democracy? Maybe, the same that is sure to be found in all other political
systems which, as is known, are even worse than democracy: take the power of the Soviets, of
the Presidency of Jefferson, or the rule of Pol Pot — all those forms of regulation of human
relations which, of necessity, are not based on non-confidence.

And that is all. Further, to the accompaniment of the din of a slot machine, there begins a great
historic dupery.

Inasmuch as in the family everything is based on trust in and on reverence for the senior
members or heads — that is a tradition — there is no need for any social contract there. What the
father and/or the grandfather says is the law to be obeyed but if the father is a petty tyrant and the
grandfather is senile and sick, the success of further family development depends only on the
patience and tact and prudence of the "lesser" or "junior" family members. It goes without saying
that in many cases it would hardly be possible to manage (within the family) without lies,
treachery and "caches". And all those "tricks" are exclusively an internal family affair and are of
a confidential nature. Those "tricks" are concealed not out of fear but out of a wish to preserve
the "intra-family" atmosphere of pious falsehood.

The contract is a form of restriction of freedom, and this is precisely why the family does not
need it. The family relinquishes freedom either absolutely voluntarily, on choosing wives and
husbands, or on heeding promptings from Above, that is without any law, because parents are not
chosen.
In short, all the aforecited family parameters coincide with what a Motherland requires: so that
we would not only agree to limitation of our own freedom but would also prize that limitation
and hold it dear, like a loving mother. And should the Motherland stop at the family stage, the
Czech Rodina-based synonymic group would look quite logical. But a Motherland needs
something more global. So, the Motherland outgrows the family domain and emerges onto the
courtyard.

This is the climax of substitution. The courtyard is a unique mixture: it is no longer a family but
it is not yet a state. Without a vow of their mutual trust. They, the courtyard and a state, already
coexist. But as yet without a covenant and mutual commitments stemming therefrom.

It is precisely there, in the courtyard, that the Motherland begins its triumphant march. It will
leave the courtyard in order to return there later, but it will be entirely different upon its return. I
am ready to give my answers to my Motherland about the flags and the five goals we scored
against the Portuguese soccer team.

Spectre of the courtyard

Group fist fights rarely occur in the courtyard. But single-combat fistcuffs are rather frequent.
The principle of fair play is strictly observed. A third party is absolutely forbidden to intervene,
even if the fists of one of the contestants are the size of his opponent's head.

I am envious of those who grew up in small courtyards in St. Petersburg's "holes", behind the
arches of Moscow's winding bystreets, back streets and dark alleys, on and around the Tbilisi
balustrades hung with laundered clothes, in Odessa's spacious backyards pervaded by the sour-
sweet fumes of roasted meat. My own courtyard enclosed a vast world within a space shut in by
standard prefabricated five-storey buildings put up in Khrushchev's time. We would play
football from one entrance or gateway to another, with all the dire consequences for the windows
of the first storey and for our relations with many of our neighbours. Most of the neighbours
worked at a nearby plant and everybody knew that it was a secret one and made moonrovers. A
majority of us treated scanty intellectuals who did not work at the plant with regret.

The courtyard is conservative, benevolent and contemplates everything with a primitive
uncivilized suspicion. The courtyard is patriarchal and pious. It knows everything and forms its
own uncompromising public opinion about everything. This is exemplified by the old women
sitting outside the entrance most of the time and narrowly watching people entering and leaving
the house. They seem to have been keeping their watch since the time of the dinosaurs.

The courtyard is the first stage of civilization. We knew that should one of us get into trouble the
courtyard would stick up for him. Yet, perhaps nowhere else but in our own courtyard were we
exposed to especially severe trials. The courtyard is the first freedom, with but one limitation
which depreciates it to some extent. One must by no means become "an alien" in his courtyard.
Either in good or in bad deeds, because the antithesis of Good versus Evil is dwarfed by the
division of all and sundry into its and them. This antithesis is the sole law, patriarchal, unwritten
and objective, like the multiplication table. One could become an alien at every turn and step,
perhaps, but realization of the dire consequences of that would save one from a hasty or ill-
considered step.

The smoke of our Motherland smells of childhood and the courtyard. The courtyard expands,
traveling by whimsical trajectories, to the school, to the cinema house and to one's new friends.
The courtyard, like a cheerful octopus, has girdled the first community of the territory of the sole
nation which one sees belonging to as the meaning of his life. There was nothing holy about that
Motherland one may not have loved like one may not have loved his parents. But then it
disappeared. That first and sole nation disintegrated and has since stopped exchanging telephone
calls (well, almost). Only once in a long while do old friends and acquaintances meet, embrace
and hug one another and ask a few polite and discreet questions, exchange telephone numbers,
never to phone up again, and part ways heaving a sigh of relief... And your son or wife would ask
you: "Who's that?" And you say, absent-mindedly, thinking about something else: "We used to
be bosom friends at school".

The courtyard is the first phantom pain which is thousands of years old. Our Motherland is its
coeval.

"He is from our courtyard," we would say, with casual pride, about someone who had become
famous, and it does not matter in which field: he could have been our town's champ in some
sport or game or could have landed in prison for stealing a car. But Zhores Alfyorov has probably
not heard of my town. And what do I care about him being a Nobel Prize winner? But, still, it
gives me pleasure. Because he is "one of us".

"One of us" is the main courtyard watchword. Our Motherland has successfully completed its
historic forgery: instead of a social contract, it has given us the code of norms and rules for
maintaining courtyard discipline. The difference between the courtyard existing without a social
contract and the state existing owing to it has vanished without a trace.

All was over. For the social contract had by then failed dismally.

A question for electrician Mechnikov

To be more precise, the contract failed already the moment it appeared. It turned out that no one
liked the state per se. And, indeed, how can a normal person love an instrument? One's own
hammer or car is, naturally, dearer and more handy than any other hammers and cars, and they
can even be adorned with one's own name, a small icon and even with one's family coat of arms.
An oath of allegiance is not administered to any piece of machinery or tool, nor are flags hung
out in their honour, or the national anthem sung in their honour with all the people standing.

In short, a state can be bad or good, but even the best of states is incapable of guaranteeing
everything for the sake of which a comprehensive social contract was concluded. A good
example is the guarantee of the right to life which the eternally fighting states offered their
citizens to pay for the state's imperfections with.

Truth to tell, it does not call itself a "state". Nor did my companion, in the train compartment
who prevented me from overturning the world say: "This is my state." He said: "This is my
country."

And a country is something quite different. This is a very equivocal word. It seems to have no
signification of "the state". It is poetry, pure and simple. Mountain Country, the Country of
Elves. But, on the other hand: Basque Country and the Land of the Soviets. What do those say
who attentively follow our words "this country" or "my country". Does the word "country", in
this instance, mean "our state" or "our Motherland"?

Thus the Motherland declared itself to be synonymous with the state.

The social contract failed and, as the shrewd electrician Mechnikov in Ilf's and Petrov's famous
novel could have justly observed, the Motherland is the product of the failure of the sides to
abide by their commitments. And, it turns out, that, just like life is a mode of existence of protein
bodies, so also the Motherland is the sole form of the existence of the state.

The mother of ne'er-do-well

And we all have now set out for our past: the state which did not manage to fulfill its contract
assumed the form of a Motherland, i.e., a courtyard with its selfless unity of "alien" people where
everything is permissible but one thing: one may not become a real "alien", a castaway. But the
notion of the courtyard has become obsolete, and we are growing into a nation. A nation,
according to our encyclopedias, has a set of immutable characteristics.
The territory uniting the nation is inviolable just as our courtyard was off limits to unwelcome
strangers. Whoever is on that territory is declared "one of us".

But this assertion does not work.

Any mountain or a representative of any local flora or fauna species can become the symbol of a
nation. The Armenian Mount Ararat has for a long time now been in Turkey but Russian birch-
trees are in no way different from those growing, say, in Canada. Language is an object of
inexhaustible pride and a symptom of permanent consanguinity, although having the same
mother tongue as that of the Drevlyane did not keep Princess Olga from exterminating them.
Nor did it keep the Germans from annexing Austria. Common economic links. Cronyism based
on family ties is not exactly effective. Those economic links had to be internal — the notorious
inviolability of the borders of the common territory kept them from becoming normal and
external. There are also cultural specifics. This is so. But within an integral and indivisible
Motherland and nation each constituent group and/or people, such as Siberians, Svans, has its
own specifics.

And, finally, there is the mysterious "spiritual side". The authors of the definition have, to all
appearance, hoped to pack into it all the rest, the exhilarating and the informal. They simply did
not want to reveal the main thing about the phantom pain. For a Motherland is right. It is not
chosen — live where Fate has ordained you to live. And every Motherland has its own face from
its own courtyard. Someone's Motherland has the face of a smiling and benign babushka with
happy children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren living together in a very large family in a
little town of Scandinavian fairy-tales. Another Motherland has the face of an energetic business
woman, a top manager in whose honour the grateful neighbours hang out star-spangled banners.
But our Motherland is dressed poorly, is very jittery, touchy, quick to take offence and energetic
because she is sure that she must do whatever she considers her duty or responsibility unaided.
With the passage of time she has grown corpulent, she uses powder excessively, and covers her
toil-hardened hands with an imported cream because she has to wash clothes without a washing
machine for the water pressure in her house is never sufficient. She must be someone's mother.
Or the wife of a failure, more likely than not.