Interview with Leon Spivak

We are  in Boston’s Russian bookstore Books and Arts.

I love this place. Firstly, it is cozy, and secondly, this store has good taste, with a good selection of literature, that has existed for a long time in our Boston. The neighborhood is called Brookline, probably one that reads the most in Boston, so it’s good here.

I came from St. Petersburg, quite a long time ago, in 1993. In general, this was my first trip abroad, as I had never been abroad before. I knew that I was going to Boston and I came to the state public library named after Saltykov-Shchedrin on Nevsky Prospekt, and a very strict woman from a bygone era told me: “there are not any materials about Boston, you can read something about America or about New York.” Much has been written about New York. Nothing good, nothing interesting, but a lot, and there was nothing about Boston. And then she took pity on me,  order someone’s report about Boston.  There were three typescript pages about Boston in Russian. I didn’t know English then. There was an encyclopedia Britannica in the public library back then, but I couldn’t get over it. With this knowledge, I came to the city of Boston. This is how it all started.

What did you start doing? What was the very first challenge for you in Boston, or so to speak, in the words of immigrants, what amazed you and what made you do something supernatural to be successful? Did you want to be successful?

To be successful in America requires several qualities in my opinion. In general, you need to love what you do and, in general, the first recipe, is not from me, it’s Mark Twain. The first recipe for depression is to force yourself to, do something. When you are very busy, you have no time to think that you are unhappy. For myself, I have outlined the professional areas in the first place. I passed the medical boards, like all doctors here do … I have such a character trait – I really like to see where I am, I am always interested in what is there. By the way, it helped me with one of my first jobs, I led excursions in Russian.

Tell me, did you come already with an interest in history? It cannot be said that here ...

It was an amateur interest in history.  In the former Soviet Union, I never wrote anything, never published anything. There was no motivation. I wanted to find a hobby that would distract me from 12 or 14 hours of study. I needed to do something. I didn’t want to go in for sports, but that was interesting to me. And here, I came to a the editorial office of the Russian Word. This is our most famous newspaper. Perhaps everyone knows. Bunin, Aldanov, Nabokov, Brodsky were published their works here. This was my first such experience. A beautiful building on Fifth Avenue. I don’t remember which floor. And so I came there with the first written article. I wrote an article called Dickens’s Eyes. And this woman spoke to me strictly. She asked, you from whom? I said that I am on my own and and I was interested, and they published the article. Dickens lived in Boston. I wrote about this for the first time.

Please tell me if you can say that you started doing this hobby in order to cope with nostalgia, because you still came from St. Petersburg.

Of course, there was some nostalgia, but again. Nostalgia is a very difficult concept for me and nostalgia has a lot of components. Look, there is gastronomic nostalgia …Nostalgia for missing something. Ilf and Petrov, by the way, so they have such maxims in One-storied America, where they write with hatred about American sweet pickles. And at first I did not understand what it was. And then I realized. Pickled. That is, in the thirties, in the Soviet Union, when One-storied America was written, there were no pickled cucumbers. So how could they be called? We are talking about cooking – this is also a conflict. In a way, cultural conflict is part of culture. In some ways, American cuisine is different. Basically Anglo-Saxon cuisine. And as long as you take this …

And so let’s get back to your creativity, at first you started to lead excursions with this enough material accumulated, and you felt …

I wanted, yes, to write, a little about America. First of all, about Boston. The first book to come out is called The Stories of the City of Boston. It has withstood three editions and will surely be more.

Well, this genre turned out to be successful, but this is not a guidebook. Then there were already guidebooks in Russian. And in Russia a guidebook about Boston, about New England is being published. At first it was a small, pocket-sized package, such a book, but now it has grown to a thick, voluminous edition.

Tell me, do you work in archives to write your books?

Yes, now, … well, in general, archives are very, of course … I have my own methodology. I absolutely do not want to be an academic historian until I have the right. I didn’t study and in general I don’t want to. I am making such a fictionalized story. What people love.  As the philosopher Ralph Emerson once said, There is no history, there is a biography. That is, what is history? It is the sum of biographies. That is, basically, these are stories of human destinies, how they intertwine and how they eventually end up. It’s interesting to me, and also legends are. Like a seasoning. Boston is steeped in legends. This is a very old city, this is a city older than Petersburg, for example, and many other Russian cities and even European, oddly enough.

Translated by Nadiya Prokopyeva. Edited by Audrey Hager.

What is your relationship with your readers?

Well, in general, of course, a good relationship. First of all, they read, they like it, and they ask questions. And there is no need to be afraid of difficult questions. It’s not a shame when you don’t know something. It’s very interesting to discuss. Feedback is always interesting to me. I want to feel that people are interested. I enjoy that.

Was there an occasion where you had to explain what you wrote or even make excuses for what you didn’t mean?

I have my own fears. Since we are from the country with censorship creep. In general, self-censorship  put some restrictions on my my discourse, I wrote about some topics with some apprehension. Generally, I can tell you about this, so I had a book called Judas, this is such a big story. Judas Benjamin is the Secretary of State for the Confederate States of America. Thus, these are events of the civil war in the United States. This boy is an immigrant from a Jewish family, he is also a person who has achieved the highest position in the American political hierarchy available to an immigrant. There were several secretaries of the state who were immigrants. And he was the first of such kind. He was a Jew. He did not give up his religion. And he became a Secretary in the most dramatic period of the American Civil War, in general history. It is the epicenter of the wildest storm in the American history from which America managed to recover only 7 to 8 decades later. In the south, this is still a painful topic in many ways. I wanted to write about him, since it’s an émigré story and an interesting political story. Interesting biography in general.

But, do you understand what the problem is? If we write about the civil war in Russia, it is much easier to do so now. That is, if you write about the Reds, you need to explain their motivation, if you write about Kolchak, about the Whites, then this hero should also be somehow interesting to the reader, right? And here, seriously. The issue of slavery and ethical issues in general, these are all very serious. Here, I somehow very carefully approached this, carefully looked.  In the beginning it is kind of superficial. So on which side are you? Are you there for the southerners or what? Who is in the right? And the first thing to understand is that there are no right and wrong in a civil war. Unfortunately, even the side who is in the right sheds their blood and does many tough things. Secondly, it means that you just need to understand the following: people of that time did not understand everything. I can give you an algorithm and tell you what they will condemn us for. Here we are smart and educated people who know everything, understand everything. And we will be condemned in 100 years. I can give you a few things for which we will be condemned.

Sure thing. Go ahead. 

Please, offhand, for example pets. Is it wrong to have animals who are wonderful, beautiful, dressed, well-groomed, who have the best doctors and the best vitamins? Nevertheless, this is still an animal that was originally adapted for freedom, well, now they are not adapted for freedom, but still people keep a bird in a cage. Educated, all understanding people well, you know that very well. We will be condemned for this. They will even make fun of us. We will seem very antediluvian and undeveloped in 100 years. Do you know why?

Why? 

For instance, we cannot solve the problem of the death penalty. We cannot come to any general agreement about it. I think that in 100 years this problem will somehow disappear. The problem of abortions. We cannot create any solutions yet. We cannot agree on this topic. There are a lot of these hot topics. But after 100, 150, 200 years it will seem ridiculous. As these people, like the educated man Thomas Jefferson was, maybe the most outstanding mind of the 18th century in America. Yet, he could not personally, in his family, solve the issue of slavery. Well, he could not make the decision. We need to understand this. I first had to figure out how and why and how to write about it now. This is interesting. There is a very interesting algorithm. A Soviet historian wrote that George Washington suffered very much from bourgeois narrow-mindedness, so it sounds like a medical term… Here is the last book that I published in Moscow and one chapter was very controversial, it was almost banned. I was ready to throw out this chapter if the publisher insisted.

Namely?

This chapter is about Nicholas II. For instance, I wrote a biography of Theodore Roosevelt. A lot of books have been written about Roosevelt. This is one of the heroes. This is the first row of the American political “iconostasis.” And for the Russians, he was ‘walking on untrodden ground, setting precedents. There is practically nothing about Theodore Roosevelt in Russian. I, myself, was interested. I have structured this book differently. There are two lines intertwined. One story about him: he walks through the Brazilian jungle, he went on an ill-equipped expedition. But they survived. They lost three people out of 20. Theodore Roosevelt, already an ex-president, miraculously survived. He then lived for two or three years, as I can recall, after this expedition. His health was severely compromised. This is one line as they go, what difficulties and how they are starving and how they are slowly turning into beasts, because there was nothing to eat. This is one part. And the second part is a political biography. It seemed successful to me. Since the book was sold out. If I were to write just a political biography of Theodore Roosevelt, I would not say anything new. One of the topics I hesitated to write about was infringement of rights of American Jewish industrialists, a “passport question.” Roosevelt asked not to infringe on American industrialists. They were not given passports. Look, Russia needed American industrial equipment, agricultural machines. American cotton was the best in the world. That is, Russian calico is American cotton. The Russian textile industry, until … then they conquered Samarkand, something … but, all the same, the American one was better in quality.

Oh well. I understand, of course, that you wrote about Theodore Roosevelt and know that this book is quite interesting. But, please tell me, why did you suddenly become interested in Madame Gardner and dedicated chapters of your first book to her?

Bostonians are very fond of her. For those who do not know, I advise everyone to visit the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Art Museum. A woman with a very interesting destiny, who has put together a unique collection. She was a hunter for rare works of art. But the main thing is that Vermeer and Rembrandt were stolen. The only seascape of Rembrandt that defies any even approximately estimated value. In a sense, she was an immigrant, because this wonderful Victorian century was ending and the cruel 20th century was coming. For us, too, some era ended and another has began. The world is transforming. We have to adapt to this all the time. That was interesting to me. And finally, this is the Boston story with all its funny moments and interesting tragic ones.

Tell me, do you have any favorite historical figures that you wrote about, or maybe there are unloved ones?

Yes, it happens sometimes it is difficult to write. You know, everyone answers in the same manner. The ones that I love are the ones that are recently written. You still live by this, then you start to live by some other characters and they slowly replace one another. Well, it seems to me that the biography of Theodore Roosevelt was a success. It seems like that. And before that there was the Loneliness of a Diplomat, which I think is also a good book, about William Bullitt, who was a friend of two presidents, a friend of Bulgakov, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Freud, and many other people. The man through whom the 20th century passed. These are all the figures, he communicated with. With de Gaulle, Roosevelt, Stalin kissed him at the banquet, Churchill knew him, all such iconic figures of the twentieth century… By the way, Alexander Etkind wrote about this, he has a new book called Roads not Taken. I follow his work so much. An interesting moment, Bullitt is the prototype of Woland. Looks like outwardly, there are some things that coincide. And the problem is that there are no sources. There are only two sources and this is still a big issue. There are only two sources that specialists use, the first is the diary of Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova, and one finds these coincidences with the Satan’s Ball and this was a reception at the American Embassy. And secondly, one of the diplomats, Charles Thayer left a rather funny book called Bears in the Caviar. It has now been translated into Russian. And these are two sources. Although, that reception at the American Embassy was attended by about 400 people. There are no more memoirs left. Further, the flight of fantasy. But the Russians did not leave their memoirs, of course. It was dangerous. It was already 1935. It was no longer worth writing a memoir.

Okay, then I’ll ask the question a little differently. Tell me, are there such historical figures that are extremely hard to write about?

Yes of course. This is for sure.

Who is it?

Well, I would like to write about Hamilton. Precisely in Russian. Because, too, very little has been written in Russian about Hamilton. And it seems to be very interesting. But, try … well, and once again there is a kind of very heavy, but correct academic biography, in two volumes. But, to write in such a way that the reader would say: I am interested in this person, I have sympathy for him, I know what the motivation was, why this person was made of flesh and blood. He is not some kind of control figure who says the right words and the right things. It’s very difficult. I’m somehow afraid to do it. There you need to look at a lot of materials, write of a war, a revolution, finance. How can you write well and interestingly on finance? Well, I have some leads in there. But basically, it’s a person. For example, he is a bastard. The bastard is not just illegitimate. It doesn’t matter now. If we take the 18th century, this is a complete outcast. Not guilty of anything. I understand if the anger of society fell on the parents. Parents should be punished for bad deeds. And this person is generally not to blame. He could not be admitted to any good school, his career was closed … that’s how the Smithsonian Institute appeared in America. Do you know? Smithson was the illegitimate son of a baroness, and  a duke. He had everything, he had money, he did not live in poverty, however society could not accept him, and he was a decent scientist, a neurologist. And so he decided not to leave his big fortune to his mother, but bequeathed to the United States. A lot of money. Now, this is probably billions. America gratefully accepted all of the money, the only conditions were: an institute named after him. And that’s why we got the Smithsonian Institution. We live in a society that he has built. Because he is the founder of the national bank. He came up with many political schemes, under him a bipartisan system arose, he contributed to the creation of the federal capital of Washington. Here we live in the house that he built. It remains only to write.

Okay, are there any Russian figures who are attracted to you as much as you are, so to speak, American founding fathers and politicians?

Somehow I didn’t think about Russian history. Well, I mean, only if there are parallels. That is, if there is a relationship between historical facts, cultural interactions, iconic things, I’m interested. But, on purpose, to write about some Russian politicians. No, probably. For me, American history is interesting. Again, why? I discover something for myself, and I live here. Much is still not open. Much has not yet been explored. The history of America is very old. I like to give an example, that the first Europeans always came, as far as we know, these are the Vikings. Norwegian sailors, Icelandic Norwegians. And there was Leif Eriksson, who first entered the land of America in the 10th century.  And what was his biography before that? He served in the squadron of the Norwegian king, who bowed to Vladimir the Baptist of Rus. Here, through two handshakes, strange things are connected.  There was still no America, no Russia, Nothing. There are these two handshakes with which we are connected. Well, like that.

Translated by Nadiya Prokopyeva. Edited by Audrey Hager.