"Betrayal of Generations"
When I saw this headline in the Russian-language 7 Дней (7 Days) newspaper, I knew that the article was going to make me facepalm.
Most Russian-language periodicals published in the Chicago area are right-leaning to some extent or another. 7 Days is not as far to the right as Обзор (Observer), but it still reflects the beliefs and biases of its target demographic - middle-age and older Russians (mostly Russian Jews) that came to this country long before Perestroyka swept through Soviet Union. They tend to vote Republican and hold economically and socially conservative beliefs.
I wrote all this in hopes of providing context for the article - an opinion piece by one Ihil Brotsky.
At first, it looks like a charming story about Brotsky meeting a friend's successful, well-educated Russian-American grandson. For a few paragraphs, I held out hope that the article wasn't as bad as the title suggested. But it quickly becomes clear that he actually wants to use this as an example of a worrying trend - American-born kids and grandkids of immigrants from his generation "spitting in our faces" and voting for Obama.
What happened between our generations? Where did this chasm come from? Why do our young people, who are fully capable of making a conscious, realistic choice - want to call upon our head and theirs the socio-political problems we fought against, the ones we fled from and ones that will inevitably come upon us, if their candidate, with his utopian, socialist, anti-American ideas, will return to power.
Brotsky lists off some of the possible reasons why this happened - lack of knowledge of recent history, "brainwashing" at the universities, that the members of the younger generation are too busy with their work and their families to fully analyze the facts, youthful rebelliousness. But ultimately, he believes those are not the only reasons. At least, not the most important ones.
The key reason, according to Brotsky, is that his generation failed the young people.
What did that mean? Well, for starters, he argued that immigrants from his generation didn't explain to the kids what it was like to live in the Soviet Union, so their kids have no context.
Just try to explain to your children what's a "communal apartment" or a "residence permit" or a "vacation voucher to a place of relaxation." [Try to explain] the constant fear of your neighbors and colleagues, that can [report you] to the "entities" for any careless word? [..] Will they understand this, when they have an unlimited right to buy anything they want, go anywhere they want and organize whatever social or political organization they want?
As Brotsky sees it, immigrants of his generation were so traumatized by living in the Soviet Union, they preferred not to discuss all the negative things. He feels that they didn't tell their kids enough about all the sacrifices they made to make it to United States. That, if anything, they spent too much time talking about their accomplishments in the Soviet Union and all the ways they tried to defy the laws.
But that wasn't all. As Brotsky sees is, his generation was so eager to give their kids the lives they never had that they exposed them to harmful influences.
Remember: when you decided to immigrate from Soviet Union (or post-Soviet Russia), almost all of us explained [our decision] as a desire to give our kids normal, human* lives. But once we reached these shores, we betrayed them, removed ourselves from their lives and excluded them from our lives. We relied on the American education system, handed them over to the American television, computer games and disco-clubs. We bought them their first cars, paid for their university education and their first apartments, even as they moved away from us, etc. We did not implant them with the family-orientated mentality, the feeling of family. We didn't teach them the most basic philosophical concept - that all good things can be gained through hard work and only hard work, and all the other important moral imperatives.
And that, in Brotsky's view, is why the new generation leans liberal.
He feels that his generation doesn't want to alienate their children, so they prefer to avoid political topics. But that, in Brotsky's view, is wrong-headed. Drawing not-so-subtle comparison to American Jews who didn't speak up for their European counterparts during World War II, he essentially urged his contemporaries to speak with their kids and grandkids, because damn it, American freedoms are at stake.
The horror is in that, God forbid, Obama will be re-elected for the second term - it will most surely be a step backwards into our past. We are "lucky": right now, we are living through the previously unseen in America, a struggle between the advancing socialism, with all of its delights, the very thing we fled from, and capitalism, with its possibilities for every individual, something that we all strive towards. In this struggle, every voice has decisive importance. Every one! And if we lose - the blame will fall on the parents and grandparents of the now adult children-voters.
There are a lot of things I can say about this. I can point out the rather discouraging undercurrent throughout the whole piece, an implicit notion that nobody reasonable could possibly vote for Obama, that voting against him (as opposed to voting for someone else - Brotsky never so much as alluded to Romney, let alone mentioned Romney by name) is the only logical course of action. I could say that, while I wasn't old enough to remember Soviet Union, I was old enough to remember what happened when unregulated, unrestricted capitalism was unleashed upon my homeland, to the detriment of most of its population's economic well-being. I could talk about how the experience taught me the importance of balancing the needs of the individual against common good, the need for checks and balances against the socialist and capitalist excesses.
But ultimately, the one thing that particularly struck me is how much those arguments echo the arguments made by native-born American conservatives from the same generation. How the kids don't understand what's at stake, because they've never lived through Cold War, because they have no conception of how much they sacrificed to make their kids lives better. That the modern culture is corrosive and breeds complacency. Even the whole notion that, even though Obama's first term didn't end free market capitalism in any way, shape or form, his second term surely would - is very familiar.
Ultimately, I don't think it's really so much about where you are from or how you grew up as about certain shared values, and the shared feeling that those values are threatened. The fact that Brodsky (and other Russian immigrants like him) actually experienced life under Soviet Union only adds urgency and a sense of authenticity to his arguments, but it doesn't offer anything fundamentally different.
----------------------
* This is one of those bits that doesn't quite translate into English. In this context, the term basically means "decent," as in "worthy of a civilized human being"
Most Russian-language periodicals published in the Chicago area are right-leaning to some extent or another. 7 Days is not as far to the right as Обзор (Observer), but it still reflects the beliefs and biases of its target demographic - middle-age and older Russians (mostly Russian Jews) that came to this country long before Perestroyka swept through Soviet Union. They tend to vote Republican and hold economically and socially conservative beliefs.
I wrote all this in hopes of providing context for the article - an opinion piece by one Ihil Brotsky.
At first, it looks like a charming story about Brotsky meeting a friend's successful, well-educated Russian-American grandson. For a few paragraphs, I held out hope that the article wasn't as bad as the title suggested. But it quickly becomes clear that he actually wants to use this as an example of a worrying trend - American-born kids and grandkids of immigrants from his generation "spitting in our faces" and voting for Obama.
What happened between our generations? Where did this chasm come from? Why do our young people, who are fully capable of making a conscious, realistic choice - want to call upon our head and theirs the socio-political problems we fought against, the ones we fled from and ones that will inevitably come upon us, if their candidate, with his utopian, socialist, anti-American ideas, will return to power.
Brotsky lists off some of the possible reasons why this happened - lack of knowledge of recent history, "brainwashing" at the universities, that the members of the younger generation are too busy with their work and their families to fully analyze the facts, youthful rebelliousness. But ultimately, he believes those are not the only reasons. At least, not the most important ones.
The key reason, according to Brotsky, is that his generation failed the young people.
What did that mean? Well, for starters, he argued that immigrants from his generation didn't explain to the kids what it was like to live in the Soviet Union, so their kids have no context.
Just try to explain to your children what's a "communal apartment" or a "residence permit" or a "vacation voucher to a place of relaxation." [Try to explain] the constant fear of your neighbors and colleagues, that can [report you] to the "entities" for any careless word? [..] Will they understand this, when they have an unlimited right to buy anything they want, go anywhere they want and organize whatever social or political organization they want?
As Brotsky sees it, immigrants of his generation were so traumatized by living in the Soviet Union, they preferred not to discuss all the negative things. He feels that they didn't tell their kids enough about all the sacrifices they made to make it to United States. That, if anything, they spent too much time talking about their accomplishments in the Soviet Union and all the ways they tried to defy the laws.
But that wasn't all. As Brotsky sees is, his generation was so eager to give their kids the lives they never had that they exposed them to harmful influences.
Remember: when you decided to immigrate from Soviet Union (or post-Soviet Russia), almost all of us explained [our decision] as a desire to give our kids normal, human* lives. But once we reached these shores, we betrayed them, removed ourselves from their lives and excluded them from our lives. We relied on the American education system, handed them over to the American television, computer games and disco-clubs. We bought them their first cars, paid for their university education and their first apartments, even as they moved away from us, etc. We did not implant them with the family-orientated mentality, the feeling of family. We didn't teach them the most basic philosophical concept - that all good things can be gained through hard work and only hard work, and all the other important moral imperatives.
And that, in Brotsky's view, is why the new generation leans liberal.
He feels that his generation doesn't want to alienate their children, so they prefer to avoid political topics. But that, in Brotsky's view, is wrong-headed. Drawing not-so-subtle comparison to American Jews who didn't speak up for their European counterparts during World War II, he essentially urged his contemporaries to speak with their kids and grandkids, because damn it, American freedoms are at stake.
The horror is in that, God forbid, Obama will be re-elected for the second term - it will most surely be a step backwards into our past. We are "lucky": right now, we are living through the previously unseen in America, a struggle between the advancing socialism, with all of its delights, the very thing we fled from, and capitalism, with its possibilities for every individual, something that we all strive towards. In this struggle, every voice has decisive importance. Every one! And if we lose - the blame will fall on the parents and grandparents of the now adult children-voters.
There are a lot of things I can say about this. I can point out the rather discouraging undercurrent throughout the whole piece, an implicit notion that nobody reasonable could possibly vote for Obama, that voting against him (as opposed to voting for someone else - Brotsky never so much as alluded to Romney, let alone mentioned Romney by name) is the only logical course of action. I could say that, while I wasn't old enough to remember Soviet Union, I was old enough to remember what happened when unregulated, unrestricted capitalism was unleashed upon my homeland, to the detriment of most of its population's economic well-being. I could talk about how the experience taught me the importance of balancing the needs of the individual against common good, the need for checks and balances against the socialist and capitalist excesses.
But ultimately, the one thing that particularly struck me is how much those arguments echo the arguments made by native-born American conservatives from the same generation. How the kids don't understand what's at stake, because they've never lived through Cold War, because they have no conception of how much they sacrificed to make their kids lives better. That the modern culture is corrosive and breeds complacency. Even the whole notion that, even though Obama's first term didn't end free market capitalism in any way, shape or form, his second term surely would - is very familiar.
Ultimately, I don't think it's really so much about where you are from or how you grew up as about certain shared values, and the shared feeling that those values are threatened. The fact that Brodsky (and other Russian immigrants like him) actually experienced life under Soviet Union only adds urgency and a sense of authenticity to his arguments, but it doesn't offer anything fundamentally different.
----------------------
* This is one of those bits that doesn't quite translate into English. In this context, the term basically means "decent," as in "worthy of a civilized human being"