Abstract
A brief anecdote sets the stage for future investigations: It was in 2001 when I accompanied a Cuban colleague who lived in the United States and his Spanish-speaking Russian wife to the Old Havana home of a couple of his friends who remained on the island, a theater critic and a painter.1 After a bit of rum, the linguistic world switched to Russian and in the last thirty or so minutes of the dinner, I was left out; there was laughter and little translation. While the function of Russian was no longer vital to international transactions on the national sphere, I was not convinced that it was entirely useless. All four then reconciled their behavior, explaining to me that, in fact, they had in common this phenomenon of longing for certain elements of the Soviet Union, to which they had all traveled years before for the purposes of study. What had become clear to me was that although Russian was no longer the principal language of international affairs, it did function as a foil in my presence, and for these Cubans who were born in the 1940s and 1950s and had studied in the Soviet Union, that evening at least, Russian, if ever so slightly, continued to defend Cuba against la yuma. 2 Such a resort to Russian is complex. Cubans’ memories of their experiences in the Soviet Bloc are often filled with disillusionment, and it is likely that the language switch that occurred at the gathering is wrought with that sensation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See Victor Fowler (2001b) and Yoss (2004). Since 2004, Yana Elsa Brugal, a Cuban theater critic who received her Ph.D. in Arts and Sciences in San Petersburg, Russia, has organized the annual “Stanislavski siempre” conference, and she is currently examining the Russian influence in Cuban theater. Aurora Jácome’s muñequitosrusos.blogspot.com must be credited in drawing attention to the significance of the Soviet Bloc-Cuban solidarity in recent cultural production. The February 2007 international symposium “Cuba-USSR and the Post-Soviet Experience” that I co-organized with JosĂ© Manuel Prieto brought together writers and artists around this theme, and over the past year, the topic of the sociocultural impact of the Soviet-Cuban union on the present has been explored more extensively. See Rafael Rojas’s “Souvenirs de un Caribe soviĂ©tico” (2008) as well as various blogs, including those of Jorge Ferrer, “El tono de la voz”; Ernesto Hernández Busto, “PenĂşltimos DĂas”; and Yoani Sánchez, “GeneraciĂłn Y,” among many other spaces. In November 2007, in Havana, the “Vostok” exhibition took place, and in February 2008, the Torre de Letras organized “Tres Jornadas dedicadas a la literatura rusa en la literature cubana.” The permanent research group “RevoluciĂłn Bolchevique historia de la URSS y Cuba. Análisis crĂtico socialista desde el siglo XXI” was initiated in May 2007 in Havana.
See Francisco Brown Infante’s and Ariel Dacal (2006), which purports to analyze the reasons and the consequences of the fall of the USSR. In his preface, Allen Woods (2006) reminds readers of Russia’s backwardness before the revolution and of the discrepancies between Marx and Engel’s vision and the actual Soviet experience, as well as the problem of the USSR’s isolation, signaled by Lenin and Trotsky. He concludes by calling for the destruction of bureaucracy, “the terrain wherein the pro-bourgeois tendencies could put down roots and grow.” For Woods, Venezuela is a lighthouse for a future in which Cuba is less isolated.
P.M. (1961), directed by Sabá Cabrera Infante, was a short film that featured the nightlife of Havana. It was censored and the cultural supplement edited by Sabá Cabrera Infante’s brother, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Lunes de revolución, was subsequently shut down. This controversy resulted in Fidel Castro’s 1961 “Words to the Intellectuals,” the most memorable part of which is frequently quoted: “Dentro de la Revolución, todo; contra la Revolución, nada” (Within the Revolution, everything; against the Revolution, nothing).
As Alejo Carpentier affirms, “Soviet literature had an early diffusion in Cuba. First the poets Yeset and Mayakowsky were known and already read by 1924.” In fact, Mayakowsky’s impressions of the racial and monetary inequities in Cuba located in the poem “Black and White” (1925) are often considered a reference for Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s part of the script for Soy Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov 1964). According to Desiderio Navarro, in the mid-1980s, he and Tatiana Gorstko compiled and translated a collection of Mayakowsky’s poems, the majority of which were previously unpublished in Spanish. While the editors were paid for their work by the Cuban publisher Arte y Literatura, the volume, PoesĂa censurada en nuestra lengua VladĂmir Maiakosvki (1893–1930) (Censured Poetry in Our Language, Vladimir Mayakowsky [1893–1930]), did not see the light of day.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2009 Ariana Hernandez-Reguant
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Loss, J. (2009). Wandering in Russian. In: Hernandez-Reguant, A. (eds) Cuba in the Special Period. New Concepts in Latino American Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230618329_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230618329_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-37383-3
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-61832-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)