Trafika Europe 13 - Russian Ballet

Judeophile

had written some kind of a letter to Stalin, was arrested, but, after several months, was released and restored in the ranks – Stalin had died just in time. I once asked him directly: “Why are you so interested in Jews?” “Hello. Who isn’t interested in the Jews? Have you heard of the Wandering Jew (he had long ago adopted the informal “ty” with me)? “And the secret of his immortality is tantamount to the key to the secret of life…. You once spoke of history as a story, and so you could say that this story had captivated me…” 2 When I was a child, my grandmother used to read the bible tome in Old Church Slavonic, and I thought: what a beautiful fairy tale… And then later, it just so happened that the most interesting people, whom I had the pleasure to intersect with in this life, were Jews….” “I don’t know, so far, I haven’t been very lucky in that respect. And anyway, Soviet Jews are not really Jews any more, they are not carrying with them any sort of special cultural birthright, heritage, they are not safeguarding any sort of particular cultural experience. All the more, those of ‘mixed blood’. What are we going to do, calculate the percent of Jewish blood? That would already be some sort of, please forgive me, racism.” Silence fell upon us, as before an artillery bombardment, which was not long in coming.

Boris Pasternak

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