Igor Pomerantsev, author of Radio Liberty’s “Over the Barriers” program, is proud of his photo portrait (see page 4), even though he looks more cheerful and relaxed in real life. This photo was taken by an amateur and what it may lack in professionalism is fully compensated by the photographer’ s celebrated identity: composer Rodion Shchedrin, Maya Plisetskaya’ s husband. Mr. Pomerantsev has a lot of well-known friends frequenting his Munich and Paris studios as well as his London home. He spent his youth and received a post-secondary education in Chernivtsi, majoring in journalism. Then he had to work as a schoolteacher in a Carpathian village. Later, he worked as an interpreter for the patent bureau in Kyiv. He wrote poetry, sometimes appearing in print. As any other decent intellectual, he was disgusted by the idiocy of the Brezhnev regime and had to pay a dear price: he was blacklisted by the KGB. Later, by one of the Soviet ruling bureaucracy’ s whims, he was expelled from the USSR. A very good turn of events, considering what would have happened if the KGB decided to deal with him seriously: a term in a prison camp at best. In the West, he continued to write and “cast aspersions” on the Communist paradise from Radio Liberty studios which the Soviet regime hated so much.
His radio essays are elegant and highly entertaining. Gracefully, he waltzes through time and space, showing enviable erudition and an adventuresome thirst for fresh experiences. His essays cover a remarkably wide range: from music to literature to architecture to mores to cooking to wines.
Now wine is a special subject. He visited Kyiv as a professional winetaster (grandiloquently, Mr. Pomerantsev prefers to identify himself as an expert on wine). He had received an invitation to participate in the First International Wine Salon and eagerly accepted. Here was an excellent opportunity to visit the city from which he had been expelled and ordered out of the USSR twenty years back. He makes no big thing of his dissident past, believing that his status as a Russian poet made him superior to other Ukrainian dissidents.
I.P.: If I were a Ukrainian writer they would simply have squashed me. I would have served seven years in a prison camp and then another five in exile. Of course, I cannot grasp the logic of the Soviet law enforcement authorities, but I think that in my case some additional red tape was involved, so they just threw me out. Anyway, I left the Soviet Union being regarded as a dissident and years later visited Ukraine as an expert on wines. In other words, one's life is as unpredictable and as full of surprises as poetry. By the way, the KGB mostly wanted to know what books I was reading. An unbelievably humiliating experience. Adults packing guns lectured another adult on what he should read. Today, I know for sure why I could be considered a dissident. I refused to put up with everything that blocked my view of the winemaking horizons of France, Italy, Spain, and California. They were the obstacles between my contemporary self and my ultimate vocation.
S.V.: But you could partake of the culture of winemaking and winetasting while still at home. I remember that drinking was the invariable attribute of any gathering when I was a student. Why didn’t you?
I.P.: Of course I could have, but this was more a social aspect of the problem. Remember bormotukha, the cheapest and most popular fruit-and-berry wine we used to consume? Just think of the name. It literally means “murmuring” – stuff making one lose one’s senses and start mumbling rather than speaking. On the other hand, it was in Ukraine that my palate enjoyed its first strongest pleasure from grape wines. Now, having a “bi-imperial” experience (I mean my life in the Soviet Union and the past 15 years and some spent in London, currently my hometown), I can certainly state that I come from a colonial family. My father worked for a local military district newspaper in Chita (Russian Federation), then we found ourselves in Chernivtsi (Western Ukraine). My father was a party-affiliated journalist. I think that we were regarded as part of the Establishment in Chernivtsi, yet we were acutely aware of our being strangers, outsiders. I have talked to a lot of Englishmen who spent their childhood in Burma or India and every time I was amazed at the similarity of our experiences. Moreover, they were all infatuated with those countries, precisely the way I was and remain smitten by Ukraine. Some say that Russian immigrants in the West are bound to experience culture shock. My own experience says there is nothing cultural, just the shock of being faced with Western amenities compared to Soviet daily realities. Back in my childhood I experienced a sensual shock. It was like a color blind person made suddenly aware of the array found at Disneyland. The only kind of fruit I saw while living in Zabaikalie (the area beyond Lake Baikal) was Chinese apple. In Chernivtsi, I was overwhelmed by tomatoes, squash, plums, and of course heavy clusters of grapes. I am sure I owe my present vigor to all that rich fruit consumed in Bukovyna.
S.V.: Figuratively speaking, the West uncovered the taste of real wine for you, didn’t it?
I.P.: The important point is that the production and consumption of alcoholic beverages in every country is largely dependent on that country’s geographical position. Ukraine is among the world’s wheat, beet, and potato producers, so here the emphasis is on vodka – or horilka. Nothing to be ashamed of, really. The wine-making countries provide excellent examples of how well wine can coexist with vodka. Thus, Italian wines harmoniously blend with grappa. In France, this historical wine-making leader, Bordeaux and Burgundy live hand in glove with cognac and Calvados. By the same token, Ukraine with its absolute prevalence of horilka may well accommodate choice wines to add to the palette of Epicurean pleasures.
S.V.: Would you agree that this “wine culture” in Ukraine is to be shaped by a class resolved to enrich the palette of Epicurean pleasures – and most importantly prosperous enough to afford them?
I.P.: I would, but only partially. There is no direct connection between prosperity and culture, particularly wine culture. Say, in Great Britain, this traditional rye whisky and beer producer and consumer, people also drink wine, but German wines are in the greatest demand. Personally, I call them operetta wines, because most are unpardonably oversweetened. Regrettably, semidry wines have been popular in Russia and Ukraine for the past two hundred years. In wines, as in literature, bad taste is identical: syrupy. But then Ukraine, compared to England, is in an advantageous position. Good wine can be made in the presence of three key factors: good soil, hot sun, and dedicated people. The first two are present in southwestern Ukraine, so the problem is to have dedicated people with a delicate nose, demanding palate, and a broad wine outlook. Winemakers have to be cultivated, just like vineyards. All it takes is discarding one’s own hypocrisy.
Wine is not what makes people drunk. People get drunk consuming wine in unreasonable quantities. When used reasonably, wine makes people keenly aware of that special sense of life, enriching their sensual experience. Wine is not vodka which blurs one’s senses, triggering off brutal aggressive emotions, causing arguments ending in fistfights or worse. Wine prolongs one’s sensual pleasure. Wine-drinking people are less aggressive than those who prefer vodka. Wine-drinking gives rise to a very special way of thinking. Wine makes one think in a noble way and vodka makes one quarrelsome. Wine will coexist with horilka in Ukraine like Baptists with the Orthodox Eastern Church, and this will only serve to enrich Ukrainian culture.
S.V.: Could one use a given country’s drinking habits to determine its social attitudes, something like “Tell me what you drink and I will tell you who you are”?
I.P.: I would say that a given country’s eating and drinking habits can in a way testify to that country’s cultural standard. I would rather consider this problem at the social bottom line. In France, beggars gather at the street markets by closing time when sellers dump products which they consider of slightly inferior quality. Every day these beggars eat practically fresh fruit and cheese. And they drink cheap table wine – but this is French wine, many times better than the kind of beer guzzled by the British bum. Now consider British soccer fans, the most disgusting social group in Europe. After putting a dozen six-packs in their bellies they start making a lot of trouble, something you will never see at a French stadium. Here is the difference between wine and beer cultures.
S.V.: Am I supposed to understand that people can be made more tranquil and contemplative by developing their wine culture?
I.P.: Now that’s an illusion you shouldn’t harbor. It’s just that Ukraine has come considerably closer to the wine Weltanschauung than it can realize at the moment. Unlike Russia, this country is slow in thinking and making decisions. Here the modus vivendi and operandi is almost Oriental.
S.V.: I am compelled to ask what was your first impression of Kyiv after twenty years of separation.
I.P.: I left a city gripped by fear and indifference where I was summoned for interrogations leaving me scarred stiff, where the notion of conscience was considered a suicidal luxury. But the city is still there, with its singular historic charms. I have since visited a lot of other magnificent cities, but Kyiv has always remained unique. So when I arrived this time it was like falling in love again.
S.V.: And the people?
I.P.: Passing judgment offhand would be improper and most likely erroneous. The evil empire has collapsed, producing a tremendous psychological impact on the populace. And mind you: that empire had done everything it could to destroy the individual and the nation. Ukraine was a colony, thus fully exposed to every kind of brain-drain. On the other hand, every such metropolis produces a rich culture, thus adding to the world treasure-trove. In an empire culture always benefits by making a lot of people suffer. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think that Russian-speaking residents of Ukraine—people raised on Russian cultural and linguistic traditions — experienced quite a shock when this “transitory period” began. Some of my old friends say they feel as though they found themselves in immigration, without lifting a finger to do so. Such is the paradox of the epoch: you leave and your country follows its way, then you come for a visit. In this sense one’s “forced immigrant” status is quite dangerous, I think that one can get irrevocably conservative. Any culture is kept alive by being nourished by fresh talent, trends, questions, and risks. I often visit Moscow. Once the heart of a giant empire, coveted by all those ambitious Soviet cum laude university graduates, it is now strikingly open and straightforward. Its people are looking for new progressive ways and say so. I would hate to see “Russian Kyiv” acquire the “Parisian Russian emigre” status, with all those has-beens looking down on everyone and everything, with their senseless snobbishness and intolerant conservatism. I wish this game ended with both sides – red and white – winning, like in winemaking where red and white wines are equally appreciated.
Photo by Serhiy Bardin:
“IN MY VIEW, BEING A PESSIMIST IS BAD TASTE”






