Review

- Traver’s work can’t ©

escape the familiar

Time magazine bias

KIFE: The Lives and Dreams of Soviet
Youth. By Nancy Traver. St. Martin's
Press, New York. $25.95 hardcover. Avail-
able at People’s Co-op Bookstore.

“Kife is about the children of glasnost,
and about young people who’ve known
both the days of fear and the flowering of
freedom. Ultimately, this book is about the
future which is in the hands of those who
will dwell in it the longest.” With those
words, Yuri Shchekochikhin, the editor of
the Soviet newspaper, Literaturnaya
Gazeta, concludes his foreword to this new
book on the lives of young people in the
Soviet Union.

It was that introduction that prompted
me to read the book despite my misgivings
over the credentials of the author, Nancy
Traver, who was a Moscow correspondent
for Time magazine from 1983 to 1987. Unfor-
tunately, my first impression about the possi-
ble content of the book proved more correct
than the enthusiastic description in the
foreword for as expected, the book reads
like Time magazine: there is'a veneer of
objectivity that poorly masks the right-wing
ideological pattern underneath.

However, I eagerly read every word in
Kife because it illuminates in a clear, easy to
read style the day-to-day lives of average
Soviet people. Questions I have had for
some considerable time about life in the
Soviet Union are at last answered here.

What do Soviet people want out of life,
and how to they go about getting it? Traver
seeks to answer those questions by briefly
examining all aspects of Soviet life from
school and work to politics and religion to
dating services and rock bands to teen preg-
nancy and health care.

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30 « Pacific Tribune, December 18, 1989

What she finds, of course, is a people with
aspirations little different from our own.
She sums it up in the word “kife’” — a
recently-coined Russian slang word which
she defines as “‘catching a buzz, or having it
all. When a Soviet has achieved kife, he’s
got it made.”

But what Traver also finds in the under-
35 section of the population that she focuses
on is a large measure of cynicism and skep-
ticism about the ability of their society to
change. “Those who were in*their teens
when he (Gorbachev) came to power are
hopeful. But their older brothers and
sisters — members of the generation that
came of age under Brezhnev — remain lar-
gely indifferent. Their skepticism is already
so ingrained that they can hardly be induced
to dream Gorbachev’s dream,” she writes in
the introduction. The rest of the book is
dedicated to fleshing out that theme of skep-
ticism and indifference.

Through seven chapters Traver briefly
touches on many areas of Soviet life by
interviewing young people, who for the
most part are identified only by their first
name, who have had some experience in
that area.

In the first chapter, Traver details the
lives of Misha and Zhenya, two young men
who “‘despite all their years of conditioning
in Soviet schools had defied the system.
Both regularly broke laws and lived as they
pleased. They had quit the collective and
relied on each other.”’ Misha marries a West
German woman and emigrates to Berlin.
Zhenya finds that his previously illegal
video parlour is now a profitable co-
operative under perestroika.

Other young people are introduced
throughout the book and if their voices are
not enough to complete the grim, hopeless
picture of Soviet life that Traver seems
insistent on revealing, then she adds the
occasional editorial instruction on how the
Soviets could improve their lot.

For example, at the end of the chapter
called “The Military and Careers,” Traver
writes: “Most Soviet workers have known
only Stalinist tyranny or the widespread
corruption, cynicism, and inertia of the
Brezhnev era. If Gorbachev is to rebuild the
economy, he will have to ease government
restrictions and unleash the spirit of private
enterprise. Without this, the Soviet people
will never change their sheeplike ways.”

But even Traver cannot avoid some
interesting comparisons with the American
way of life. In her chapter titled ‘““Education
and Indoctrination”, (just to be sure you
don’t overlook her main point in the text)

she provides statistics on literacy in the-

Soviet Union. “Soviet schools are wonder-
fully efficient. Teachers there have good
reason to be proud. Before the Russian
Revolution 75 per cent of the populace was
illiterate. Today’s literacy rate is better than
99 per cent. At least 164 million of the

nation’s 280 million people have a high ©

school or college education. Meanwhile,
American schools are graduating young
people who can neither read nor write.”

She also points out: “Soviet youth are
shocked to hear that some American par-
ents will end up paying $20,000 a year or
more for their children to attend Yale, Har-
vard, or other elite schools. They are proud
of their no-cost school system. The right toa
free education is unlikely to change under
Gorbachev. Like free health care and low-
cost housing, the Soviet educational system
is one of the centrepieces of socialism.”

If you have wanted a more detailed pic- .

ture of life in the Soviet Union today, a

' picture that goes beyond the images that we

it

SOVIET YOUTH ..

get on the nightly news, then reading Kife
will provide that picture.

But keep in mind that this book is written
with an agenda and style typical of Time
magazine. In my view, Traver’s opinion
that the only resolution of the present prob-
lems in the Soviet Union is the creation of a

. presented through Time correspondent'’s eyes..

“

U.S.-style society casts a dark shadow over ~
her attempt to reveal the aspirations of —
Soviet young people. I can only hope that a —
book on a similar topic might one day be —
written by Fred Weir, the Tribune’s Mos-
cow correspondent.

— Angela Kenyon

independent magazine reporting the USSR.

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