Searching the Soul of Russia

Absurdity and Pain in the Land of Pushkin

Michele Kelemen, C’89, began studying Russian in her Columbia, Maryland, high school and became hooked. "Basically, I liked the challenge of it," she says. At Penn, she majored in Russian and spent a summer in Moscow. "I found myself captivated by the literature, the history, and the culture," says Kelemen. "I think it was that never-ending search for the Russian soul, the philosophical writing, the drama of everything Russian." Part of the late 80s drama was Gorbachov’s Perestroika and the opening up of the Soviet Union. "It was hard not to stay interested."

And if the Russian people’s hope, engendered in that heady time, has been finally shaken by recurring economic and political crisis, Kelemen remains interested. In fact, it’s her job. She lives in the Russian capital and for a year now has filed regular reports as Moscow correspondent and bureau chief for National Public Radio. Her broadcasts can be heard on NPR programs like Morning Edition and All Things Considered.

Kelemen has covered everything from Russian politics and the economic crisis that culminated in last summer’s collapse of the ruble, to anti-Semitism, decaying nuclear facilities, "Pushkin Fever," and new cultural trends like the Boris Eifman dance troupe as well as cultural pillars like the Kirov Ballet. She has helped explain Russian activities in Kosovo, elaborated the tribulations of small businesses in an uncertain economy, and exposed deplorable conditions in Russian orphanages. In her broadcasts, which emanate from a Moscow studio that she describes as "a small black box" in her office, listeners hear the voices of the mighty and the small: President Boris Yeltsin, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, and U.S. Secretary of State Madelein Albright along with prima ballerinas, government functionaries, laid-off single moms, and homeless children. As Kelemen travels across the country doing feature stories, her reports trace the reverberations of important stories–like the ruble’s collapse–down through the strata of Russian society.

Before coming to NPR, Kelemen worked eight years for the Voice of America as newswriter, producer, and newscaster, eventually becoming host of the hour-long news program World Report. "I’ve always been a fan of NPR and the format of the programs," she says. "It’s one of the few places where listeners can hear longer pieces about world news. At NPR I’ve had the chance of doing more in-depth reporting–explaining some of the background behind the headlines."

When she’s not traveling, she starts her days reading the papers and later tracks down news conferences, sets up interviews, and then spends lots of time sitting in traffic or waiting to go through security. Her reports vary from three to eight minutes, thesis length compared to the sound-bite slots allowed by commercial news shows. "By the time my day is over, the editors are just waking up, and my day begins all over again. It is exhausting–but exciting."

Radio news is an alchemical blend of reportage and storytelling, of information hung on a picture that’s created out of sound: words and sound effects. Kelemen says this deliberate selection and precise placement of radio’s raw material "brings the story to life." Some stories lend themselves to it more than others, particularly features about Russian life far from the intrigues of the Kremlin. "For many Russians," she says, "life has simply become hard."

In a report about surviving the tough winter of ‘98 in the city of Murmansk, Kelemen paints a stark picture with words. She describes a scene with dozens of people milling around the unemployment office. "This is not somewhere you want to be during these long, cold polar nights," she confides. "It’s mid-day, and still it looks like dusk with pink skies over the drab buildings that make up this city, the largest in the arctic." You can almost see the frosty breath plumes steaming from hooded heads. And lest you are charmed by that warm pink fringe that glows along the horizon, the narrative is suddenly interrupted by the sound of a raw wind that wandered in from surrounding tundra ice fields. Slipping through some forgotten crevice somewhere on the empty streets, the glacial cold moves with a snow-muffled moan–and makes the listener shiver. The sound effect conveys not just the ice-crusted gloom of a long arctic night but the bitter malaise of unrelenting hardship that Kelemen now takes up in her story.

The city’s unemployment office is two years behind in its payment of benefits. What jobs there are, pay only about $30 a month–not enough to get by. In addition to the economic troubles afflicting the rest of the nation, Murmansk is a casualty of the post-Soviet transition. In a drive to settle the region, the Soviet government paid generous subsidies and high salaries to those willing to endure its arctic conditions. Now, however, the cash-strapped government can no longer support the population of one million, and it has become a burden for the regional government and local enterprises. One unemployed mother says her family eats only porridge, bread, and tea, and she doesn’t have money to pay for their apartment. Local authorities are long overdue in paying the child support they owe her. In a "tangled web of mutual debt write-off," the child-support payment is made by eliminating her rent and utilities debt. With no cash, a system of barter has taken hold: instead of salaries, some people receive fish in exchange for work. Authorities estimate about one-third of the population doesn’t have enough to live a "normal life" through the winter, and some believe there is danger of a famine. The city is the proud home of the navy’s northern fleet. In her report, Kelemen remarks that "the signs around town proclaiming Murmansk a ‘heroes city’ seem surreal."

But that’s sandlot surrealism compared to the major league absurdity of the thick state bureaucracy. The surrealism of life in Russia is compounded exponentially by an unsolvable Rubik’s Cube of official regulations and agencies. It doesn’t matter how you turn it, the administrative system seems to exist to retard economic recovery, to mass produce frustration, and to increase the sale of vodka. "Most Russians do what they can to avoid dealings with the government," says Kelemen. "In many ways, it’s a continuation of life under communism–this bureaucratic state with regulations that don’t really make any sense."

In describing the energy she puts out to deal with the official apparatus, Kelemen ceaselessly invokes the word million: "I had a million documents" and "I had to go to a million places." It takes bribery and lots of time to accomplish almost nothing. One time, she tried to get a license plate for her car. She needed "a million" documents: one saying she’s the bureau chief of NPR, one showing that the bureau is registered with the tax police, one giving the car’s history, one proving she’s certified with the foreign ministry, and so on. Each document had to be notarized in the U.S., and then Russian officials needed to receive an apostille, a notary of the notary. Everything is then translated and that too is notarized. On each document, at the end of the process, the name "National Public Radio" was transliterated slightly differently. The authorities claimed it couldn’t be the same organization.

A feast of absurdity and pain–along with regret for lost superpower greatness–is no doubt an oversimplified summation of what Kelemen has found on her journey into the soul of Russia. But it doesn’t disappoint her expectation of high drama and big emotion–and it’s downright Dostoyevskian.

"Russia is at a crossroads now and is in the midst of a crisis," she says. "We are really witnessing now the end of the Yeltsin era, and there are few politicians who could realistically replace him. The parliamentary elections later this year and the presidential elections next June will be key. There are many interesting stories to tell."