Русские здесь: Фильм, помогающий Андропову - [24]

Emigre: Tbo much freedom [in America] for criminals, too much freedom for young people. Interviewer: Why have you come here?

To produce the show, why did PBS choose Ofra Bikel

— a poorly qualified amateur

— and not a gifted, well-educated competent emigre?

From 60 to 80 percent of Americans believe that there is too much freedom in America for criminals and — in a different sense — for young people. For Ofra Bikel this is a wild aberration of a Russian savage: "Why have you come here?”

The emigre, who is by now an American citizen, could have asked Ofra Bikel: ‘‘Why have you come here?”

The fact that emigres from post-1917 Russia tend to support American views more to the right than those that Ofra Bikel supports accounts for another source of her hatred for the group.

Primitive rustics only

The emigres from post-1917 Russia have been providing a powerful cultural stimulus which we can clearly see in retrospect. If I were to choose the opening musical background for a documentary on the emigration from Russia, I would choose Rachmaninov’s Fourth Piano Concerto (which he wrote in America), played by a recent Russian emigre to an American audience.

What did Ofra Bikel choose? A 1905 tune played on a village harmonica. Now, what do recent emigres from Russia, most of whom are urban Jews, have in common with village harmonicas playing 1905 tunes?

The 1905 tune on a village harmonica is followed by a 19th-century folk song which an emigre plays on the street on a kind of xylophone, reminiscent of American street-corner musicians. Jessica Savitch says to its tune: “... they (the “Russians”] have their own music ....”

Indeed, Rachmaninov’s Fourth Piano Concerto would be absurd: the “Russians" composing or playing serious music! On the other hand, the “Russians" who have “their own” primitive street music reinforce the impression of an alien primitive Eastern tribe, with “their” music, in contrast to the music of Ofra Bikel’s Western and American sophisticated civilization.

Next comes a kind of singing and dancing clown who is “known to every Russian,” the announcer proclaims. No “Russian” of my emigre milieu has ever heard of him. But what the “documentary” purports to show is that just as all Americans know world-famous musicians or writers, ail “Russians” know their clown whom no outsider knows. The “Russians” live within their closed, self-contained tribe, alien, incomprehensible and unpleasant to outsiders.

Incidentally, this dance the clown dances is Jewish, which Ofra Bikel ought to know. But in her desire to represent Jews from Russia as aliens, savages and “Russians,” Ofra Bikel even shows an international Jewish dance as “Russian.”

What is not shown

Ofra Bikel stresses again and again that the “Russians” are primitive, rustic, corny. The “documentary” does not feature a single concert pianist or another serious musician, a single ballet dancer, a single scientist in any field, a single inventor or a single chessplayer. It does not show a single “Russian” doing any prestigious work or employed by a single university, a single government agency, a single hospital, a single engineering firm, or any other prestigious American institution.

Residing in the United States is a phalanx of fighters for freedom in Russia. The names of some of them are world-known. But none of them is as much as alluded to in the "documentary.”

Intense religious life, both Judaic and Russian Orthodox, exists in certain segments of immigration. It is not as much as hinted at.

The “documentary” does not show that the emigres — served by their own thriving emigre businesses, some of which are better than competitive American businesses — have brought life, order and prosperity to several areas which had been urban wastelands haunted by criminals.

The median income of emigres is, already, higher than the average for America as a whole, while the average scholastic rating of their children is far higher than America’s average. Is this surprising? No. After all, some of the most gifted, intelligent, enterprising inhabitants of Russia have been emigrating to America since 1917. They are far above the average in Russia and America. Ofra Bikel wants to see this elite as a bunch of primitive rustics, drunks, derelicts or social misfits — and this is what she shows.

Russian traits...

Ofra Bikel’s “Russians” have the following “Russian” traits:

(1) Materialism. Though her “Russians” are paupers (not a single Russian is shown to own an expensive home, office, plant, laboratory or any other substantial property), they avidly try on mink coats, overeat, wallow in cheap vulgar “luxuries” and see X-rated movies dubbed in Russian.

(2) Rustic innocence. They don’t understand there are burglars, and the purpose of safety chains on doors has to be explained to them. In rustic Russia, evidently, no burglars exist.

(3) Inclination to crime. They are afraid of the police, forge documents and seek illegal ways in everything.

(4) Mental underdevelopment. They are primitive, speak atrocious English (all worse than even Ofra Bikel), cannot think or speak coherently on any subject, and when asked to explain how they understand freedom, they just mumble and stammer.