Russia: Books, Bollywood, space ...soft power that binds India, Russia

Kolkata keeps its love for Soviet-era lit aliveRussia might have become increasingly isolated on the global stage but you wouldn’t have guessed that from the high turnout at the Russia Pavilion of the 45th Kolkata International Book Fair held earlier this month. Kolkata’s reading community still has a deep-rooted affection for Russian literature and many of them turned up in search of Soviet-era translations and reprints.This love affair travelled beyond the Marxist strongholds of West Bengal and Kerala to other parts of the country through mobile bookshops and translations into Indian languages. In an essay for The Guardian, author Pankaj Mishra wrote about his own diet of Soviet Life magazine and Russian fairy tales while growing up. “For boys like me, in north Indian railway towns in the 70s and 80s, where nothing much happened apart from the arrival and departure of trains from big cities, the Soviet Union alone appeared to promise an escape from our limited, dusty world.”It wasn’t just the classics of Dostoevsky and Pushkin that attracted people. If ‘Soviet Nari’ was liked by women for its knitting designs, folk tales of Baba Yaga, the wild witch, and Ivan, the handsome prince, ignited the imagination of children. Of course, those tales also came loaded with dollops of Soviet propaganda. Debasmita Moulick, curator at the Russia Pavilion, says scarcity and nostalgia have turned these books into collector’s items. “Some of the children’s stories have been passed down over generations,” says Moulick, adding that about 200 to 500 people turned up every day at the fair asking for specific editions or translations. medium90511762Deep Ghosh, who runs the first Bengali science fiction (SF) and fantasy web magazine Kalpabiswa, discussed the impact of Soviet literature on early Bengali science fiction. “The first Soviet SF book to have a far-reaching impact on Kolkata writers is Alexander Belyaev’s ‘Amphibian Man’, written in 1928. This inspired early Bengali SF writers, such as Satyajit Ray,” says Ghosh whose publishing house has translated about five Soviet SF books.Those early translations were the handiwork of Bengali translators living in Russia, explains Suvankar Dey, whose Dey Publishers translated many Russian works. “These illustrious Bengali translators living in Russia were closely involved in translation, publication and distribution of Soviet books in Kolkata. These included publications from Raduga and Progress Publishers based in Moscow, which were set up in the 1960s. The Soviet Consulate also promoted magazines like ‘Soviet Desh’ and ‘Soviet Nari’.” Dey points out that Soviet subsidies ensured that the works were sold at nominal prices.Another big, albeit sometimes forgotten, arena of Soviet publishing were educational textbooks. “We used to get excellent Russian science and math textbooks through a Soviet book export agency called Mezhdunarodnaya Kniga because western ones were either unavailable or too expensive. They were life-savers for many students,” says Jadavpur University professor Rimi B Chatterjee.When Soviets shimmied to Mithun's 'Jimmy Jimmy'The year was 1983. Film director Babbar Subhash’s ‘Disco Dancer’ had just been invited for the Moscow film festival by a Mumbai-based agency Sovex Fort. “I was hesitant because it was a modern film with modern music and mostly dark films such as ‘Do Bigha Zameen’ have been successful in Russia but Smita Patil convinced me otherwise,” Subhash recalls.By the time the movie screening ended, over 3,000 people in the auditorium were clapping and dancing along to the title track. “It was one of the best days of my life,” he says. ‘Disco Dancer’ went on to sell 120 million tickets in the Soviet Union, and even WhatsApp’s Ukrainian cofounder Jan Koum recalls watching the film as many as 20 times as a kid in Kyiv.With Hollywood movies banned in the USSR during the Cold War, the Soviet government began promoting Indian movies from the 1950s onwards. The first big hit was Raj Kapoor’s ‘Awaara’ selling 64 million tickets followed by ‘Shree 420’. Then came movies such as ‘Dhool ka Phool’, ‘Love in Simla’, ‘Bobby’, ‘Barood’, ‘Seeta aur Geeta’, ‘Muqaddar ka Sikandar’.Dr Sudha Rajagopalan, senior lecturer in East European Studies at the University of Amsterdam, estimates that 210 Indian films were screened in Soviet theatres between 1954 and 1991, around 190 of which were mainstream Hindi films from Bombay. “Indian popular films often surpassed both domestic and other foreign cinema in viewer turnout,” she writes in her book. medium90511871Elena Doroshenko, a Moscow-based journalist and linguist who has watched the old hits as well as the relatively newer ‘Kal Ho Naa Ho’ and ‘Paheli’, says they struck an emotional chord with Russians. “The films spoke the same emotional language — even though we were different, we understood the emotions and passions,” she says.The success of Hindi films in the USSR also led to joint productions such as ‘Alibaba aur 40 Chor’ and ‘Sohni Mahiwal’. However, this changed after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. “There was a flood of various films from the West and we wanted to imitate that lifestyle,” Doroshenko says. “Indian films were still on TV — it’s not that they were forgotten but they stopped being a sensation.”Dancer Svetlana Tulasi, who was born to an Indian dad and Russian mom and raised in Moscow, recalls watching Bollywood movies on cassette tapes, then cable TV, then DVDs and eventually on the internet. She shot to fame a few years ago with her viral Bollywood-Kathak fusion dances at Russia’s Got Talent and Ukraine’s Got Talent.On YouTube, there are Russian fan channels devoted to Mithun Chakraborty, and dance performances set to the song ‘Jimmy Jimmy’. There are even a couple of restaurants by that name in Vladivostok and the Georgian capital of Tbilisi.The Georgian ‘Jimmy Jimmy’ was inaugurated in 2019 by none other than Raj Kapoor’s son Rajeev Kapoor. “When we visited Georgia for the first time, we were surprised to see that taxi drivers were playing ‘Jimmy Jimmy’ and ‘Mera Joota hai Japani’,” says owner Shubham Joshi whose customer base includes both locals as well as Indian students.boxcontent medium90511963To space in a Soviet rocketIndia’s space relationship with Russia goes back to the Soviet days when they helped in the launch of satellites. In fact, Rakesh Sharma, the first Indian to go to space on April 2, 1984, flew aboard the Soviet rocket Soyuz T-11. Those ties still continue and there are apprehensions that India’s Gaganyaan human spaceflight project, which relies on Russian cooperation, might get delayed What these Lenins and Stalins think of PutinYuri Gagarin PK still recalls how almost every day he would return home from primary school teary-eyed. There were several Lenins and Stalins in his school, but the kids in Kannur village had never heard of the Soviet cosmonaut. Proudly named by his father, an admirer of Marxism and all things Russian, it took years for Gagarin, now 59 and a farmer, to realise how lucky he was to be named after the first man to successfully venture into outer space.“When the whole world is trying to save lives in a pandemic, Russia is killing innocent people. But my love for the ‘real’ Russia will never decline,” says Gagarin, referring to the invasion of Ukraine. Any number of Keralites would agree with Gagarin. They consider Putin an abomination but Russia itself, rightly or wrongly, remains an object of nostalgia. Till not so long ago, and no matter the startling revelations from behind the Iron Curtain that emerged after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Soviet Russia was for many Indians what America could never be — a symbol of justice, equality and the wretched of the earth belatedly claiming their legitimate due. medium90511728It’s this that gave rise to the fascination for naming children after Russian leaders, with Lenin and Stalin topping the charts with some Pushkins and Brezhnevs in the mix as well. There’s even a Moscow junction in Kottayam.But the old Soviet charisma is fast fading, especially among the new generation. Lenin Unnikrishnan (22), a mechanical engineering graduate from Mayyil in Kannur, was named after the Russian leader by his late father, a school teacher and hardcore leftist. Lenin takes the attention his name draws in his stride but, as he makes clear while refusing to be photographed, he clearly considers this Russian legacy a mixed bag at best.Stalin, whose name cost him a seat at DB College in Thalayolaparambu when the then Congress-affiliated college management considered him a political undesirable, opposes Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “If Ukraine joins NATO, it is a cause for concern for Russia. But that cannot be a justification for war.”CV Lenin, a video journalist in Kochi, has a more complex view on Ukraine. “Like any country, Russia too has its red lines — you can’t bring NATO to its backyard; also, there is a huge fraternal link between Russia and Ukraine that goes back centuries. Having said that, I feel Putin shouldn’t have attacked — he has turned 18 lakh ordinary people into homeless refugees,” he said.boxcontent medium90511946Chess capital’s Russian linkThe Tal Chess Club — named after the legend from erstwhile USSR — began its journey in August 1972 at Chennai’s Russian Centre for Science and Culture. It holds a special place in the growth of the game in the country. Manuel Aaron, India’s first International Master (IM) who had a diploma in the Russian language, was instrumental in running the club where the biggest names in the sport such as Viswanathan Anand and other star players honed their skills. The club was renamed Emmanuel Chess Centre (ECC) in 1996 and has since been run by Ebenezer Joseph, India’s first FIDE trainer. Over the years, thousands have benefited from the skills imparted by the trainers at ECC