“No one in the book can forget Russia no matter how much they may want to.” -A Jewish Q&A with historical fiction author L. Bordetsky Williams, Forget Russia
It seems like lately, for obvious and terrifying reasons, we are thinking about Russia and Ukraine. We are also thinking about what it was like for Jews there in the last century. Holocaust fiction and memoirs are prevalent, but I couldn’t find many novels set in the Soviet Union on the shelves. Like many readers, I often start with historical fiction and then go online and learn as much as I can about the subject of the book. Just as I did with Forget Russia, which is set in 1980s USSR, with flashbacks to pre-Soviet Russia.
I caught up with the L. Bordetsky-Williams, the author of Forget Russia, to ask her all the Jewish questions about crafting her novel, based on a true story.
Q: I was convinced this book was a was a memoir the entire time I was reading, and have since read your essay describing your grandparents’ stories, which you used as the backdrop of this novel. But how much of Anna’s story is based on personal experiences?
A: Like Anna, I was a student in the Soviet Union in 1980. I then had the unusual opportunity to meet many Soviet Jews who wanted to practice Judaism and were very persecuted as Jews. They welcomed me into their homes and shared their dreams and fears with me. I also wanted to capture in Forget Russia what it was like to be a Jew in the Ukraine during the tumultuous years of the Revolutionary Civil War (1918-1921) when rule shifted away from the Red Bolsheviks, and White sympathizers fought for control of the region. Pogroms and genocide against the Jews were rampant. My own great-grandmother (just like Szlata in the novel) was raped and murdered by Cossacks as they rampaged through the shtetl of Gornostaypol. The novel is based on my own family history. My goal was to show the devastating consequences of war and hate crimes on the following generations. When I see the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine now, my message feels even more urgent than ever. Putin wants to restore a type of imperial Tsarist glory through his rampage and destruction of Ukraine as he insists on bringing the country under the control of Russia.
Q: Anna visits the Soviet Union and meets Jews while she is there. She boards the plane optimistic for her time there, and through the Soviet Jews she meets, she discovers the hardships they go through. But still she carries a love for Russia with her when she leaves. I have met many Jews from the former Soviet Union who remember their hardships and yet are nostalgic. What is this unique combination all about?
A: I titled the novel Forget Russia because no one in the book can forget this country no matter how much they may want to. The contemporary poet, Warsan Shire, writes. “No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.” We see now in Ukraine how millions of people are forced to flee the country they love because of war and genocide. In Forget Russia I wanted to capture the love and longing the immigrant and refugee continues to have for their home.
Q: Part of what motivates Anna is to somehow put to rest her great-grandmother, who was drowned in a river during a pogrom. Though it’s decades later and Anna never met her great-grandmother, she carries this trauma with her. Is it possible to ever leave these generational traumas behind?
A: I believe that by connecting to her ancestor’s life, in this case Anna’s murdered great-grandmother, a healing process can begin. Toni Morrison discusses the importance of connecting with the ancestor as a way to strengthen one’s self-identity and sense of rootedness. In the process of writing Forget Russia and researching Ukraine before and after the Bolshevik Revolution, and as I attempted to reconstruct my great-grandmother’s short and tragic life, I began an important healing process in my own life. I don’t think the trauma can or should ever be forgotten but by honoring the life of the ancestor, great value can be created.
Q: Sarah is Anna’s grandmother, and the flashbacks to her pre-Soviet stories of antisemitic violence are gripping. How did you decide which parts of Sarah’s story you wanted to tell in flashbacks and which in letters that Anna discovers?
A: By using flashback to show Sarah’s grief at losing her mother in a pogrom, I wanted to not only capture Sarah’s story but the stories of many Eastern European Jews in the early part of the 20th century. The most unusual part, however, of my novel is the story of Sarah and her husband Leon’s return to the Soviet Union in 1931. This is also based on my own family history as my grandparents went back to the Soviet Union at that time with my mother and aunt, ages five and three. Many American Jews who left Russia in the early part of the 20th century, along with other Americans from places, for example, like the Midwest, went to the Soviet Union in the early 1930s. The U.S. was at the height of The Depression, so life was extremely hard here, and the Yiddish Dailies and the Communist Party newspaper promised jobs and a home for all. If those Americans in the Soviet Union came back to the U.S. before the height of Stalin’s purges of 1936 or 1937, they were okay. During the purges it was almost impossible to leave and many of those Americans of Russian/Jewish descent along with other Americans simply perished in the Gulags. When Anna discovers letters from the Soviet years of her grandparents, she is able to understand the enduring legacy of violence and fear her Soviet Jewish friends were experiencing in 1980. She is also able to finally understand the hope and dreams of her own grandparents. In Putin’s Russia, we see the legacy of fear and repression as he tightens his hold on the country and squashes all dissent.
Q: Let’s talk craft. Historical fiction is a difficult task. There are always readers who will want to nitpick historical details. Particularly when we have to parse through family lore and compare it to historical facts, and all the muddy in-between. What challenges do you face writing in this genre?
A: I have to say that I loved doing the research that was necessary to write this novel. I read voluminously about those American Jews and other Americans who went to live in the Soviet Union in the 1930s—their diaries, memoirs, and biographies gave me the courage to reconstruct this time period. I also didn’t realize how unstable and dangerous a place Ukraine was for Jews during the Civil War of 1918-21. Those people pillaging Jewish shtetls were further emboldened to carry out more antisemitic violence during World War II. After the Fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Jews over time became part of the larger Ukrainian community. President Zelensky is even Jewish. The present war in all of its horror is uprooting years of peace and healing for the Jewish community as it targets all Ukrainian citizens.
Q: You’ve written about a time in Jewish history usually overshadowed in fiction by the Holocaust. What are your thoughts on the direction and diversity of Jewish historical fiction?
A: We have to continue to remember the Holocaust and write about it so the present generation and others never forget. Given the genocide we are seeing in Ukraine right now, this becomes even more imperative. That being said, there is a wonderful diversity in Jewish historical fiction now. The floodgates have opened, and I can’t stop reading!!
Q: And lastly, my favorite question to ask every Jewish author and reader: When was the first time you saw yourself represented in fiction?
A: Reading I. B. Singer many years ago heled me to understand more the shtetl worlds of long ago. While I didn’t see myself specifically in those pages, I did discover the voices, foibles, and lives of my ancestors, which, in essence, helped me to understand myself. I also loved the writings of Anzia Yezierska, who gave me insight into the world of the first-generation female immigrant and the sexist restrictions placed on Jewish women by a patriarchal orthodoxy. The stories of Abraham Cahan, and particularly his novel, The Rise and Fall of David Levinsky, describes the moral descent of the human soul as the Jewish immigrant accepts American values of assimilation and materialism and acquires wealth and property. And yes, his theme does remind me of Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilyich!
