Diplomacy

Today tragedy struck Europe again -- especially Russia. For me, it was not being able to get a ticket to see Eugene Onegin. This is a shallow, and American, problem.

For Russia, pain resonated throughout many of its people. The crash of the plane carrying the president of Poland struck deep within many of its older generation -- I feel. For this generation, the one that bears some weight of Stalin's treatment of the Poles (no matter how real or impressed upon them), a sword went through their heart. The act and the symbol were weighty.

Meanwhile, the Americans had barbeque.

I woke up late -- around 11am. The news was just breaking about the crash of the outdated model of aircraft carrying the president and numerous heads of government of Poland. More tragic: the families that traveled with them. They were enroute to a memorial. My thoughts momentarily went sorrowful. The human loss, the impact on Polish government ... terrible. I said a prayer, and took a shower.

The memorial that the president's plane was enroute to was a memorial that involved Russia's reluctant admission that it massacred Polish prisoners of war. For Russians of a certain age, this reluctance is an embarrassment. For these same Russians, this accident is a blight. It is salt on an embarrassing wound. This irritation did not strike me until I was in class.

Natalya, our Meyerhold professor, opened the door to Meyerhold's apartment (where we have class) and my first words to her were about how beautiful the day was. Her first words to me were about how tragic the day was -- how only a week ago Moscow was hit by tragedy, and now how Russia is once again in mourning.

I felt stupid. Not in that I didn't know what was going on, but stupid in that I didn't have any emotional response. Should I? No, is my instinct. The cycle of life, and tragedy, happens. You endure it. You put on a strong face and take stock of you blessings. You carry on.

As my classmates arrived, and we sat around the large table in the middle of Meyerhold's apartment, the very room where his wife was ruthlessly murdered, Natalya again brought up the crash. Nastya, our faithful translator, echoed the misery. Again, I felt dumbfounded.

But a thought struck me, and maybe it is inappropriate, but perhaps not. Gitta Honegger, my brilliant professor at Catholic U., talked about growing up in post-Nazi Austria and the weight of the guilt in the air they breathed. Her mother, by virtue of her nationality and however inadvertantly or unwittingly, was a party to genocide. Gitta eluded to this, and its resulting agony, when we dicussed Brecht's ANTIGONE (I might be wrong, and I apologize if I am). I think the same psychological weight of culpability applies in Russia. Russians, of a certain age, remember. Poles, of a certain age, remember. Russification is not long ago -- but none of these are American problems.

Cathy Owsiany was a classmate of mine in high school. I was her escort to her society ball in Chicago -- the League of Polish Women's Red and White Ball. It is one of the ten white tie annual affairs in Chicago. Beneath the crystal chandeliers of the Hilton and Towers, dressed in tails and ballgowns, we danced mazurkas and Polonaises to benefit charities in post-Soviet Poland. It was 1996 -- less than a decade from Communism's collapse.

Before I could escort Cathy to the ball, my mother and I (dad had to work) had to go to tea with Cathy's parents. My mother was terrified -- "TEA? What do I wear? What are we going to talk about?" Mr. Owsiany did the talking. He was eloquent, and reminiscent. He was born and raised in Poland. He worked in the Gdansk yards where Walesa raised hell for the Soviets. He experienced Russification -- being fored to learn Russian instead of his native Polish. He, and his wife (who Cathy lovingly referred to as Owsiana -- the Polish form for the women of the family [my sister, Mary, would be Pindelska]) both were forced to abandon their roots by an alien government.

Russians today understand that alienation -- if they are of a certain age -- because they were pary to it, of sorts. It was their country that forced its will upon countless millions -- massacring 20,000 Polish POWs near Smolensk, numerous millions of Ukranians in the collectivization of farms. Horror.

Today, to have a Polish head of state die, on Russian soil, en route to a memorial for Russian wrongs, strikes deep at the Russians. But it was lost on us Americans. Tonight, we drank and had barbeque at the American Embassy. We were happy to speak American English and talk about college rivalries and places we've lived. Today, we were on American soil, not enveloped in Russian issues, not fretting over Polish lives lost. It was not our issue -- and it sould not have been. We were not involved. Those of us who knew about it, we gasped, we said our prayers, we did what we thought appropriate and our lives went on as we thought best.

Tonight when we got back to the dorm, after beers and good time and the ecstacy of being able to relax with fellow Americans, we were a bit loud. Mariana, our house mother, came into the kitchen as asked if we had heard about the tragedy. Half of us knew what she meant, the other half were confused -- was the Polish jet crashing a tragedy?

To some in Russia, of a certain age, it was. Russia was taking a step forward, admitting past wrongs, and the universe (and poorly made aircraft and stubborn pilots and the iron hand of Fate) smacked at that admittance. Today, Russia was denied a chance at absolution.