{"id":1033,"date":"2016-03-08T03:05:54","date_gmt":"2016-03-08T03:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/?p=1033"},"modified":"2016-08-14T16:17:42","modified_gmt":"2016-08-14T16:17:42","slug":"boris-natasha-peter-catherine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/?p=1033","title":{"rendered":"Boris & Natasha & Peter & Catherine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s\u00a0a short list of what formed my impressions of Russia. My earliest images\u00a0would be Boris Badenov and Natasha Nogoodnik on the Rocky and Bullwinkle show.\"980x\"<\/p>\n

The Cuban missile crisis and Nikita Khrushchev’s banging his shoe when I was 10.\u00a0My dad taking me out in the backyard at night to see Sputnik crossing the sky.\u00a0<\/span>There was always the background cultural noise of Cold War saber rattling.<\/p>\n

When I traveled and lived in Europe in my twenties, I read the biographies and autobiographies of \u00a0writers. The diaries of Sophia, Tolstoy’s wife, left a strong impression on me, as did Nabokov’s memoir,\u00a0Speak Memory<\/em>. I didn’t get around to reading Russian\u00a0novels\u00a0until I fell in love with Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov in college, around age 28. \u00a0Around the same time I read about the Greats, Catherine and Peter, the doomed Romanovs, and lusty Rasputin.<\/p>\n

There were the Bond movie super villains, including the\u00a0reptilian\u00a0Rosa Krebs. Oh, and of course Dr Zhivago<\/a>,\u00a0of which I only dimly recall troikas in the snow and throbbing balalaika music.<\/p>\n

I watched\u00a0the movie REDS<\/a>\u00a0more than once, mostly for the writer-on-writer love.\u00a0Skip ahead to Mugatu’s Russian henchwoman, Katinka, in Zoolander<\/em>, and back to this little gem from the 1980s \u202ahttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=5CaMUfxVJVQ <\/a>and that’s about it for me.<\/p>\n

I’ve got a stack of TBR history, biography and literature that’s Russian-centric, plus some audio lectures on literature that I’m loving. I gave\u00a0Gogol’s Dead Souls (<\/em>as interpreted by Monty Python alumni) a listen. I’m currently switching back and forth between biographies of Peter the Great and\u00a0Great Catherine<\/em>, by Carolly\u00a0Erickson.\"catherine-the-great-20150728\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Looking forward to having my childhood notions and literary preconceptions replaced with actual experience.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s\u00a0a short list of what formed my impressions of Russia. My earliest images\u00a0would be Boris Badenov and Natasha Nogoodnik on the Rocky and Bullwinkle show. The Cuban missile crisis and Nikita Khrushchev’s banging his shoe when I was 10.\u00a0My dad taking me out in the backyard at night to see Sputnik crossing the sky.\u00a0There was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1037,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3,21],"tags":[121,119],"class_list":{"0":"post-1033","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-preparation","8":"category-st-petersburg","9":"tag-preparation","10":"tag-st-petersburg","11":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/ShrewTamed_Landseer.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7OBxc-gF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1033"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1041,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033\/revisions\/1041"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}