Going to America
At several different points in the action of C and P the characters mention going to
America. At one point the perverse Svidrigailov tells Dunya, Raskolnikov’s
sister, that he is willing to save her brother, even offering to take him to
America. At another he offers to give Raskolnikov money: “If you are so sure
that one can’t listen at doors, but any old woman you like can be knocked on
the head, then you’d better be off at once to America somewhere. Run away,
young man! . . . . You haven’t any money, is that it? I’ll give you enough for
your journey” (Part 6, Ch. 5).
Svidrigailov later uses the metaphor of America as a way of
alluding to his suicide: “’Sofya Semyonovna,’ he said, ‘I may, perhaps, be
going to America, and as this is probably the last time we shall see each
other, I have come to complete some arrangements’” (Part 6, Ch. 6). When he arrives
at the actual act of suicide, Svidrigailov comes upon a Jewish man who is
working as a watchman:
“’Well, what do you want here, already?” [asks the watchman]
‘Nothing, brother. Good morning to you!’ answered
Svidrigailov.
‘So go somewhere else.’
‘I am going to foreign parts, brother.’
‘Foreign parts?’
‘To America.’
‘America?’
Svidrigailov took out the revolver and cocked it.
‘What now, this is not the place for jokes!’
‘Why shouldn’t it be the place?’
‘Because it isn’t.’
‘Well, brother, it doesn’t matter. It’s a good place . . .
If you are asked, say I said I was off to America.’
He lifted the revolver to his right temple” (Part 6, Ch. 7).
Why the allusions to America? Because the idea of the
country on the shining hill had a special mythological force in Russia for
several centuries, roughly the eighteen through the twentieth. Russians saw
America as a place of refuge, a place where you could begin life all over and
live very well, a magical realm of milk and honey. Despite the Cold War, any
American in the Soviet Union had a special status. In the unwritten ranking of
countries in the Russian/Soviet mind, the U.S. was always at the very top.
Caught in the Soviet trap, unable to travel abroad, Russians
dreamed some day of visiting the magic country. Then, when the Soviet Union
fell apart, they finally had their chance. And by the early years of the
twenty-first century the old myth was dead. When Russians arrived, finally, at
the paradisal land, they found it much lacking in many ways. As it turned out,
the country has attracted large numbers of Russian immigrants. Some three
hundred thousand Russians still live in the U.S. today. But they no longer live
the magic dream.
They are here because this country still provides economic
opportunities unavailable in the homeland. Ask them, however, about the
fairyland kingdom shining bright on the hill, the land envisioned by Russians
for three centuries. They’ll give you their honest opinion about the country
they have chosen to live in. Don’t expect to hear a lot of encomiums. You won’t.
For Russians the end of communism and the chance to travel killed the myth of
the American Dream, which, even in the minds of native Americans, appears to
shine much more dimly these days than it once did.
D. Shmarinov
Svidrigailov
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