Gregory Guroff, president of the “Foundation for International Arts & Education”.

Washington Profile: What was the recent work of the Foundation for International Arts & Education?

Guroff: We are currently involved in a project called American Artists from Russia. How we’ve defined, these are people who came from the Russian Empire, settled here and became known as American artists. They had their training in Russia and brought their ethnic heritage and culture, whether as Russians, Jews or Ukrainians, and they were both impacted by and had an impact on the United States. The exhibit we are now doing begins with people who came and worked here but didn’t settle here necessarily. It begins in 1812 with Pavel Sviniyn, who you may know of. He was a diplomat who came here and drew watercolors of the Americas of the time, and they were published in Petersburg. There were exhibits in Saint Petersburg and here, and they were the first presentation by a Russian of his views of the United States to a Russian audience. 

Later many Russians artists came and were participating in exhibits here. Perhaps two of the most interesting were Vereshchagin, who came here and at his show met Frederic Remington, perhaps the best known American artist of the American West, particularly in sculptures. He and Vereshchagin worked together. You could go out to Montana or to Nevada and find in museums sketches that Vereshchagin did of American cowboys. The question is, did his experience in the United States have an impact on the way he drew Central Asia and the Turkish war? Also Aivazovsky, who came and painted here. He donated many of his paintings to the United States as a symbol of gratitude for the U.S. help during the famines of the 1890s. These are people who came and went, as many, many did.

Our exhibit really begins with people like Nikolai Fechin, who came here to New York. He had tuberculosis and he moved to Taos, New Mexico where he began painting American Indians and Western scenes. He formed the Taos school of Western art. Most Americans have no idea that Fechin comes from Kazan, nor that he brought this very clear classical artistic training to his work in the United States. The exhibit will open in the U.S. at the University of Oklahoma, it will be in Saint Petersburg at the State Russian Museum in 2009, then at the Tretyakov in Moscow, and then it will come back to the San Diego Art Museum.  

Some artists came when they were very young, others came after having established their careers, whether it is Mark Rothko, or whether it is Louise Nevelson, Max Weber, John Graham, Boris Anisfeld, Arshille Gorky, or Ilya Bolotowsky -- very famous artists who were considered American artists, but who had brought their training and memories of Russia here. Ben Shahn came here and drew from memory the Jewish communities of the Russian Empire. There are some amazing paintings in our exhibit by David Burliuk. He, more than any other artists, saw himself promoting the Soviet Union at a time when the Soviet Union didn’t want anything to do with him.

There has been long debate about what is American culture. It is all of these trends of all the immigrants who came here, and I think people don’t understand how much Russian artists contributed to it. In the catalogue that we are doing for this exhibit we are also looking at similar types of people who came here in music, theater and film. 

Music is perhaps the most interesting. Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky settled in the United States. Prokofiev came, tried to have a career. Most great musicians of that era up to the almost current period were born and trained in Russia, whether is was Vladimir Horowitz or Nathan Milstein… For example, the movie High Noon, the classic American western with Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. The music is the most typical Western music and it was composed by Dimitri Tiomkin, a Russian immigrant. 

You can go from movie to movie and see that lots of music was composed by Russian émigrés. Rachmaninoff lived and died here, and continued to compose what is considered to be Russian music, and a lot of Rachmaninoff’s music became theme music for American movies. He lived for a long time in Hollywood as did Stravinsky, entertaining people like Horowitz and Gregor Piatigorsky. The amount of cultural interaction was extraordinary. People don’t write much about that. I am a Russian born in the United States. I went to Russia at the age of 25 and met my grandmother, my uncle, my cousins. I had an enormous emotional experience. What struck me most was that these great cultural figures, some of whom chose to emigrate for professional reasons, some of whom were driven out of the country, my Russian relatives, even those in culture, didn’t know anything about. I hope with this exhibit, when it goes to Russia, people will begin to understand how Russian culture affected the world outside of it. 

It was an entire wave of cultural figures, who made American culture in many ways. Theater, for example. American theater without Stanislavsky is unknown. There were artists, designers, musicians. I mean people like Anisfeld who were part of the World of Art (Mir iskusstva), became very famous here as opera designers, costume designers, in an entirely different world of fashion where Russians had a great deal of impact…

I am retired, but I help with the Foundation for International Arts and Education to introduce American audiences to the cultures of the former Soviet Union and to help museums and other institutions there to survive. Of course, the Hermitage doesn’t need our help. But a couple of years ago with Houston we did a major exhibit from the Shchukin-Morozov collection from the Pushkin museum. The Pushkin museum had never done an exhibit here, and we were able to help them to do that. The State Russian Museum has become a major partner.  We also do Ukrainian exhibits; we did a major exhibit from Kazakhstan. We did an exhibit under the Georgian catalog there. I thought the exhibit Painting Revolution was sensational because if you look at the catalogue and you look at where those paintings come from, it’s absolutely amazing. There are I think 12 provincial museums. Even Russians didn’t have any idea that all of this artwork existed in their own country, and in Krasnoyarsk and in Tula…

One of the things we did with the exhibit was to make sure that the fees that we paid went to those museums, not to the Ministry of Culture. When we did the exhibit, the most interesting thing was that the museums we talked to from Tula and elsewhere had no problems sending their works to the United States. They didn’t want to send them to Moscow because they thought that the big museums and the Ministry of Culture would grab them and keep them. We also insisted that the curators and directors of the provincial museums would be the people that would be sent to the openings. The director from Omsk, would come and look at paintings that come from Tula, at the paintings from Nizhny that they have never seen before, and they would see Malevich side by side with [their own] paintings. They suddenly began to understand what else existed and why they were talking to each other about doing an exhibit rather than having to talk only to Moscow. 

Washington Profile: How popular are these exhibits here in the United States?

Guroff: All the museums we deal with always start off by saying: “Well, it’s Russian and it’s not… We are not…”  Then they show the exhibits and they are very popular. The World of Art exhibit drew 120 thousand people in Omaha, Nebraska. In Minneapolis it was the most popular exhibit. In Princeton, which is just outside of New York, it was the most popular exhibit they have ever done. But they are hard to sell; museums are very conservative. It is also expensive. You first need to have the exhibit. Second, you need to have museums on this side that are interested.  Third, you have to have financing: grants from companies, foundations, individuals… Luckily, we have some great people to work with us and we didn’t build a huge bureaucracy which we have to pay. Our board of directors is chaired by Ambassador Hartman, who was ambassador to the Soviet Union. Almost everybody on the board is connected in some way mostly to Russia, but as well to countries of the former Soviet Union.  Every time we meet a new partner on the other side they ask, “Where does the money go? Who gets the money?” It is almost impossible to explain what an American not-for-profit institution is and why people volunteer to do that. Our board doesn’t get paid.  If they go to the opening exhibit, they pay their own way, and they contribute to the foundation.  We all do it because we think it’s worthwhile.

Washington Profile: You worked in Russia in the beginning of 1990s?

Guroff: I studied in Russia in the beginning of 1960s. My career in Russia started as a graduate student writing a dissertation in the 1960s, visiting relatives and then working at the university and at the Academy of Sciences in the early 1970s.  I taught at the university for many years, after which I was offered a position in the government.  Then I went back to teaching, and Ambassador Hartman asked me if I would go to Moscow with him in the early 1980s. At the time there were no cultural agreements. Everything had to be done informally. Because I had worked in these institutes and I knew the cultural figures, they asked me to come and help them figure out what to do. So we were at the embassy for three years. When I came back here, instead of going back to the research office, I worked at the National Security Council in preparation for the Geneva meetings and worked on the cultural exchange agreement. Then for six years I ran an office called the President’s US-Soviet Exchange Initiative. It was a very interesting office: we created it to help to encourage new exchanges and also helped to coordinate exchange programs. Six years was enough, so I left the government.

I worked with a number of research organizations and people kept coming to me because of what I’ve done to help negotiate agreements. Ambassador Hartman and many others said, “We can do this better than they can do it. Why don’t we just set up this foundation?” So we did. We did a whole range of training programs helping to bring groups here for training in business and other types of training. We also started doing exhibits, which then became big and time-consuming. That’s what we largely do now.

Washington Profile: Could you tell us about your family heritage? It is an interesting story...

Guroff: My family is very polyglot. A very good friend of mine is Vlad Pozner, and we always compare family histories and how hard they are to trace because one of my great grandfathers was a governor general in southern Ukraine in Novorossijsk. My grandfather on my father’s side was a lawyer. On the Table of Ranks, they had to all be Orthodox, so we don’t know what they were before. They could have been anything: Tatars, Russians, Jews, Ukrainians…

My dad left Russia as a young student. He was a pianist, and eventually he traveled to Chicago where his grandmother lived. She had left with two of her daughters years and years earlier.  He arrived, and he was now a Russian musical sensation, gave concerts, and taught… He met a charming American girl who was also a musician, and they got married.

During the war my dad was very concerned because my mother’s brothers were fighting in the American army and his brother was fighting in Russian army. From my childhood I remember maps on the walls where my uncles on both sides were.  My mother took my oldest brother to meet her in-laws in 1935. My dad was also supposed to go. They were going to spend a year and she was going to study at a conservatory with my father’s teacher Heinrich Gustavovich Neigaus.   So my mother took my older brother who was then six months old, and they got on a ship and sailed to Leningrad. She lived in the Metropol hotel. By all standards she was a struggling American young mother who was not very rich, but in comparison with my relatives there, she was wealthy. They had a wonderful time, and she learned some Russian. Then my dad was supposed to go, but when he was getting his visa, the counselor said to him: “Look, you can go and we will give you the documents, but we are not going to let you leave because we still consider you a Soviet citizen.” So he didn’t go. My mother came back and between 1935 and 1966 there was no direct personal contact and no meeting between our family and his family. My dad died very young. He never went back to Russia.

My grandmother was 86 when we met in 1966. My grandmother was an extraordinary person,  so we decided that we should go as often as possible. We went every year after 1966, either for a year for an academic exchange or for a couple of weeks in summer. My grandmother lived until 97, so that was a lot of trips. The family there that survived consisted mostly from either cultural figures or doctors. Unbelievably we were never harassed by the authorities. Although in the 1960s and 1970s we always lived under the stress that this might be the last time. Amazingly, none of our family members there really wanted to emigrate.

We had this extraordinary experience in traveling to Russia for 40 years. Being Americans living ether in a university, an academy, a hotel, or an embassy with family members who had no reason to meet foreigners, except by this accident of birth… They weren’t institute people, they weren’t dissidents, they were just regular folks.  Only one of my aunts spoke English.  We met all these people and have stayed in touch with all of them. Once we met, there was never a break.

There is an interesting story when we went to Russia for the first time in 1966. We didn’t know whether we would actually get visas. So we let my grandmother know we are coming, but we didn’t know exactly when. We arrived. We knew approximately where she lived, but we didn’t have a telephone number.  When my grandparents moved to Moscow in 1921 they had a whole apartment. By this time the uncles left and the children had all moved out, so my grandmother shared one room in a communal apartment with no hot water.  We found the apartment and rang the bell, and nobody came to the door. Later, it was explained that in a communal apartment nobody rings once, you ring twice for this person, three times for this person, four times… My grandmother didn’t breathe for about an hour, and I thought she had had a heart attack, because I was a bit older but I looked like my father when he left in 1924, which was the last time she ever saw him. Then she was embarrassed, because her grandson was here, and she was not receiving me in the way she should.

So she said that we have to come back tomorrow. There was a communal phone, and my Russian was not great at the time, but I could hear her talking. She said, “I don’t care who you have to get permission from, I am your mother. You will be here tomorrow; this is my grandson!” The next day all of these people showed up, a couple of them party members… terrified. They didn’t tell anybody at work that they had American relatives. They all came, so there was a huge dinner. I was absolutely amazed, one that everybody came, and two that there was so much food on the table. Only slowly did we begin to understand how people lived. The liquor appeared because this uncle had connections with the Bolshoi and he could get tickets and trade with a guy who ran a liquor store… This one was a doctor who saw people and she had a butcher as a patient who always said, “If you need anything…” Nobody had any money, but it all appeared. From that moment we were just part of that family, and it expanded every time.

After three of four months we were invited to go with my uncle to friends’ houses. I think in the course of the year with the family we met a hundred people, where in their homes, and of that group maybe be two or three had traveled abroad or ever met foreigners. Our kids went when we would go, when we were at university in the 1970s, the kids went to Soviet detsky sad.  When we were at the embassy they went to Soviet schools. Our son is currently living in Moscow. His Russian is so much better than ours.

Washington Profile: What was your experience with a Russian first and last name in the United States? Did you have any problems, any advantages?

Guroff: I don’t know about the advantages, but there haven’t been any problems. In Chicago, there are now more people from the Soviet Union. But when I was growing up there it was largely an Irish and Ukrainian city. Chicago has a huge Ukraine town, but we didn’t have much to do with that community. 

In this country there is discrimination for lots of things, but I was never considered an immigrant. I was born here; I grew up here.  My language is English. I didn’t know any Russian until actually after my dad died. Then we started to get letters from my grandmother again, which was in the 1950s. I was the one who translated them. The vocabulary would tend to repeat itself, so that’s when I started to learn a foreign language. But I don’t think any of our family has ever experienced any problems having a Russian name.

There was a funny story about it. My name is Grigory Aleksandrovich Gurov. When we first went to Moscow, one time we were having a party at MGU with Americans and a couple of Russians in our room. Somebody knocks on the door and says, “We are from the studsovet. We are here to remind you that Sunday is the election and you have to vote. Here is where it is.”
And I said:
”I am not voting, I am American.”
“Don’t be funny, this is a serous matter.”
“Ok, close the door.”
Fifteen minutes later, somebody knocked again: ”You are pretending to be an American and making fun of our elections and this is serious business.”
I said: “Please go away, we are having a party…”
Then he listened to my language a bit, and he understood. He was terribly embarrassed. He comes back:
”We would like to invite you to observe our elections.”

And I said: ”Ok, ok, fine...”

I read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pasternak. You always look at these Russian novels and there are always people meeting somewhere. How can you believe that Lara meets Zhivago in Siberia or that Natasha meets Pierre? There are two instances which in our background were extraordinary coincidences. 

My dad never talked about his family. His memories were from the Civil War, people dying, hunger… The first chance to find out about the family history was when we went to Moscow and met my father’s side of the family. We brought a tape recorder and recorded all sorts of things. Then we took the tape back to Chicago and played it for my grandmother and my mother. My mother didn’t understand Russian, so I was translating it for her. One story I think was fascinating. 

In 1905 my father’s parents were engaged. When the revolution came in 1905, the students who didn’t live in Petersburg were sent home. My grandmother lived in Saint Petersburg, so she stayed. My grandfather went back to Elizabethgrad. Somehow he ends up in Chernigov, and gets arrested for reading lectures to workers about socialism. He can’t tell his father and grandfather. He sends a message to my grandmother through his friends in Petersburg. My grandmother was very young, came from a wealthy family and had never traveled anywhere by herself. She arranged to get a train to Chernigov, where her friends gave her books for my grandfather. She gets to Chernigov, introduces herself to the prison warden, and explains who her fiancée is. The warden understands why she couldn’t tell his parents and says:
”Ok. We are going to figure this out, it was not a big deal, and you are here…”
She said: ”I brought all these things for him.” 
Then she hands the books off to him. After a second the warden goes over the books, gets mad and tells to my grandmother: ”How could you do this?”
”What did I do?”, was her reply.
My grandmother thought that she brought to her fiancée some books of Lermontov and Pushkin poetry. The warden opens them up and shows that they were cut out, and there was socialist propaganda inside. She tried to justify herself:
’I didn’t know, these were given to me by my friends!’

”We’ll figure this out, he said, but I am not going to do anything today. Go away and come back tomorrow.”

She leaves the prison and walks along the street trying to figure out what to do. She meets a group of girls and asks them how she can get to a hotel. One of the girls runs inside and then back out:
“My mother said you can stay with us!”

So I am translating all this to my mother. My Chicago grandmother seemed to be falling asleep.  My other grandmother on the tape is explaining how wonderful it is that these people could take her in and how she has this wonderful evening. And suddenly my other grandmother wakes up and says how unexpected it was to have this woman from Saint Petersburg staying there, because they had never been to Petersburg! She and her sisters spent the entire night with this woman telling them all about Saint Petersburg!   

I have to say that my Chicago grandmother comes from Chernigov, where her father had owned a fishery on a river. A commandant wanted to marry her and she didn’t want to marry him, so her brothers got her out of the country. And the fascinating story is that, as turned out, in 1905 my two grandmothers met in Chernigov, didn’t know each other, had no reason to have met except that my Saint Petersburg grandmother needed a place to stay. The memory of this evening stayed with both ladies for years. At the end of 1905 my Chernigov grandmother left Russia and eventually found herself in the United States. And twenty three years later their children met in Chicago and got married.

So I believe that Natasha and Pierre did meet, and Lara and Zhivago did meet! There is no question in my mind. That’s not fantasy: it actually happened. That is the history of my family. 

-- 08/08/2008