A few of us will some day read Solzhenitsyn's magnum opus of Soviet forced labor camps, Gulag Archipelago. For the rest, there is Anne Appelbaum's GULAG: A History (Doubleday, 2003). The word "Gulag" has come to be synonymous with the camp system itself, and is even frequently misused to mean an individual camp, but is in fact an abbreviation for "Central Administration of Camps," the Soviet bureaucracy that ran the system. Though the KGB, and its predecessors OGPU and NKVD, have frequently vied for control of the camps with the Interior Ministry, the KGB won, as it did in most aspects of Soviet life, and in light of the fact that the KGB's archives were the only ones that were not opened to researchers after 1991, Appelbaum's study is as comprehensive and precise as we can hope to find until that situation changes.
Those who have no meaningful knowledge of Soviet camps will find more than they will have bargained for. It's all here - the unbearable weather of Russia's Arctic regions, appalling sanitation, starvation rations, inhumane working hours, and beyond-cruel punishments for the slightest disciplinary infractions. She does not skimp on details, some of which may come as a surprise even to those who think themselves knowledgeable. Prisoners on the verge of starvation who spend the last days of their lives crawling around garbage dumps in search of scarps. Women gang-raped literally to death on the transport ships plying the waters of the Russian Far East. It goes on.
The value of Appelbaum's research and writing, though, extends far beyond these topics, as valuable as they are. She masterfully analyzes the complex social structure of the camps - the informers, the bribery, the gangs and the rivalries among prisoners. What will no doubt come as a shock to many Western readers is the revelation that the line separating the guards from the guarded could, and frequently did, blur. Prisoners became guards with regularity, often going directly from one status to the other.
In the West, more often than not Soviet camps are mentioned in the same breath as political prisoners, so I am particularly grateful to Appelbaum for the attention she pays to the professional criminals that have always, even in the darkest days of political repression, constituted the majority of the camps' population. The Soviet Union having been a society under which the most minute aspects of an individual's life were controlled by the government, many readers do not realize that the country has always, even under Stalin, had a large class of full-time criminals, complete with its own code of ethics, distinctive style of dress and, famously, a patois that at times barely sounded like mainstream Russian. As a primer on this underworld, one could do a lot worse than Appelbaum's book.
Nor does she skimp on the government's administration of the camps and the dismal failures that usually accompanied it. From its inception in 1926, GULAG was always intended to be a bulwark of Stalin's economic policy, but in fact had not had a single profitable year in all of its existence. That does not surprise us today, of course, but what might is her revelation that also throughout its existence, the system was plagued with intense conflict between the central administrators in Moscow and the local commanders at the individual camps. The local bosses, expected to fulfill completely unreasonable production norms, and occasionally, Appelbaum is careful to note, out of genuine desire to improve their prisoners' lot, constantly harped on the bureaucrats for woefully inadequate supplies, lack of support, and the general fact that the bureaucrats simply did not get it.
Appelbaum's writing style is perfect for the topic. She is direct, clear, and most importantly, completely unsentimental. This is a documentary work based on research, and the lack of fuzzy, emotional language in no way diminishes its power or makes us appreciate the plight of the tens of millions of GULAG's victims any less. And her research is impressive to say the least. Communist apologists will no doubt find fault with it, citing, among other things, her reliance on the writing of Varlam Shalamov, who, while a survivor of the camps, has only published camp-themed fiction. But that's just squeaking of a discontented few. Remove Shalamov completely, and the book will lose no more than a few pages and none of its power.
In the closing chapters, Appelbaum does offer some thoughts on why the history of the camps has not played nearly as prominent a role in Russia's social and political discourse after 1991 as many have expected. More significantly, she takes a few pages to lament the West's relative indifference to what we can reasonably view as the largest case of mass murder, if not genocide, in history. Yes, nothing Appelbaum says in conclusion is different from Santayana's "those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it," but of countless things we, as a civilization, would never want to repeat, the GULAG is right at the top, and in English at least, it has no better chronicler than Anne Appelbaum.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Road Trip 2009, Day Five, Part II
Our original plan was to come down the Western side of the state of Michigan and stop for a visit at two legendary breweries in the Grand Rapids area - Founders in Grand Rapids proper, and New Holland in Holland, MI, a few miles away. We were now completely off schedule, however. Determined to catch at least one, we headed for Founders. After an uneventful two and a half hours on US-131, we rolled into downtown Grand Rapids.
Founders, located in the warehouse district on the edge of downtown, turned out to be a block-long hangar, with several roll-top gates, all of them open, separating the cavernous interior from an equally capacious raised deck. At nine o'clock on a Tuesday, the place was well peopled with a stylish twenty-something crowd, but we had no trouble finding two seats at the end of the bar opposite the stage. A singer was performing, accompanying himself on guitar, but the place was so vast that we could barely hear him in our corner. Founders has made a reputation in recent years for being a hotbed of extreme beer, and they did not disappoint. They are most famous, or infamous, for a beer called KBS. It used to stand for Kentucky Bourbon Stout, but seeing as they were nowhere near Kentucky, authorities intervened. Thanks to our generous and enthusiastic bartended, we tasted it. A 11.2% ABV monster aged in Bourbon barrels, it was so intense that the ounce or so he poured for us was more than enough. I cannot imagine drinking even a snifter of the stuff, much less a pint. We had to be a bit careful, seeing as we still had a couple of hours of nighttime driving ahead of us, but I did enjoy a snifter of the Hand of Doom, which is founder's double IPA aged, once again, in Bourbon barrels (definitely a signature of the brewery). It was enormous - huge hops, huge fruit, big funk and pronounced alcohol (10.4% ABV). Evidently, it is not bottled, so we were glad we got to experience it at the source. There were many, many other fascinating-sounding beers on the blackboard, so we made a mental note to come back (the annual release of KBS in March is supposed to be worth attending), and 130 miles later, were back in Ann Arbor.
Founders, located in the warehouse district on the edge of downtown, turned out to be a block-long hangar, with several roll-top gates, all of them open, separating the cavernous interior from an equally capacious raised deck. At nine o'clock on a Tuesday, the place was well peopled with a stylish twenty-something crowd, but we had no trouble finding two seats at the end of the bar opposite the stage. A singer was performing, accompanying himself on guitar, but the place was so vast that we could barely hear him in our corner. Founders has made a reputation in recent years for being a hotbed of extreme beer, and they did not disappoint. They are most famous, or infamous, for a beer called KBS. It used to stand for Kentucky Bourbon Stout, but seeing as they were nowhere near Kentucky, authorities intervened. Thanks to our generous and enthusiastic bartended, we tasted it. A 11.2% ABV monster aged in Bourbon barrels, it was so intense that the ounce or so he poured for us was more than enough. I cannot imagine drinking even a snifter of the stuff, much less a pint. We had to be a bit careful, seeing as we still had a couple of hours of nighttime driving ahead of us, but I did enjoy a snifter of the Hand of Doom, which is founder's double IPA aged, once again, in Bourbon barrels (definitely a signature of the brewery). It was enormous - huge hops, huge fruit, big funk and pronounced alcohol (10.4% ABV). Evidently, it is not bottled, so we were glad we got to experience it at the source. There were many, many other fascinating-sounding beers on the blackboard, so we made a mental note to come back (the annual release of KBS in March is supposed to be worth attending), and 130 miles later, were back in Ann Arbor.
Road Trip 2009, Day Five, Part I
Our second day in the wine country blessed us with the sort of pluperfect weather that I had been disproportionately lucky to experience on my previous visits to Northern Michigan - blindingly bright sun, temperatures in the low sixties, no humidity, and the overpowering blue of the sky that I had only seen in the Southwest. Since wineries didn't open until 11:00 at the earliest, and some not until noon, we had time to kill, so we enjoyed a leisurely and hearty breakfast at the Omlette Shoppe in downtown Traverse City (all the better to absorb Leelanau Peninsula's bounty), then walked around along the lake shore a bit, admiring the views of the bay and discussing G.&N.'s recent idea of leaving dry land altogether and living full-time on a sailboat for a while. I must say that to my myopic, risk-averse mind it sounded completely insane, though if I know anyone who would not only be able to pull it off but actually enjoy it, it would be them.
Our first winery of the day was L. Mawby, and I completely shot ourselves in the foot by not bringing along detailed directions. The place proved to be impossible to find. We drove all around the lower half of Leelanau for at least an hour, stopping to ask for directions and at one point passing within 500 feet of the entrance without realizing it, until we finally arrived by a combination of unmarked, barely paved roads and sheer intuition. I'm glad we persevered. Mawby would be a rarity in most wine-growing regions. To find it in Michigan was downright shocking. They make nothing but sparkling wines, the vast majority of them using the traditional mèthode champenoise, where the wine is fermented in bottles, rather than tanks or barrels. The bottles are arranged on racks and turned periodically to ensure even distribution of yeast. It is an expensive and arcane method of winemaking, but it is what makes Champagne Champagne. In addition to the traditional sparklers, Mawby makes a line of tank-fermented wines under the M. Lawrence label.
The tasting room was small and sparse, with a small deck in the back, and although you could not see the bay, the views of gently rolling hills covered with rows of vines still made for an idyllic location. The tasting is normally paid, and geared towards helping the visitor select their favorite wine, of which they would then buy a glass and enjoy it on the deck. G., however, gently brought his industry connection to bear, and we were able to taste through most of the wines free of charge, poured by the very knowledgeable and pleasant but refreshingly unsalesmanlike middle-aged woman whose name I'm kicking myself for not having asked. The wines were delicious and stood up admirably, in my opinion, to anything from the West Coast. We focused on the traditional wines, though our hostess did talk us into trying one of the tank-fermented ones. The two lines seem to serve radically different markets. The traditional wines are carefully labeled with the French designation of their sweetness (Brut, Sec and so on) and are named either after their types, Champagne-style (Blanc de Blancs, Blanc de Noirs), or with some appropriately hoity-toity sounding moniker (e.g. Cremant Classic). The sweetest of the bunch, Jadore, is fairly sweet, but still balanced and would not be out of place on any dinner table that would take an off-dry Riesling. The tank-fermented wines, on the other hand, all have gimmicky names intended to evoke stereotypical sparkling-wine-drinking occasions (Us, Fizz, Wet, etc.) and are one-dimensionally sweet. The one we tried is the perennial favorite that is actually called Sex. It is a rosé, cloying, with an off-putting, unintegrated finish. It sells like crazy, according to our hostess, for a whole bunch of wrong reasons (the fact that no one wants to say "I don't like Sex" out loud is only the beginning). The pun in the name is no doubt lost on the vast majority of buyers.
Raftshol Vnieyards
Our next stop was going to be Forty-Five North, but we arrived to discover that it was closed, so we moved on immediately to Raftshol Vineyards. We arrived to find a large, dilapidated barn with a small concrete tower, and adjacent to it, a prefabricated single-story structure that claimed to be the tasting room. The interior was a single large room, and it was in complete disarray. A high counter, something you might find in a cut-rate reception hall, to be used by itinerant bartenders, ran alongside one wall; this would prove to be the tasting area. Across the room from it, something akin to an office - desk, a computer, some bookshelves, peeked from behind a mountain of empty cardboards boxes. Various other objects were strewn about, dominated by a bottle labeling machine in one corner. During my research, Raftshol caught my eye because they appeared to emphasize red wines. Reds are notoriously more difficult to make than whites, and the room we were now in did not exude the sort of discipline required to make good reds. A few people were milling about by the counter, but left shortly after we arrived, leaving us in the presence of an elderly gentleman in suspenders and a flannel shirt, sporting a Lincolnesque beard. This turned out to be Warren Raftshol, owner, vine grower and winemaker. He was so self-effacing as to appear almost uncaring. His answer to many of our questions was a shrug of the shoulders followed by "I wasn't paying much attention." Never have I met anyone in the wine world who had so little need for the trappings of wine commerce and the image that frequently goes along with it.
I would have loved to report that the wines were spectacular, smashing once and for all the myriad myths associated with winemaking and wine drinking. Sadly, they were not. The Pinot Noir, which we tasted from dusty, mismatched glasses, was exceedingly light in color and flavor, murky (bottled completely unfiltered, if memory serves) and tasted home-made. The Bordeaux blend (to think that a place like this even made one!) was not a wine I would reach for expectantly, but was at least convincing, the unmistakable flavor combination of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc detectable, even if muted. When I asked whether Mr. Raftshol has had much luck with Cabernet Sauvignon, his reply was a non-chalant "Not really." The straight Cab Franc, not surprisingly, aquitted itself the best, and at $9, was a bargain. G. and I bought a few bottles between the two of us, and Mr. Raftshol labeled them for us on the spot, putting the foil over the necks of the bottles and setting it with a hair dryer before handing the bottles to us and asking us to let them sit for a couple of weeks as he had bottled them only a few days before our visit.
Our long search for L. Mawby had thrown us off-schedule, and we were now well into the afternoon. While at Mawby, we learned that one of the grapes they grew was Vignoles, an obscure French blending grape that seemed to do well in the local climate. Furthermore, we found out that another local winery, Leelanau Cellars, made a varietal Vignoles. Their tasting room was in the village of Suttons Bay, which happened to be only a couple of miles away, so we headed there to try it. They turned out to have not one but two Vignole-based wines. We found the basic, dry, table Vignoles to be good, though not really unique - crisp, but with a decent body and good fruit. A solid, everyday white wine. It was well worth stopping in at Leelanau Cellars for other reasons, though - the winery features a large tasting room, strikingly finished with maple planks on the interior, with an enormous panoramic window overlooking the bay. It was a lovely place to spend some time, and the wines we tasted from Leelanau's enormous portfolio were in tune with the quality of the wines we had been tasting. The biggest surprise turned out to be the other Vignoles - a botrytis dessert wine. Botrytis - a fungus which, under the right conditions, can remove enough moisture from grapes to concentrate the sugars without killing the grape altogether, is, of course, what makes Sauternes, probably the world's most famous dessert wine, Sauternes. Making a botrytis wine is an enormous amount of work, but Leelanau Cellars pulled it off. While I could not describe the flavor with any precision, it was delicious and enormously complex. There is a bottle in my fridge, waiting to be revisited.
At this point, the afternoon was starting to bend towards evening. We relaxed for a while on the deck of the restaurant next door to the tasting room, enjoying a glass of wine and mesmerizing views of the bay, then got on the road and headed South, for we had one more place to visit before returning to Ann Arbor.
Our first winery of the day was L. Mawby, and I completely shot ourselves in the foot by not bringing along detailed directions. The place proved to be impossible to find. We drove all around the lower half of Leelanau for at least an hour, stopping to ask for directions and at one point passing within 500 feet of the entrance without realizing it, until we finally arrived by a combination of unmarked, barely paved roads and sheer intuition. I'm glad we persevered. Mawby would be a rarity in most wine-growing regions. To find it in Michigan was downright shocking. They make nothing but sparkling wines, the vast majority of them using the traditional mèthode champenoise, where the wine is fermented in bottles, rather than tanks or barrels. The bottles are arranged on racks and turned periodically to ensure even distribution of yeast. It is an expensive and arcane method of winemaking, but it is what makes Champagne Champagne. In addition to the traditional sparklers, Mawby makes a line of tank-fermented wines under the M. Lawrence label.
The tasting room was small and sparse, with a small deck in the back, and although you could not see the bay, the views of gently rolling hills covered with rows of vines still made for an idyllic location. The tasting is normally paid, and geared towards helping the visitor select their favorite wine, of which they would then buy a glass and enjoy it on the deck. G., however, gently brought his industry connection to bear, and we were able to taste through most of the wines free of charge, poured by the very knowledgeable and pleasant but refreshingly unsalesmanlike middle-aged woman whose name I'm kicking myself for not having asked. The wines were delicious and stood up admirably, in my opinion, to anything from the West Coast. We focused on the traditional wines, though our hostess did talk us into trying one of the tank-fermented ones. The two lines seem to serve radically different markets. The traditional wines are carefully labeled with the French designation of their sweetness (Brut, Sec and so on) and are named either after their types, Champagne-style (Blanc de Blancs, Blanc de Noirs), or with some appropriately hoity-toity sounding moniker (e.g. Cremant Classic). The sweetest of the bunch, Jadore, is fairly sweet, but still balanced and would not be out of place on any dinner table that would take an off-dry Riesling. The tank-fermented wines, on the other hand, all have gimmicky names intended to evoke stereotypical sparkling-wine-drinking occasions (Us, Fizz, Wet, etc.) and are one-dimensionally sweet. The one we tried is the perennial favorite that is actually called Sex. It is a rosé, cloying, with an off-putting, unintegrated finish. It sells like crazy, according to our hostess, for a whole bunch of wrong reasons (the fact that no one wants to say "I don't like Sex" out loud is only the beginning). The pun in the name is no doubt lost on the vast majority of buyers.
Raftshol Vnieyards Our next stop was going to be Forty-Five North, but we arrived to discover that it was closed, so we moved on immediately to Raftshol Vineyards. We arrived to find a large, dilapidated barn with a small concrete tower, and adjacent to it, a prefabricated single-story structure that claimed to be the tasting room. The interior was a single large room, and it was in complete disarray. A high counter, something you might find in a cut-rate reception hall, to be used by itinerant bartenders, ran alongside one wall; this would prove to be the tasting area. Across the room from it, something akin to an office - desk, a computer, some bookshelves, peeked from behind a mountain of empty cardboards boxes. Various other objects were strewn about, dominated by a bottle labeling machine in one corner. During my research, Raftshol caught my eye because they appeared to emphasize red wines. Reds are notoriously more difficult to make than whites, and the room we were now in did not exude the sort of discipline required to make good reds. A few people were milling about by the counter, but left shortly after we arrived, leaving us in the presence of an elderly gentleman in suspenders and a flannel shirt, sporting a Lincolnesque beard. This turned out to be Warren Raftshol, owner, vine grower and winemaker. He was so self-effacing as to appear almost uncaring. His answer to many of our questions was a shrug of the shoulders followed by "I wasn't paying much attention." Never have I met anyone in the wine world who had so little need for the trappings of wine commerce and the image that frequently goes along with it.
I would have loved to report that the wines were spectacular, smashing once and for all the myriad myths associated with winemaking and wine drinking. Sadly, they were not. The Pinot Noir, which we tasted from dusty, mismatched glasses, was exceedingly light in color and flavor, murky (bottled completely unfiltered, if memory serves) and tasted home-made. The Bordeaux blend (to think that a place like this even made one!) was not a wine I would reach for expectantly, but was at least convincing, the unmistakable flavor combination of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc detectable, even if muted. When I asked whether Mr. Raftshol has had much luck with Cabernet Sauvignon, his reply was a non-chalant "Not really." The straight Cab Franc, not surprisingly, aquitted itself the best, and at $9, was a bargain. G. and I bought a few bottles between the two of us, and Mr. Raftshol labeled them for us on the spot, putting the foil over the necks of the bottles and setting it with a hair dryer before handing the bottles to us and asking us to let them sit for a couple of weeks as he had bottled them only a few days before our visit.
Our long search for L. Mawby had thrown us off-schedule, and we were now well into the afternoon. While at Mawby, we learned that one of the grapes they grew was Vignoles, an obscure French blending grape that seemed to do well in the local climate. Furthermore, we found out that another local winery, Leelanau Cellars, made a varietal Vignoles. Their tasting room was in the village of Suttons Bay, which happened to be only a couple of miles away, so we headed there to try it. They turned out to have not one but two Vignole-based wines. We found the basic, dry, table Vignoles to be good, though not really unique - crisp, but with a decent body and good fruit. A solid, everyday white wine. It was well worth stopping in at Leelanau Cellars for other reasons, though - the winery features a large tasting room, strikingly finished with maple planks on the interior, with an enormous panoramic window overlooking the bay. It was a lovely place to spend some time, and the wines we tasted from Leelanau's enormous portfolio were in tune with the quality of the wines we had been tasting. The biggest surprise turned out to be the other Vignoles - a botrytis dessert wine. Botrytis - a fungus which, under the right conditions, can remove enough moisture from grapes to concentrate the sugars without killing the grape altogether, is, of course, what makes Sauternes, probably the world's most famous dessert wine, Sauternes. Making a botrytis wine is an enormous amount of work, but Leelanau Cellars pulled it off. While I could not describe the flavor with any precision, it was delicious and enormously complex. There is a bottle in my fridge, waiting to be revisited.
At this point, the afternoon was starting to bend towards evening. We relaxed for a while on the deck of the restaurant next door to the tasting room, enjoying a glass of wine and mesmerizing views of the bay, then got on the road and headed South, for we had one more place to visit before returning to Ann Arbor.
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