A Broken Russia Inside Me: A Memoir
By Anatoly Molotkov
Trail to Table Press, an imprint of Wandering Aengus Press, 2026
Eastsound, WA, 194 Pgs.
Anatoly Molotkov’s memoir is an extraordinary achievement. Born in 1968, he comes of age against the backdrop of the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991—arguably the defining cataclysmic events of the 2nd half of the 20th century.
The memoir opens in May 1990, near the U.S. consulate in Leningrad. Anatoly, twenty-two, is with his friend Sergey. They are science majors at Leningrad State. They are checking for immigration postings. They want out. Most countries are closed, but the U.S. remains open. “If the entire world were wide open, we would choose America anyway. We don’t know much about the United States, but we love it for its relentless opposition to our rotten regime and for its literature and art.
He gathers his family together in the kitchen to share his decision to emigrate to the U.S. He paints an intimate, vivid scene:
“I invite everyone to join me in our small kitchen, painted green up to the middle. The top half of each wall and the ceiling are white. The shy gas stove, old-fashioned even by Soviet standards, perches in the corner. A tiny refrigerator, a cupboard, a counter, a small table by the window where we sit, a green poplar outside, an expiring century whooshing past us.”
The kitchen is transformed into a private compartment on a train that is not moving! It’s the scenery personified as Time speeding past them, leaving them in the past. Family and reader are destabilized. Anatoly stands outside of Time, in a working relationship with the Fates, playing out the threads of his life to his destination in the U.S., and his destiny as a writer.
“I’ve decided to move to America. Sergey and I will go together.”
“What?” Mom’s face hardens.
“I need to get out of here.”
“I’m going to be a writer. I’ll do anything else to make it work. I’ll figure it out.”
As the plane to the U.S. lifts off the runway, he observes, “The drab Russian land trails back, a tape of my life fast-forwarded.” He has broken the spell of stasis from his (soon-to-be-former) country, his whole being thrown into overdrive, catching up to the future that had almost whooshed by him.
Molotkov employs a nonlinear narrative compressed in short chapters and vignettes that flash back and forth and forward in time, highlighting the events in his life that have shaped him into who he is in the present and who he hopes to become. The first three chapters are a template for this: He is 22 years old in Chapter 1 when he decides to emigrate; in Chapter 2 he is 16 years old, a budding philosopher, asking “Who do we decide who we are?” and experiencing a strong epiphany to be a writer. At the end of Chapter 3 he is 49 years old, back to the future— “As I type this in 2017, I find online photos…,” a meta memoir move breaking the narrative and speaking directly to us about the unreliability of his memory, doing research for the writing of the very book we are reading!
He settles in Albany with friends who have preceded him. He rents a small studio, but the work he finds doesn’t pay the rent. When his lover Luba arrives, just divorced, with six-month-old baby Sonya, his promise to himself to do whatever it takes to be a writer is put to the test:
“On one of our most penniless evenings, Luba and I pack Sonya in her stroller and set out hunting the sleeping Albany downtown for bottles and cans to recycle. It’s a chilly night. …As we prowl Albany’s streets with the homeless and the hopeless for our 5¢ prizes, the dark downtown buildings stare down in disgust. We are not put off. We’d rather collect cans in the United States than engage in intellectual pursuits in the Soviet Union. There is no future for us there.”
Soon they are fighting over money and who cares for Sonya because they can’t afford a babysitter. Luba begins an affair and moves out, though they still feel a deep connection. She decides to move to the West Coast. “We meet twice on Luba’s last day in town and share tense words and desperate sex. Our relationship doesn’t seem finished.”
This opens a creative space in Anatoly, and he fills it by viewing films and reading novels, studying their craft and searching for his own narrative voice. He is moved by the flashback ending of Philip Kaufman’s film The Unbearable Lightness of Being and the conclusion of Atom Egoyan’s Exotica:
“This deconstruction of time is loaded with opportunities. Breaks in narrative chronology break me into pieces, bring me to tears, and make me rethink my work. Time is a gift, an enemy, a friend. A gap in time is a collision of emotional tectonic plates.”
As a writer, I revel in the joy of his discoveries — one can almost hear his synapses snapping! And it leads him to the one and only conclusion:
“I’ve been writing in Russian and translating into English. This is time consuming. It becomes clear: sticking with Russian is absurd. What good will it do to be bound by the language of the dead Soviet empire? I’ve already given it up by moving away. My future as a Russian writer ends here.”
He begins a grueling routine unpacking English grammar: “I sweat as I struggle for synonyms, a thesaurus on my desk.” He starts a novel in English, commits to a single-spaced page a day, whether it’s at the end of a ten-hour shift at the deli, and it’s an effort to keep his eyes from closing until “a sufficient bundle of words lands on the page.”
At the deli, he forms a lasting friendship with Scott, who has done theater and writes, and shares a passion for film. They collaborate on short stories and a novel. When Scott graduates from SUNY, they decide to move to San Francisco in January 1991 “for its multicultural and multisexual vibe, art, and beautiful views. It beckons us from Kerouac’s pages.” Here he goes through a radical transformation: his inner “flower child” springs forth:
“San Francisco exposes me to a broader range of lifestyles. To a person from the gray USSR, this place is both an imperative and an offering. I love the freedom. I might as well use it. Hair dyes enter my life. …Rainbow hair is the only reasonable choice.
“After a few months, …my full-color commitment begins. I hire a seamstress to sew two pairs of pants from four different sections of multicolored fabric. With rainbow pants and shirts to supplement my rainbow hair, I finally feel far enough from a uniform. Can I relax yet?
“Wait a minute.
“Fingernails.
“I stock up on nail polish.”
But when he meets Laurie, who will become the love of his life, she gives him an ultimatum; she is tired of being the center of attention when they go out. “The pants are the worst part. If you could wear a normal pair of pants or jeans, I think I could deal with the shirt and the hair.” He agrees. They will become lifetime partners, and his personal commitment clarifies: “I must continue to shape myself into the best instrument of art I can be. I also intend to live a moral life.” Beauty & Truth made whole in the living witness of the artist.
If the East Coast bestowed freedom, the West Coast offered wings. And he soars, gaining perspective on his life. He travels to Russia and revisits friends and memories. His biological father died when he was four under mysterious circumstances: by accident, suicide, or murder by the KGB. He asks family members, and everyone has a different perspective. It is not resolved, but through the many tellings, he gains a more complete understanding of his father.
The frenetic chapters of his youth in Russia and New York give way to contemplative, elegiac portraits. His mother: “She was sincere and brilliant, full of energy and cheer, a warm, impressive individual. …Her name was Valentina.” His stepfather: “[We] played chess, had debates and minor fights, read and discussed poetry. The daily habit, and then nothing. I caused so much distance by emigrating. His name was Ivan.” And Luba, his first love, former partner, and longtime friend: “Is this a happy ending or simply a different one? We helped each other peel off our more selfish selves and gave each other permission to hope for a better future.”
He also confronts the atrocities of Stalin when the mass graves are discovered in Toksovo in 2002, not far from where he used to ski. “We must still be trying to get the Soviet poisons out of our systems,” he reflects in the closing pages of A Broken Russia Inside Me. Writing the memoir was the cure.
Richard Cambridge’s poetry and theater productions address controversial themes on the American political landscape. From 1998 to 2000, he travelled to Cuba four times as co-founding member (with Patiño Vázquez) of Singing with the Enemy, a troupe of poets, musicians and performance artists. The show, ¡EMBARGO!, a dramatic mural of poetry, music, and dance, portrayed the four decade economic blockade on the people of Cuba. By special invitation, the troupe performed in Havana, Cuba in July 1998 at the historic First U.S.—Cuba Friendship Conference.
Richard was also commissioned by the National Lawyers Guild of Cuba to write and perform a poem for their yearly conference, “From the Belly of the Beast” (1998) and “Letter from Cuba,” (1999). In November 2000 he performed at the World Solidarity with Cuba Conference, in Havana, Cuba.
In 2001, he co-founded ¡PRESENTE! with former African American political prisoner Kazi Touré. In collaboration with local artists and imprisoned activists, PRESENTE! is a dramatic tapestry of poetry, music, dance, mask, mime and ritual that brings awareness to political prisoners and prisoners of war in the U.S.
A longtime resident of Cambridge, MA, he received the Cambridge Peace and Justice Award for his art and activism. He has published poetry, PULSA—A Book of Books (Hanover Press), and a spoken word CD One Shot News—Poetry of Conscience (Earthshine Productions). His awards include The Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize; a finalist for a residency at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA.
He is a Fellow Emeritus at the Black Earth Institute, a progressive think tank based in Wisconsin. He guest edited Volume II Issue IV of About Place, the institute’s online journal, whose theme was 1963-2013: A Civil Rights Retrospective. http://archive.aboutplacejournal.org/civil-rights/
His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in Solstice Literary Magazine, About Place, the Asheville Poetry Journal, and other publications. He curates the Poets’ Theater at Somerville’s Arts at the Armory, and is the poetry editor for The Lunar Calendar. He is working on his second novel, 1970, an alternate history of that year in which a band of activists led by Black Panthers spark revolution in the U.S.
