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FIELD NOTES IN CONVERSATION
A WEAPONIZED IMMIGRANT: YASHA LEVINE WITH WILL MCDONALD
MAY 2023
Taken in 1989 outside the Vatican while living in a refugee camp.
Soviet-American investigative journalist Yasha Levine is currently writing a
memoir, publishing it in installments on his Substack1. Called The Soviet Jew: A
Weaponized Immigrant’s Tale, it is about his family’s emigration from the Soviet
Union and subsequent life in America. Yasha is the author of Surveillance
Valley, an investigative history of the internet’s military origins, and
co-hosts the podcast The Russians with his wife, Russian-American filmmaker
Evgenia Kovda. We spoke over Zoom.
Will McDonald (Rail): The past couple months have been chaotic for you and your
family. You were in Russia at the time the mobilization and conscriptions began
and were part of the mad dash to the border along with thousands of others.
Yasha Levine: Yeah, we went to Russia in September because—well, for two
reasons—my wife, Evgenia, has family there—elderly relatives she hasn’t seen
since before the pandemic began and wasn’t sure if she’d ever see them again—so
that was one reason we wanted to go. We actually were planning to go around this
time before this whole horrible war broke out. Before Russia invaded Ukraine and
Putin decided to do this stupid thing that he did.
The other reason was because Evgenia and I had written this script a few years
ago. It’s called Inheritance. The best way to describe it is a kind of Soviet
zombie film set in Moscow, a film that’s on a very deep level about the collapse
of the USSR and Putin’s elite. Before the war broke out, Evgenia’s plan was to
start laying the groundwork for shooting it. The invasion pretty much put an end
to that. Still, we wanted to see if there was maybe a tiny chance it would be
possible to shoot this film — this very indie zombie film — on the sly somewhere
in the countryside. Things in Ukraine were obviously bad, but in Russia people
were still going about their lives, so we wanted to go and see for ourselves
what the situation was like.
Well, we found out. Our trip was cut short because of the sudden mobilization
order that Putin gave. And so there was a huge panic, and people fled for the
closest border. We got out through the land border with Estonia, and then caught
a ferry from Tallinn to Helsinki and got a flight to Rome. Somewhere between
leaving Russia and arriving in Finland, we caught COVID, because you can’t
really protect yourself in these crowded border stations, on a bus packed with
people or a ferry packed with people. So, with COVID layered onto everything
else, it was a pretty grim trip.
Rail: Obviously different circumstances, but doesn’t this trip feel strangely
similar to your first escape from the Soviet Union as a kid?
Levine: It’s funny you say that because one of the things that characterized our
recent escape out of Russia was the total uncertainty of what was going to
happen. I mean, we bought a bus ticket that was taking us from St. Petersburg to
Tallinn in Estonia, but we didn’t know if we’d get turned back at the border,
either by Estonian border patrol or on the Russian side. Because the Baltic
states were the first ones to close their borders to individuals with Russian
passports. But there are even cases of people with dual citizenship—let’s say
Israeli citizenship and Russian citizenship—who got turned back at the Estonian
border. And my parents, when we emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1989—I don’t
really remember it and they tried to hide it from me because I was only eight
years old when we left—but they were very nervous that they would get turned
back at each border stop along the way. Because when you decided to emigrate
from the Soviet Union, you lost your job, you lost your apartment, and in the
months leading up to leaving you were slowly stripped of all the things you used
to have. And if something went wrong along the way, at the Belarus border, or
the Poland border, there’s a chance that some edict might come through that
says, “We are shutting down all emigration,” before they were really in the
clear, and if that were to happen they’d have nothing to go home to. All they
had was what was in their suitcases. So, at each stop along the way, there was a
wave of relief for my parents, and then finally, once we got to Austria, the
ultimate relief came through because there was no way they could be turned back
by that point. So, there was definitely a sort of symmetry between the two
trips. But the similarity was very superficial. I mean, come on, when we went
back to Russia this time we were basically tourists. Getting out was definitely
stressful, but there weren’t the same sort of life-changing ramifications this
time around.
Rail: Then you’re stuck in Rome with COVID, and this isn’t the first time you’ve
been stuck there without a clear path out. The introduction to your memoir, The
Soviet Jew: A Weaponized Immigrant’s Tale, begins with a photo of you and your
family outside the Vatican.2
Levine: Yeah. Of course, Rome is a big place for Soviet immigrants that came to
America starting in the 1970s and continuing through the 1990s. Rome was the
destination for people who didn’t go to Israel. Some people were there for a few
weeks, my family was there for six months, and my dad worked at a bank in Rome
as a translator. He’s very good with languages and so he quickly learned Italian
and was able to interpret for the Soviet immigrants coming to collect their
paychecks. And one of the plans while we were there this last time was to go on
a tour of all the places that we remembered from our six months there, and go
see the bank where my dad worked, but we all caught COVID and, instead, we were
just sweating it out in an Airbnb.
Rail: You made a comment a little while ago about losing everything of your
former life when you decided to leave the Soviet Union, except for the contents
of your suitcase. I immediately think of Sergei Dovlatov’s novel, The Suitcase,
where each item in his suitcase tells a story of the life he once had before
emigrating. And you really feel a sense of loss for this man, who—even though he
made it to America—he’s still nostalgic for his home country.
Levine: Exactly. Basically, you’re taking these small pieces of luggage with you
into the unknown.
But, I have to say, compared to immigrants coming from Mexico or taking this
very dangerous journey across the southern US border, Soviet immigrants were
more privileged. Soviet immigrants, for all the stuff they talk about—and
immigration is a traumatic experience itself—were very privileged. They were
sort of the “it” immigrants of the time. They were supported by the White House,
and by the Congress, and the Senate, and they were idolized as these victims of
totalitarianism. We sort of confirmed this myth America tells about itself about
protecting those fleeing danger. So, a lot of resources were given to help us,
and the conditions were not luxurious. We stayed in a single-wide trailer in
Italy for six months that was cut in half and split between our family and one
other. But we were safe, we were taken care of, we were fed. The bureaucratic
process was smooth for us. Also, we were white—or white-passing—our religion was
not a problem, like Muslim immigrants might be viewed. So, our religion was not
a problem, our ethnicity was not a problem, and our politics were not a problem
because everyone was anti-communist and very much in support of capitalism and
everything that surrounds the American mythology. You know, American Soviet
immigrants are more patriotic than a lot of Americans.
Rail: Yeah, you actually have a memoir entry that you shared on your Substack—I
think you posted it around the Fourth of July—where you describe scrolling
through your Facebook feed and seeing your immigrant friends pledging their
patriotism and how grateful they are to America, and you write that, as a Soviet
American, your role is to “remind Americans that theirs is the only good system
in the world, and that there can be no alternative,”3 and I think that really is
the kernel of this memoir and the idea of the “weaponized immigrant.” Also, did
you coin that term? It’s so perfect.
Levine: I didn’t coin it. It existed and was used by other scholars. But, I
think I popularized the way in which I use it and now others use it.
There’s multiple ways the term gets used. There’s the way that is used by
politicians, more the Republican Party, which demonizes immigrants and uses them
as a scapegoat for everything that’s wrong. So there’s immigrants as a political
weapon. You also have the idea that America is ultimately a nation of
immigrants, which is a skewed rhetoric you get from the liberal side of the
political spectrum. It’s presented as, “the fact that we allow immigrants in is
our strength.” But when you actually look at the logic behind it, it’s really
more about needing cheap labor, or we need to grow and Americans aren’t breeding
enough [laughs]. I started understanding this more as I got older and looking at
my own immigration in a political context and that’s how I started using the
term. We were pawns in this larger geopolitical battle that helped justify
defense spending and prop up this pretty nasty military industrial complex.
Because the narrative was that there was a second Holocaust about to happen in
the Soviet Union, and America was saving us, even though the narrative that Jews
were under threat was not true. Anti-Semitism did exist in the Soviet Union, but
it was not this existential kind of—apartheid kind of—racism. There were
discriminatory hiring policies put in place, sure. And unofficial quotas at
universities about accepting Jews. But they were not the kind of things that
people thought about on a day to day basis. On some level, it was much more
benign than the kind of racism that exists in America today, in terms of racism
against the Black population and the ghettoization that takes place in America
with redlining.
But the Soviet Jews who came to America sort of parroted this idea that the
Soviet Union was Nazi-like because it was what Americans wanted to hear. It’s
the story they told to immigration officials while applying for refugee status
and asking to be let into America. So, it’s like the myth became reality, even
in the minds of Soviet immigrants. And this memoir is about how we were
weaponized in service of American power and American imperialism.
Rail: You’ve criticized the emigre literary community for exactly what you just
talked about, playing into this myth. One of the things that your discussion on
this topic has revealed to me is how this weaponization of immigrants makes for
some strange bedfellows. Under this umbrella term of weaponized immigrants, you
have both Russian nationalists, like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, as well as writers
with very Russophobic attitudes who write about Russian people and Russian
culture with outright disdain.
Levine: The way you are treated by American society changes over time. So
Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize. He was this prisoner of conscience. He was
almost like a martyr who channeled this angst and this deep trauma of the gulag
system in the Soviet Union and the brutality of the system. I mean, he did open
up to the world this kind of place that existed, this police state and forced
labor camps. But he was also a hardcore Russian nationalist and basically a
monarchist. So when he came to America he was received as this hero; as a guy
who could confirm these horrible aspects of this evil system, but also
represented the potential of the people of Russia to resist. But recently,
because he was a Russian imperialist and nationalist, who did not have the best
things to say about Ukraine and its independence, his star has fallen. At first,
he was weaponized one way, against the Soviet Union, and now is viewed the other
way, as, like, a weapon of Putin.
Rail: Right. And now you’re seen as an agent of Putin for simply speaking the
Russian language.
Levine: Yeah, it’s getting ridiculous.
Rail: Keith Gessen has a new memoir called, Raising Raffi, and it’s a parenting
memoir. I liked it, but there’s a chapter where he debates whether or not he
should speak Russian to his son. You and I talked briefly before the interview
about your daughter—
Levine: Yes, and we speak Russian to her. We’re raising a proper imperialist
baby.
Rail: [Laughs] Exactly! So now your toddler is an agent of Putin.
But Gessen writes that he fears teaching his son Russian could put him in danger
the way it put Paul Klebnikov in danger, the Russian-American journalist whose
parents taught him the Russian language. Klebnikov later reported from the
country after the fall of the Soviet Union and “wrote a book about the
corruption of the Russian state by big business.” Gessen goes on,
He published another one a few years later about the dangers of the Chechen
mafia to Russian civilization … In 2003, he was named editor of Russian Forbes
and moved to Moscow full time. The next year while walking to the subway from
work, he was shot four times and died. A poorly conducted trial ended in a not
guilty verdict for the two defendants.
Levine: Yeah, I see what he’s doing there and it’s sort of sneaky. He’s
basically saying that what happened to Paul Klebnikov could happen to his son
because it was speaking the Russian language that led Klebnikov to Russia, which
led to his murder.
I want to back up a little, though. Klebnikov was a great writer but it’s funny
Keith Gessen says his book4 was about “big business.” It’s not. It’s about Boris
Berezovsky, the first big oligarch in Russia. And the fact that Klebnikov comes
from this white emigre background, and he’s hyper focused on this one person—who
happens to be Jewish—and makes it seem like the richer and richer Berezovsky
gets, the poorer and more degraded Russia becomes—it’s pretty anti-Semitic. The
book is great because it gets into the finer details of how these deals were
made to siphon off money from these newly privatized businesses, but there were
other characters involved and so, because he’s only focused on Berezovsky, I
mean, there’s like a hard anti-Semitic undercurrent and I think it’s funny that
Keith Gessen sidesteps this issue.
Back to what you were saying, though, I think this is where the issue of
editorial quotas comes in. As a Soviet immigrant writer, you’re expected to take
these jabs at your birth country. But, publishing is a business, it’s an
industry, and you have to appeal to the reader. Who is reading Keith Gessen’s
books? Probably a more liberal reader who has these preconceived notions about
the Soviet Union and about Russia today. And so they’re playing to an audience
and that’s one of the things that annoys me about Soviet writers of my
generation. The writing is filled with these stock scenes and stereotypes:
Russian women are slutty; Russian men are drunks; it’s dangerous, you’re always
in danger; no one’s safe on the street. It’s so stereotypical. Gary Shteyngart’s
books are filled with them and they’re pretty nasty sometimes. But he can get
away with it because it’s comedy. The immigrant writers I like always seem to be
from an older generation because they’re writing for a Russian audience, and
even a Russian immigrant audience. What made Dovlatov great was that he was
writing for his own community. He was writing about physicists stocking shelves
in grocery stores, and all these dashed ambitions in this new world. And it’s a
funny and depressing world, but it’s alive. So, these writers that I like,
they’re usually writers who came in the 1970s as adults and usually aren’t
published in America; they’re published in Russian and then translated.
Rail: Like Eduard Limonov?
Levine: Yes, Limonov and his ex-wife, Nataliya Medvedeva. Her memoir5 is one of
the best Soviet immigrant memoirs that exists. That’s my take on it. She’s
almost totally unknown in America and untranslated into English. But Evgenia
actually really turned me onto it. She moved to Los Angeles in the 1970s and was
a successful model, and actually appeared on the cover of one of The Cars’ first
albums.6
Rail: Speaking of editorial quotas, Limonov said he couldn’t get published in
America because he wasn’t anti-Soviet enough. And he may have been right—the
cheapest English language translation of It's Me, Eddie—his most famous book—I
could find on the internet was a 250 dollar used paperback. Hardcover copy was
500 dollars. So it’s essentially impossible to read him in America.
Levine: That's pretty amazing. I wonder if you can get some pirated version…
probably. But that's pretty amazing.
Limonov and Medvedeva were immigrant writers and they lived for a time in
America, in New York and LA, and I like their politics and their aggressive
positions. They have a lot of bile towards this country. [Laughs] I feel like
I’m at a disadvantage because my experiences of coming to this country were all
as a child, and that’s sort of why my generation’s literature is crappy, because
we came as children and we don’t have a lot to offer and it’s purely from an
observational level. Maybe the next generation that came, maybe they can reflect
now that they’re truly American, not because they are writing for a market but
because it’s just natural for them. They can sort of take the legacy of their
parents and mix it with their own understanding of what America is.
Rail: You’ve got me thinking about that movie, Everything Everywhere All at
Once.
Levine: That is one of the most brilliant films about the immigrant experience
and like the intergenerational split… it’s incredible. I mean, it’s doing
something no Soviet writer has done basically [laughs], and it gets at it in
this incredible way. But—again—Daniel Kwan7 is not an immigrant. So, that
generation can look at the immigrant aspect of their family and from a very
secure American perspective, rather than being in between this nebulous
perspective that also suffers from the fact that you were just a kid when it all
happened.
Rail: Well, it’s a wide ranging project, because you’re telling your own
personal immigration story, as well as telling the story of your ancestors, and
what their lives were like in the Soviet Union. It’s a small sample size, but
what you’ve shared has been very enlightening about life in the Soviet Union,
and I think you’re asking important questions about the American immigrant
experience.
Levine: Yeah, I’ve got to stick to it. There’s signs that some of these myths
are being dismantled. These myths about Soviet Jewish immigration to America and
Israel. People are doing a critical appraisal of that narrative, which is great,
but there’s not a lot of it. It’s pretty fringe. There is a rebooted
publication, Jewish Currents, that came out and did a Soviet issue8 and I think
they actually did a pretty good job of interrogating this myth of Soviet
anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism was a problem but the real reason they left was
because they thought they could do better in America.
Rail: I can’t wait to read more excerpts.
Levine: This has actually been helpful talking with you because it’s put some
wind back in my sails. I’m still not fully recovered from getting out of Russia
and COVID, and I’ve got all these other projects I’m working on. But people dig
it.
1. https://yasha.substack.com/
2. https://yasha.substack.com/p/the-soviet-jew-a-weaponized-immigrants
3. https://yasha.substack.com/p/an-immigrant-living-through-american
4. Godfather of the Kremlin
5. Hotel California
6. The Cars (1978)
7. Co-director of Everything, Everywhere, All at Once
8. https://jewishcurrents.org/issue/winter-spring-2022
CONTRIBUTOR
Will McDonald
Will McDonald is a Brooklyn-based writer. His work has appeared in The Village
Voice, Bushwick Daily, and is forthcoming in Stonecoast Review.
edit
Critical Perspectives on Art, Politics and Culture
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MAY 2023
All Issues
Find the RAIL in print
Subscribe now
A message from Phong Bui
Publisher and Artistic Director
ART
* SARA VANDERBEEK WITH TOBY KAMPS
* LIU XIAODONG WITH BARRY SCHWABSKY
* UMAN WITH CHRIS MARTIN
* SENGA NENGUDI WITH AMADOUR
* I’LL SEE YOU THERE
By Jamieson Webster
ARTSEEN
* MARK BRADFORD: YOU DON'T HAVE TO TELL ME TWICE
By Jason Drill
* SUNG TIEU: INFRA-SPECTER
By Helena Haimes
* ANGELA CHINA: GIRL ON THE GRASS
By Jessica Holmes
* LOUISE BONNET AND ADAM SILVERMAN: ENTANGLEMENTS
By Suzanne Hudson
* ROXA SMITH: NO VACANCY
By D. Dominick Lombardi
* ELISABETH KLEY: A SEAT IN THE BOAT OF THE SUN
By Barbara A. MacAdam
* THE ÖMEN: ALBERT OEHLEN PAINTINGS AND PAUL MCCARTHY SCULPTURES
By Andrew Paul Woolbright
* R.I.P. GERMAIN: JESUS DIED FOR US, WE WILL DIE FOR DUDUS!
By Alicia Gladston
* OF MYTHIC WORLDS
By Cassie Packard
* MICHAEL MADRIGALI: BIG CITY NIGHTS
By Barbarita Polster
* PIERRE BONNARD: THE EXPERIENCE OF SEEING
By David Rhodes
* GEORGIA O’KEEFFE: TO SEE TAKES TIME
By Rebecca Schiffman
* CECILY BROWN: DEATH AND THE MAID
By Phyllis Tuchman
* LOIS DODD: NATURAL ORDER
By David Whelan
* GEGO: MEASURING INFINITY
By Jenny Wu
* FICRE GHEBREYESUS: I BELIEVE WE ARE LOST
By Ann C. Collins
* JUAN DE PAREJA, AFRO-HISPANIC PAINTER
By Christian K. Kleinbub
* ANSELM REYLE: RAINBOW IN THE DARK
By William Corwin
* WANGECHI MUTU: INTERTWINED
By Megan N. Liberty
* DAN GRAHAM
By Marc Mayer
* SIMONE LEIGH
By Saul Ostrow
* ENRIQUE CHAGOYA: BORDERLESS
By Hearne Pardee
* KERN SAMUEL: PAINING
By Louis Block
* AMY LINCOLN: RADIANT SPECTRUM
By Bryan Martin
1X1
* ON HARRIET FEIGENBAUM
By Alex A. Jones
CRITICS PAGE
* A WORD OR TWO ON ART AND TECHNOLOGY
Guest Critic: Charlotte Kent
* NEUTRAL
By Magda Sawon
* AESTHETICS
By Dr. Tina Rivers Ryan
* TOUCH
By Yayoi Shionoiri, Sarah Conley Odenkirk , and Megan Noh
* DISPLAY
By Merel van Helsdingen
* ANCESTRAL
By Mashinka Firunts Hakopian
* METAVERSE
By Margaret Wertheim
* WORLDBUILDING
By Clara Che Wei Peh
* INCUBATORS
By Bilyana Palankasova and Sarah Cook
* INNOVATION
By Ruth Catlow and Penny Rafferty
* PUBLIC
By Kay Watson
* COMMUNITY
By Kanon
* COMPLEX
By Doreen A. Ríos
BOOKS
* CHLOE N. CLARK WITH ALLISON WYSS
* DANIEL ALLEN COX WITH GREG MARSHALL
* TEZER ÖZLÜ’S COLD NIGHTS OF CHILDHOOD
By Bekah Waalkes
* HAN KANG’S GREEK LESSONS
By Cat Woods
* CAMILLE T. DUNGY’S SOIL: THE STORY OF A BLACK MOTHER’S GARDEN
By Victoria Richards
* OLYMPUS ON EARTH: DANIEL H. TURTEL’S THE FAMILY MORFAWITZ
By Jordan A. Rothacker
* MARIO FORTUNATO’S SOUTH
By John Domini
* MATTHEW CHENEY’S THE LAST VANISHING MAN: AND OTHER STORIES
By Yvonne C. Garrett
* TOM LIN WITH BLAKE SANZ
* SOPHIE MACKINTOSH’S CURSED BREAD
By Yvonne C. Garrett
* MICHAEL MAGEE’S CLOSE TO HOME
By Tom Deignan
* RAPHAEL RUBINSTEIN’S THE TURN TO PROVISIONALITY IN CONTEMPORARY ART: NEGATIVE
WORK
By Tom McGlynn
MUSIC
* AMARCORD HAL
By Scott Gutterman
* CHARLES CURTIS, ALAN LICHT, AND DEAN ROBERTS
By Martin Longley
* CATERINA BARBIERI AND ELI KESZLER
By Vanessa Ague
* KERRY O’BRIEN AND WILLIAM ROBIN’S ON MINIMALISM
By George Grella
DANCE
* ALONE, YET INSEPARABLE
By Susan Yung
* WE ARE IN CATASTROPHE
By Candice Thompson
* THE FORCED ABUNDANCE OF JUSTIN PECK
By Eve Bromberg
FILM
* DIGITAL RECALL: THE NEW CINEMA OF MEMORY
By Alex Bliziotis and Sasha Karsavina
* HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE
By Forrest Cardamenis
* SU FRIEDRICH’S TODAY
By Jasmine Liu
* RITES OF PASSAGE: THE FILMS OF SHINJI SOMAI
By Bingham Bryant
THEATER
* DIANE EXAVIER WITH SHAMIRA IBRAHIM
* MONSOON WEDDING MAKES ITS WAY TO BROOKLYN
By Allison Considine
* INDIESPACE GIVES THE NEW YORK THEATER SCENE EXACTLY WHAT IT NEEDS
By Lauren Emily Whalen
FICTION
* FROM AUSTRAL
By Carlos Fonseca, trans. Megan McDowell
POETRY
* THEY GO DOWN TO THE FIELD
By Joel Newberger
* THREE
By Emily Lee Luan
* TWELVE POEMS BEGINNING WITH A, B, C
By Charles Bernstein
* FROM “ALL THIS IS A CONTINUATION OF THE LIE, BUT . . . IF I REMAIN
CONSISTENT, IT COMES CLOSE TO THE TRUTH”
By Alina Stefanescu
* SEVEN
By LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs
* HER SHORT FILM WITH VAN GOGH’S EAR
By Emmalea Russo
* THREE BALLADS
By Yuri Andrukhovych, trans. John Hennessy and Ostap Kin
* FOUR
By Maik Yohansen, trans. Eugene Ostashevsky
* SIX
By Mykhail Semenko trans. Eugene Ostashevsky
* I. AND I
By Rodger Kamenetz
ART BOOKS
* KEVIN BEASLEY’S A VIEW OF A LANDSCAPE
By John P. Hastings
* TAMAR ETTUN’S TEXTS FROM LILIT
By Nick Bennett
* PATRICK D. PAGNANO’S EMPIRE ROLLER DISCO
By Naomi Elias
* MORGAN ASHCOM’S OPEN
By Sarah Moroz
* HANNAH GODFREY’S CRITICAL FICTIONS
By Emily Doucet
FIELD NOTES
* THE JINA REBELLION
By Assareh Assa
* A WEAPONIZED IMMIGRANT: YASHA LEVINE WITH WILL MCDONALD
* NO POLITICS BUT CLASS POLITICS: A REVIEW
By Adam Theron-Lee Rensch
ART AND TECHNOLOGY
* A LANGUAGE CAIRN: ARTISTS ON THEIR PRACTICE
By Charlotte Kent
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