Alexander Blakely ’92, Siberia Bound: Chasing the American Dream on Russia’s Wild Frontier, Sourcebooks, 2002

I recall the first time I met Alexander “Xander” Blakely. He arrived at my office for advising and regaled me with tales of rafting on the Ob River and trekking by horse and reindeer sleigh in the Siberian winter. He explained his desire to learn Russian, along with his planned major in economics; so I was not surprised when I learned that he spent a semester studying at the University in Novosibirsk in 1991. Several students told me after Xander’s graduation in 1992 that he had moved to Novosibirsk because he had fallen in love with a young woman there during his previous visits. Over the next several years, I heard various rumors about Xander’s fate—how he was living with his Russian girlfriend in her parents’ cramped apartment, how he was importing jeans to support himself, how he was running a successful restaurant in Novosibirsk, and how he was married with three children.

Fortunately, the appearance of Xander’s memoir Siberia Bound has cleared up the mystery of his life since 1992. Although it is true that love enticed Xander back to Novosibirsk, the relationship did not last. Nor did he strike it rich as a jeans importer. Rather, he and a Tatar friend built up a mini-empire importing cocoa beans and condoms, all the while gleaning insights into the nature of capitalism and the challenges confronting Russian society as it stumbled through the dislocations of the transition to a market economy. Siberia Bound is a fascinating look at the heady days of the first half of the 1990s, when the frontier spirit captured the hearts and minds of entrepreneurs seeking to make their fortunes in the former Soviet Union.

Siberia also beckoned Xander because he was tired of the material comforts and overabundance of American life. Moreover, he was on a mission to aid in the building of a free market from the detritus of the planned economy of the former Soviet Union. Ironically, he quickly learned that market capitalism was bringing to post-Soviet Russia many of the same problems that drove him from the United States—namely, overconsumption, crass materialism, mindless advertisements, and the ostentatious display of wealth. Xander found that his efforts to apply the training in economics from Swarthmore to the realities of Siberia in the 1990s did not always end the way he expected. As he notes: “For years I had been promoting the market as Siberia’s salvation, and now the market had become a monster. So this is what Dr. Frankenstein felt like."

Xander dishearteningly learned that the spirit of unbridled, cutthroat capitalism was alive and well in Siberia. Russia’s newly emerging capitalist class did not need lessons on how to take advantage of the market during the poorly regulated transition from planned economy to market capitalism; they already knew how to wheel and deal. He ultimately acknowledged what I had recognized on my frequent visits to Russia at the same time—namely, that the unfettered business practices resembled the robber-baron era of 19th-century America. Despite his realization that capitalism is not the panacea for Russia’s problems, Xander nevertheless believes that the free market is preferable to the planned economy of the communist era. By 1996, he had decided that he had accomplished what he had set out to achieve and left Siberia for the United States, leaving Russian entrepreneurs to figure out how to instill a sense of order, legality, and ethics into the workings of the Siberian economy.

A fascinating, coming-of-age story, Siberia Bound is replete with interesting observations of what it was like to experience post-Soviet life firsthand. Xander offers a glimpse of the trials and tribulations of daily life in Siberia some 10 years ago. His vivid and succinct prose also touches on other aspects of Russian life such as the pervasive role of alcohol, the annoying tactics of American missionaries who seemed to be everywhere, the challenges of keeping your clothes clean and fresh, the menace presented by drunken drivers, and the life-threatening nature of falling icicles during the winter thaw. He also offers compelling insights into how Soviet values and ways of doing things affected the conduct of business after communism’s collapse.

The importance of personal relationships in cementing deals, not to mention the reliance on threats and violence to conduct business, gave Russia’s fledgling market economy a particular flavor for which Xander’s economics classes did not prepare him. Just as valuable are the perspectives provided by Xander’s various Russian business partners regarding business ethics, the pros and cons of American culture and society, and their hopes and aspirations for a postcommunist Russia. The text is marred by incorrect transliterations, but on the whole, Siberia Bound engages the reader and offers plenty of food for thought.

And by the way, Xander did find true love in Siberia. He married Natasha, a university student from Kamchatka, and they currently live in San Francisco.

—Robert Weinberg, professor of history

OTHER BOOKS

Jan (Burgess) Chozen Bays ’66, Jizo Bodhisattva: Modern Healing & Traditional Buddhist Practice, Tuttle Publishing, 2002. A Zen teacher and practicing pediatrican, Bays explores the development of traditional Buddhist practices and ways to incorporate key philosophies into your own life through meditations, mantras, and chanting.

Fred “Crash” Blechman ’46 and others, Bent Wings—F4U Corsair Action & Accidents: True Tales of Trial & Terror! Xlibris, 1999. This book includes 43 stories by 10 pilots who lived to tell about flying Corsair planes during World War II and the Korean War period.

Grace Bulger ’88, The Enlightened Entrepreneur: A Spiritual Approach to Creating and Marketing a Company, Marlowe & Co., 2002. Working with publisher Matthew Lore ’88, Bulger wrote this guide for creating both a financially successful and spiritually fulfilling business.

Elizabeth Burchard ’82 and Judith Carlone, Torn From the Arms of Satan, Ace Academics, 2000. This book, with an accompanying videotape, describes how Burchard was hypnotized, brainwashed, and abused by a Manhattan psychologist and how Carlone deprogrammed her.

Jeff Berman, Fran Fleegler ’73, and John Hanc, The FORCE Program: The Proven Way to Fight Cancer Through Physical Activity and Exercise, Ballantine Books, 2001. FORCE, an acronym for Focus on Rehabilitation and Cancer Education, is highlighted in this book as a comprehensive lifestyle approach to cancer treatment.

Jennifer Glancy, Slavery in Early Christianity, Oxford University Press, 2002. Drawing on various sources, Glancy situates early Christian slavery in its broader cultural setting.

Laura Morgan Green ’85, Educating Women: Cultural Conflict and Victorian Literature, Ohio University Press, 2001. Green, assistant professor in the English Department at Northeastern University and a writer for Salon.com and Poets and Writers, analyzes the conflict between the higher education movement’s emphasis on intellectual and professional achievement and the Victorian novel’s narrative, in which women’s success is measured by the achievement of emotional rather than intellectual goals.

Stephen Henighan ’84, When Words Deny the World: The Reshaping of Canadian Writing, The Porcupine’s Quill, 2002. Fiction writer and literary journalist Henighan examines both Canadian fiction and Canada’s changing literary institutions during the 1990s, when Canadian writing became a commericial enterprise.

Sharon Bertsch McGrayne ’64, Prometheans in the Lab: Chemistry and the Making of the Modern World, McGraw-Hill, 2001. This book highlights influential chemical discoveries, the people who discovered them, and how they helped to shape the modern world.

Judy (Kazan) Morris, Writing Fiction for Children: Stories Only You Can Tell, University of Illinois Press, 2001. A published author of both fiction and nonfiction for children, Morris inspires adults to use the solid building blocks of plot, character, and setting to shape engaging children’s literature.

Robert Roper ’68, Fatal Mountaineer: The High-Altitude Life and Death of Willi Unsoeld, American Himalayan Legend, St. Martin’s Press, 2002. Blending adventure with an honest look at cultural background, this book examines the pressures on mountaineers during a period torn with conflict.

Charles Sullivan ’55 (ed.), Dancing in the Wind: Poetry and Art of the British Isles, Harry Abrams, 2002. Sullivan has assembled a montage of words and pictures that presents the British Isles and their inhabitants from various viewpoints.

Kenneth Turan ’67, Sundance to Sarajevo: Film Festivals and the World They Made, University of California Press, 2002. A film critic for the Los Angeles Times, Turan writes about the most unusual as well as the most important film festivals, emphasizing the cultural, political, and sociological aspects of each event.

Naomi and Brian Zikmund-Fisher ’91, Across the Chasm: A Caregiver’s Story, BMT Information Network, 2002. After dealing with Brian’s bone marrow transplant (see profile article: www.swarthmore.edu/bulletin/june02/zikmund-fisher.html), this book was developed as a cathartic way to help other caregivers deal with similar challenges.

COMPACT DISK

Elizabeth Neiman ’82, Das Pierrot Projekt: Danse Contemporaine und Neue Musik, Konzertmitschnitt, 1999. These works include musical pieces for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano.

VIDEO

Tariq Quadir ’87, Tawhid: The One in the Many, shows how everyday Islamic religious practices can nurture the awareness of oneness of God, truth, and reality. For information, e-mail him at tquadir@aol.com.