My Mother Tongue, My Fatherland

1.
Like many of my contemporaries of similar background, I speak and write in two, if not three, languages, all three of them with the same accent – my foreign accent. You can make yourself unnoticeable in a pub: casual dress and unobtrusive manners would do the trick. But once you open your mouth asking for a pint, your cover is blown. The accent betrays you. An inevitable question pops up from a friendly face standing next to you at the bar: ‘Where are you from?’ I usually assume that the guy is not Professor Higgins; so, to cut the long game of guessing short, I find it easier to reveal the facts: I was born and grew up in Russia. I could have elaborated and explained that I am a Moscow-born assimilated Jew; I left the Soviet Union fifty years ago (I was stripped of my Russian citizenship as a condition of my departure); I went straight to Israel where for a year I ran a student theatre in the University of Jerusalem; then, while I was staying in Paris with my French publisher, Her Majesty the Queen’s government invited me to cross the Channel to join the BBC World Service and settle down in Britain. Ten years later, I became a British citizen. But my interlocutor interrupts me: ‘How are Russians in London doing?’ he asks. Which Russians has he in mind? Russian oligarchs? Bohemian artists? Illegal migrants? Vodka merchants? ‘I mean the Russian community in London’, he elaborates.

There are plenty of Russians in London. But no community. Russians used to be wary of each other, ...