Dispatch
Vladivostok :: A Russian City in Asia
WSU professor Birgitta Ingemanson chronicles her research about Eleanor Lord Pray, an American who lived in Vladivostok, Russia from 1894 to 1930 and wrote diary-like letters to friends and family virtually every day.
Background
For more than twenty years now
—regardless of season and weather—
the Russian Pacific port city of Vladivostok
has offered friendship and cooperation to students,
faculty, and administrators of Washington State University.
This new web site, Coordinates, continues to build that bridge.
The First Swallows
Viktor V. Gorchakov proposed an exchange between Washington State University and Far Eastern State (now: National) University, and Mikhail IU. Shinkovsky brought the message to WSU. Samuel S. Smith and Vishnu N. Bhatia accepted the proposal, and worked closely with Vladimir I. Kurilov to found and develop the program. The first students from both sides traveled from their homes to the other university for a month of summer studies in 1990. Since then, faculty members, administrators, and more students have met, become friends, and worked together in diverse fields, including anthropology, business, ecology, economics, fine arts, forestry, geography, geology, history, hotel administration, international education, journalism, library science, political sciences, and zoology.
A Remarkable Collection
The Eleanor L. Pray Collection of more than 2,000 letters, twenty photo albums, and other materials is a unique source of information about Old Vladivostok. Its creator was an American woman, Eleanor Lord Pray (1868 South Berwick, Maine – 1954 Washington, D.C.), who lived in Vladivostok from 1894 to1930 and wrote diary-like letters to friends and family virtually every day. She was a member of an American merchant family that from the 1880s until January 1918 ran the city’s “American Store,” selling American goods such as bicycles and sewing-machines, gramophones and rifles, canned foods and chocolate. Rather than staying for the mere five years that she and her husband, Frederick, had planned, Mrs. Pray fell in love with the city, with her life and friends there, and did not leave even when Mr. Pray died in 1923. Only the lack of continuing work forced her to move in December 1930.
The Eleanor L. Pray Collection is owned by Patricia D. Silver and housed at her private archives in Sarasota, Florida. The Prays’ granddaughter, Mrs. Silver saved, organized, and researched the Collection, and has allowed generous access to, and use of, its materials.
Eleanor Pray’s Letters from Vladivostok, 1894-1930: THE BOOK
Russian Translation: Birgitta Ingemanson, ed., Eleonora Lord Prei. Pis’ma iz Vladivostoka 1894-1930 [Eleanor Pray’s letters from Vladivostok 1894-1930], tr. Andrey Sapelkin (Vladivostok: Rubezh Press, 2008). Hardback with dust cover, 450 pp., more than 100 photos. The first edition was presented at the International Book Fair in Moscow in November 2008, and received an award from the Federal Agency for the Press and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation in March 2009 (see link). It is sold out, and a second edition is being prepared for spring 2009.
English Original: The original manuscript in English is being considered for publication by the University of Washington Press.
Eleanor Pray’s Letters from Vladivostok, 1894-1930: THE EXHIBIT
Based on the book, an extraordinary exhibit was opened in October 2008 at Vladivostok’s central museum, the Primorie State Museum Named for V.K. Arseniev. The creative team consisted of Aleksandr V. Kolesov (Executive Editor, the Rubezh Press), Vladimir N. Sokolov (Director of the Museum), and Viktor A. Shalay (Deputy Director of the Museum and Curator of the Exhibit), and their assistants Svetlana Voronina and Darya Bogdanova (exhibit design), Elena Zhukova (sound system), Sergei Aksenov (artistic construction), and Gennady Anegin (photos of the exhibit). The photos from Eleanor Pray’s albums were scanned by Iraida N. Klimenko, Nina B. Kerchelaeva, and Birgitta Ingemanson. Sponsors for the whole project included the Rubezh Press, the Primorie State Museum, the Sobranie Magazine, the City Administration of Vladivostok, the U.S. Consulate General of the Russian Far East in Vladivostok, and Washington State University.
Introduction to Diary Pages from Vladivostok
During a walk along Vladivostok’s Pushkin Street in 1992,
I came across what seemed like a forgotten home.
The big house stood there with curtains closed,
a garden in ruins, no one coming or going.
I saw fences fallen down, paths grown over, and a wild profusion of flowers.
When stopping and listening, I could imagine the whispers of the past:
sounds through open windows of plates being set for summer meals,
the cadences of friends chatting on the garden benches,
the little voices of children playing under the trees.
And I longed to open the gates and walk in,
to uncover the soul of this garden,
and of this city.
At home I have a painting by my friend Kathleen Bodley, which reminds me of Vladivostok and my spiritual connection with it. The picture shows a large stylized urban building: its walls bare, the windows open, but no curtains and no people; initially it looks bleak. Then, on the left side of this barren view, one becomes aware of a faint human face placed upside down over the windows. I identify and sympathize with this painting: my work entails reading books, official documents, and private letters and diaries in order to learn about places and events—in effect, looking in through “the windows and doors” of other people’s lives. Sometimes the information is easily accessible, but at times one is forced awkwardly to turn one’s mind this way and that, even upside down as on the painting, in order to see the patterns of the emerging stories. As a foreigner trying to understand something about both Russian history and the Russian soul—the facts as well as the feelings—I am painfully aware of the enormity of the task. But that, too, is good. I will keep looking in through those symbolical windows, — and I promise always to remember and respect those who came before.
DIARY PAGES FROM VLADIVOSTOK
October 20-28, 2008
All through that week, I met so many wonderful people and learned so much new. One fine morning, I walked around the hills with a geographer, Petr Fedorovich Brovko (who has been at WSU many times), to try to establish where in 1901 the Prays and their friends played golf. I had laminated nine large pages of photos from that year and we did figure out from the topography something about where they were. But there has been so much construction in the center of the city that some of the hills clearly cone-like on the photos are now flattened and much lower than they were. Still, the panorama over the L-shaped Bay of the Golden Horn and the central city is absolutely breath-taking. Some of the “New Russian” high-rises are actually beautiful—well designed and enhanced in good taste—and while one has to remember that their smallest apartments can cost $400,000 and up, they add style to the urban landscape. I asked Petr Fedorovich who could afford such prices, and he said, “Those who robbed the people.” Another meeting took place in “Dom Smith,” where Mrs. Pray used to live, with some of its current inhabitants, and I gave them copies of the book…
The most important meetings were in the Arseniev Museum. This is the regional history museum with all kinds of history exhibits, as well as images of natural, ethnographic, and political life. It used to be a rather low-key place where school classes were dragged around often against their will and where no one spoke loudly. The new director, Vladimir Nikolaevich Sokolov, and his colleagues are changing this. One day, there was a loud racket outside the room where I was working, and it turned out to be a very active, happy, and inquisitive group of small children having tea in a replica of a tea room from the early 20th century. In the evening after my presentation, when we were having champagne and chocolates in Clio, the Museum’s elegant banquet room, again loud voices outside—this time from a chorus practicing among the exhibits for that weekend’s fall festival. Their singing was exquisite, and again I was struck by the new liveliness of the place.
Almost every day I was in meetings with the inner team who had worked on the exhibit, including Vladimir Nikolaevich, Svetlana Pavlovna Moskvitina (his 40ish, incredibly able, and kind assistant), Aleksandr Vladimirovich Kolesov (the executive editor of the publishing-house, Rubezh), and Viktor Shalay, a historian and artist, who is in charge of the exhibit. In that meeting I was given the first copy of my book, Eleanor L. Pray’s Letters from Vladivostok, 1894-1930, and it is really pretty: 450 pages on very good paper, lots and lots of illustrations, a hardback cover and a wonderful dust cover with a collage of photos from Mrs. Pray’s albums. The book is easy to hold, and it is really well made.
After the exhibit opened I was told by very many people how extraordinary it is, not only for Vladivostok but in international art circles, too. It is a creation of true love. With photos, sounds, readings (actors’ voices), and hand-written excerpts from Eleanor Pray’s letters (as translated in the book) it recreates an audial, visual, and, especially, an emotional portrait of Old Vladivostok.
Imagine a large hall devoted only to this. The walls are covered, first, with large blown-up photos of city landmarks from the early 1900s, e.g. the ornate Triumphal Arch, the Gothic-style department store Kunst & Albers (K&A), and well-known street scenes. Hanging over this background imagery, from ceiling to floor, are transparent sheets of some kind of thick plastic, perhaps 25-30 inches wide and covered with stylized texts from the letters. The sheets move slightly from the air in the room or people simply walking by, and you can read all or some of them as you become engrossed in the historical mosaic of the place. Starting on the left as you enter the hall, you go around along the walls and end up again by the entrance door, simultaneously progressing chronologically in the story of Vladivostok and Eleanor Pray’s life within it. In the middle of the exhibit hall is a square area of perhaps 9 x 9 feet that shows a room as if in Dom Smith. It is framed, I don’t remember by what, and in each corner are items from the era, some of them from Mrs. Pray’s own collection, e.g. a chest with white baby clothing and a jaunty baby’s hat (I brought these pieces to the Museum from Patricia Silver, Mrs. Pray’s granddaughter), a sewing-machine with some material and lace as if in the process of being sewn, an old-fashioned armchair actually from Dom Smith, and a bureau with a glass-covered display case showing the graceful vodka silver set—a carafe, four tumblers, and a small platter for these pieces to stand on—that had been Mrs. Pray’s and that Pat gave me when I first finished the manuscript in English last year. I have now donated this set to the Museum because that’s where it ought to be. In the center of this little room is a table with the linen cloth where, in the late 1890s, Mrs. Pray embroidered more than 200 names of the city’s well-known people, after they themselves had first signed the material. Over the table-cloth a slide projector (invisible within a hanging lamp) shows images from her albums, about 5 seconds each and then a new photo…
Meanwhile, throughout and moving around the exhibit hall there are sounds of the city illustrating the 1890s to 1930. The tape takes 30 minutes and begins with a voice saying in English, “My name is Eleanor Pray and I was born in South Berwick, Maine.” Then follow birds chirping, horses’ hooves on the streets, children’s voices rising and falling, waves rushing to the shore; crowds of people gathering somewhere, agitators’ shouts, guns and explosions; Soviet demonstrations and always music—a lullaby, a birthday song, marches and hymns. On the Monday of the week that I was there (October 27)—the Museum being closed on Mondays—I asked Viktor if I might sit in Mrs. Pray’s little room at her table and just feel it. He turned on the sound track and I heard it twice, often smilingly but also crying with all kinds of human emotions stemming from the beauty of this place, and the heavy weight of Russian history.
I had no idea that the exhibit was being prepared so extensively and gorgeously. Over the summer and early fall, I had asked a few times in my e-mails about its design and style, and whether I could help with anything, but no one ever answered; now I understand that they wanted this part of our meeting in October to be a wonderful surprise and, yes, an invaluable gift. So, I assumed that there would just be photos on the walls with my captions under them. But the surprise was so much larger.
The afternoon on that Friday (October 24) when the exhibit opened became simply incredible, an outpouring of love and support of such intensity as I have never experienced before. The exhibit was to open at 4 PM, and by 3 or so people started coming into the Museum. They bought books and chatted, moving around in two halls adjacent to Mrs. Pray’s, where beautiful aerial panorama photos of Vladivostok and the region are currently mounted. Three television crews filmed and interviewed me and others, and soon I saw people I know, greeted those I didn’t know, and began to be asked to sign books. In the end I must have signed about 100 of them, and probably half as many again since then (by the following Tuesday morning, they had sold about 250 copies); also postcards specially made for the exhibit. I wanted there to be some kind of greeting, such as “s nailuchshimi pozhelaniiami” (with best wishes), but my name is long and for many women I just began to draw a simple heart, explaining that it meant heartfelt warmth, and then signed my initials and the date. I was given lots of bouquets of flowers, chocolate boxes, and other presents—this before the exhibit had even opened. Some time after 4 o’clock, Vladimir Nikolaevich standing by the door to the exhibit hall, and also Bridget Gersten, Acting Consul General of the United States in the Russian Far East, said well chosen words about Mrs. Pray and Vladivostok, and I thanked everyone for coming. The two halls with the Vladivostok panoramas were full of people, and now they could enter the inner sanctum, moving around in it, stopping before the photos they liked, reading the texts and listening to the evocative sounds. I had hoped, and now realized, that the letters of Eleanor Pray would electrify many Vladivostokians.
About an hour later, we began the official presentation of the book itself. This was in the “Blue Hall” of the Museum, near the archive and exhibit areas and next to Clio (where the refreshments were served afterwards). The Blue Hall has about 120 comfortable red (!) seats, and is currently decorated with photo portraits of Eleanor Pray, her family, and their life in Vladivostok. On the stage at one end of the room, seen from left to right, sat Andrey Sapelkin (who translated my book into Russian), Aleksandr Vladimirovich, I, Vladimir Nikolaevich, and Viktor Alekseevich at a table with microphones and glasses of water, although once I was to speak I got up and stood at a dais with a microphone so that I could see the audience better. Everyone spoke kindly and well.
My presentation (in Russian) took about 30 minutes; I had practiced reading through everything several times, so as to be able now and then to look out over the crowd. The auditorium was full and there were probably about 30 or 40 people also standing in the back and along the walls. I felt from the beginning that they were with me, and when I finished everyone stood up and clapped for about 5 minutes. I was told later that that almost never happens. Of course, I cried, and many of the audience (I could see it) were also crying as I mentioned the people who had helped me so much but were no longer with us, including Nina I. Velikaia, the great literary scholar and friend, who once visited WSU.
One more Vladivostok image: On the last Monday morning I had breakfast with Liusia, a woman I met in the breast cancer support group that I and Vladimir I. Apanasevich, the oncologist, started in 1992, and she is lovely with a deep understanding of life and its almost impossible variations. She said she had a little surprise for me and, after my breakfast of a “pirozhok s iaitsom i kapustoi” (pirozhki with egg and cabbage) at the Dushechka cafe in the former K&A, now the State Department Store, or GUM, she took me up five or six floors by elegant elevator stairs in a new (separate) galleria-type complex downtown. “Turn around and look,” she said, and there below us the Golden Horn spread out, waves glittering in the sun and a slight breeze moving the streets’ autumnal leaves. I thought, like thousands of times before, what a city and what people.
WSM Coordinates Archive
Afghanistan :: Airborne Sharpshooter
2009.05.18
Capt. Michael Unruh '04
Capt. Michael Unruh '04 serves on an F-15E Strike Eagle team supporting U.S. and coalition troops out of Bagram Air Force Base. In his role providing air support to servicemembers in Afghanistan, Unruh says "I've had no greater feeling of satisfaction than when I've completed combat mission and I know that I've helped save American and coalition lives that day."
Read the dispatch and view the interactive map
Bolivia :: Helping street children in Cochabamba
2009.05.01
by Jenny (Brown) Goeres ('78 Elem. Ed.)
Bill Goeres ('77 Agriculture) and Jenny (Brown) Goeres ('78 Elem. Ed.) volunteered for Amanacer, which provides a home and a new beginning for the abandoned, abused, and orphaned street children of Cochabamba, Bolivia.
Read the dispatch and view the interactive map
Vladivostok :: A Russian City in Asia
2009.04.09
By Birgitta Ingemanson, professor of Foreign Languages and Cultures, WSU.
Eleanor Lord Pray was an American who lived in Vladivostok, Russia from 1894 to 1930 and wrote diary-like letters to friends and family virtually every day. WSU professor Birgitta Ingemanson wrote her own diaries chronicling her experiences studying Pray's letters and work.
Read the dispatch and view the interactive map
Ethiopia :: Love at first sight
2009.02.27
By Laureen Haydock Lund '82.
Laureen Lund '82 traveled to Ethiopia for three weeks to participate in Ethiopia's National Polio Immunization Day in 2008. What she saw and the people she met changed her life.
Read the dispatch and view the interactive map
On the waterfront
A photographic tour of Tacoma's waterfront
Washington State Magazine, Winter 2008/09
By Hannelore Sudermann. Photos by Ingrid Barrentine.
"Twenty years ago, the City Club of Tacoma approached the city with a plan to unify the waterfront and build a walking path from the Tacoma Dome to Point Defiance. The painstakingly researched report urged that the entire waterfront be redesigned as a people place. Lara Hermann '95 was thrilled when a city hall worker handed her the document. 'It was like a present just lands in your lap,' she says."
Read more in the Winter 2008/09 issue of Washington State Magazine.
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