The following remarks were made by James McGavran '02, assistant professor of Russian, at the memorial service held Jan. 30, 2016 for Professor Natalia Olshanskaya.
I want to speak today not as Natasha’s student and not as her colleague, though I am fortunate to have been both. I have also benefited enormously from her mentorship and professional support. She is the reason I speak Russian — the how and the why — the reason I studied Russian literature, the reason I became an academic — again the how and the why — and the reason I’m making my career here at Kenyon. But it is of a deeper, more difficult, and even more important connection that I wish to speak today. I wish to speak as her adopted child, for Natasha treated me as a son, always, and I came to consider her my second mother — or русская мама, the term I usually land on when trying to describe to others Natasha’s role in my life. Please understand, though, that my point in choosing this approach is not to dwell on the uniqueness of my relationship with Natasha. I believe there was something parental, in the broadest and best sense, in her dealings with all her students, friends, and loved ones: she was authoritative, compassionate, protective, fiercely loyal, forgiving, understanding, and wise. I will speak first about her justly celebrated brand of tough love, and then about a memorable conversation I had with her in the fall.
Natasha was assigned to me as a faculty advisor before I even came to Kenyon as a student, and the day I first set foot on campus 18 years ago, I was gathered in her small office in Ascension with all her other first-year advisees and their families. One of the parents — evidently a prototype “helicopter-parent” — asked her to describe her philosophy of advising students. I can only imagine what Natasha, with all her old-school cynicism, thought of this question, but her immediate answer was as un-cynical as it was true: she said, “I mother them.”
But what does that really mean? Truth be told, and as her daughter Ksenia can attest, I doubt there are many parents left on this earth who speak to their children as brusquely or as frankly as Natasha did. Not, anyway, outside the borders of Russia and the former Soviet Union — there was definitely something quintessentially Slavic about Natasha’s love. When, during a rough patch as a student, I shared with her my problems with depression and self-harm, her commentary and therapy were limited to one expectorated word: “Stupid!” And strange as it may seem, at the time that summary judgment was exactly what I needed to hear. Her understanding of human behavior, of our weaknesses and motivations, was so acute that she couldn’t choose but be cynical. She wasn’t one to suffer fools, applaud mediocrities, regurgitate platitudes, or sow false hope. She could seem biased, perhaps because she sometimes played favorites, but there was a kind of ultimate fairness to her severity. She was nothing if not clear-eyed. At the same time, though, she could be blindly, fervently, and even mystically devoted to those in her charge — a group, again, that included friends and colleagues as well as students and family. Her love, support, and understanding were something we felt at all times, and together with her obviously high standards and expectations, they drove us to become better versions of ourselves. I suppose all this may seem like nothing more than an extended definition or stereotype of tough love, but if that is the case, then what I want to say is that I have never encountered tough love worth the name anywhere else but in Natasha. She wielded it with grace, sincerity, and unerring judgment, and she wielded it to marvelous effect.
One of the last and most memorable conversations I had with Natasha took place this fall, when she was already nearly paralyzed by ALS. It was memorable in part because for most the first time, I felt she was speaking with me as an intellectual peer, someone at home in her native language and familiar enough with its literature to help her remember something.
She said she was having trouble sleeping, and she described to me waking up in the middle of the night and trying to recall a section of an unfinished poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky. The lines begin, «Уже второй, должно быть ты легла. / А может быть, и у тебя такое», that is, “It’s after one. You must have gone to bed. / But maybe it’s the same with you too.” The language is simple and conversational, as if mumbled; the tone is subdued: these are the casual words of a person thinking of his distant, lost love. She has probably gone to sleep, just as she is certainly gone from him, but maybe, just maybe, it’s the same with her—whether this means the insomnia, the implied undying love, or just some memory of their connection.
I was struck by the thought of Natasha seized in the night by the nagging memory of these rather plain lines of verse, Natasha who had dedicated her life to the teaching of the Russian language and the importance of Russia’s literary and cultural heritage. It reminded me of my birth mother, a professor of English, who after my father’s death a little over a year ago found herself waking in the middle of the night thinking of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ line, “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.” It’s a similar image of sleepless people — people hurting, people in the grip of terrible illness, grief, and isolation — who reach out involuntarily to half-forgotten poems in their pain. People who above all, perhaps, are wondering whether it’s the same for others. I take it as Natasha’s final lesson to me that these lines, these poems, these carefully ordered words — whatever their quality, whatever their source — can serve as a bridge across the gulfs separating us as human beings, a bridge across time and language. They provide, perhaps, to borrow from another Russian poet, a way beyond the “obvious and total separation” of death — a way to deliver, as Marina Tsvetaeva once did, a New Years’ letter into a dead loved one’s hands.
Let my letter to Natasha be a thank-you note, an expression of filial love and gratitude to my Russian mother, a testament to the enduring connections she made among us, and one of her own trademark scoffs — “I mean, excuse me!” — directed against the finality of her parting.
The following remarks were made by James McGavran '02, assistant professor of Russian, May 21, 2016, at Commencement.
Natalia Lvovna Olshanskaya, your name was a struggle for most people at Kenyon, and, just as you predicted with your typical ironic amusement, it will continue to be for years to come as it lives on in what you have done for us and for this institution. Devoted teacher and colleague, fiercely loyal mentor and friend, and surrogate mother to hundreds of students far away from home, you gave of yourself — your knowledge, your wisdom, and your love — unreservedly, without restraint or calculation. After a successful career at Odessa State University, you came to Kenyon in 1997, and once here, you singlehandedly saved Russian from near-death and turned it into a thriving program, with graduates who have routinely won Fulbright fellowships and entrance into prestigious universities, and perhaps less routinely gone on to become acclaimed authors and commencement speakers.
A professor and scholar of the highest standards, you demanded — both through example and through actual, explicit commands — the absolute best from your students, and our best is what you got. It is for the care and kindness you showed us, however, that we will always remember and love you: you were unswervingly devoted to the people in your life and the people of Kenyon College. You were taken from us far too soon and after terrible suffering, and we grieve your loss desperately, but it is with profound and enduring gratitude that we honor your achievements today.