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A Love Affair With the Land of the Firebird

ST. PETERSBURG -- Pulling off to the side of the road across the street from the Hermitage, the cab driver apologized to his two passengers, "Excuse me. The wheel is broken. It will just take a minute to fix."


Such words are the bane of any foreigner's existence in Russia. But St. Petersburg's Suzanne Massie just shrugged it off with a nod as she continued to relate the tale about how she had been the first foreigner to rent a car in the Soviet Union -- and had to chase after a tire when it flew off toward the Neva River.


"This has been a serious romance," she said, reflecting on nearly 30 years of shuttling back and forth between Russia and the United States, writing books, fighting against Russian human-rights abuses and explaining Russia to mystified westerners. "And like all love affairs, it has had its ups and downs, its problems and pressures."


Since 1967, Massie has returned countless times to St. Petersburg -- where she now maintains an apartment. During that time, she has met and worked with Russian personalities ranging from Mikhail Baryshnikov to Patriarch Alexy II. During the 1980s, Massie became an unofficial adviser to President Ronald Reagan, contributing to the renewal of ties, both cultural and political, that had unraveled in the heat of the Cold War.


"Many people study Russia, but Suzanne is unique because she has been involved for so long," said Mikhail Petrovsky, the director of the Hermitage, where Massie is a member of the one-year-old Society of American Friends of the Hermitage. "She not only studies Russia but she also participates in the life here. She's truly a member of our community."


Aside from her work at the Hermitage and at the Pavlovsk palace complex, Massie has also set up a foundation to help children stricken with hemophilia. But she is best known for her books -- "Land of the Firebird" and "Pavlovsk" -- which have awakened thousands of foreigners to the beauty and soul of Russia.


"I have always tried to help Russians and Americans understand each other better," said Massie, who has a permanent home in Maine.


"I have always felt that these two peoples have an enormous amount to give to each other," added Massie, who is writing another book about her experiences in Russia. Massie, who declined to give her age, attributed much of her life's achievement to Russia itself and the people she befriended here.


Her first visit came as she and former husband Robert Massie were completing work on their book "Nicholas and Alexandra," about the last tsar and his wife. The idea to write the book arose largely out of their research into hemophilia, which afflicted their son Bobby as it had the tsarevich, Alexis.


Even before coming to the Soviet Union, Massie had had contact with things Russian through her mother, a Swiss national who lived in Russia before and during the Revolution.


From 1967 to 1972, Massie returned seven times, meeting Russians despite what she described as not-so-discreet KGB surveillance. "One thing that was impossible for them and for their bureaucracy to understand was that you might actually like it here," she said, recalling the black cars that would wait outside any place she visited.


In 1972, she found herself a "reverse refusenik," as the Soviet government refused to grant her a visa following the publication of her book on Leningrad poets. It took her 11 years to return, but in that time she took up the banner of human rights, rushing to the aid of friends and strangers who found themselves trapped on the other side of the Iron Curtain. She worked with American politicians on immigration issues and served on the board of the International League for Human Rights. Her work branched out, introducing Americans to Russian culture and history in a way that put the country in a context that helped undo Cold War stereotypes.


"What used to drive me up the wall in those days was, 'Well, if they don't like it, why don't they do something about it?'" she said. "Well, you know, it wasn't that easy to do something about it, and I tried to explain to them the nature of a society where there were many restraints."


Looking back, Massie credits Russia with much of her own personal and professional development. "I learned a tremendous amount about myself here," she said. "It's ironic that I found my personal liberation in this totalitarian society."


St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, who met Massie when he was still a university law professor, holds her in particular esteem.


"Suzanne is a special phenomenon in Russian-American relations," he said during a birthday party for Massie last month at the U.S. consul general's residence. "She really loves this city and Russia."


"In Washington, when I mentioned her name, everyone said they knew her, although maybe they thought she was a little crazy," Sobchak added. "But that is normal, because someone who is so given to one idea will always be seen as a little crazy."


That devotion to Russia was not always easy for Massie's family, said Massie's daughter, Susanna Thomas, 38. "It was hard for me to understand when I was younger," she said. "By the time I was a teenager I began to understand how important it was. When you get married and have children, it's important to hold on to something of your own self. For mom, that was Russia."


Several years ago, Massie and former husband Robert divorced. She is now married to Seymour Papert, a professor at Harvard University who invented LOGO, a computer language for children.


Massie keeps a close eye on happenings in Russia, especially now that it is bracing itself against the latest wave of Westernization.


"Russian culture is 1,000 years old, and it's survived a number of traumatic cultural events, not to speak of physical wars, which threatened to erase the Russian personality," she said.


"On my hopeful side, I always say Russia has had an awful lot of this. They've always managed to somehow keep it together, no matter what, to take something and bring it out in their own way. And I hope this is going to happen now."


Massie is already at work with the next generation of Russians, helping children struggling with hemophilia through her Firebird Foundation.


"I feel a chelovechesky dolg (human duty) to those kids, those mothers and what they're going through," she said, speaking in a typical mixture of Russian and English. .


Despite a small budget -- $6,000 in 1995 -- Massie said the foundation has succeeded in getting supplies for hemophiliacs from Western drug companies and gaining access to a St. Petersburg swimming pool for physical therapy sessions.


Another of Massie's current projects is the Orthodox-Episcopal Coordinating Committee, formed in 1991 by the Patriarch and United States Episcopal Bishop Edmund Browning.


Full of anecdotes, Massie is eager to return to writing and capture her three decades of the Russian experience in print.


"I realized that it was not just a story about Russia," she said. "It was also a story about America. And I was an American who just happened to be suspended between the two."

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