BY: VIC MATUS Experiencing life as objects is a sadly fitting way to introduce Tal Fortgang's review of The Penny is Gone: Meditations of a Soviet Jew by Emil Bezverkhny. https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!gPui!,w_1100,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1f7a7036-1717-48ce-8946-0b51f4c7eab4_703x491.jpeg It is the easiest of questions, it is the most difficult of questions: ‘Why are the Jews leaving the Soviet Union?’ asks Emil Bezverkhny. He writes throughout the latter half of the 20th century, each chapter in his posthumously published The Penny is Gone a capsule preserving the maddening, almost otherworldly qualities of being a Jew, a scientist, just a man, in that time and place. It’s easy to see why Jews are leaving the Soviet Union. They are second-class citizens in the nation that promised such a concept was anathema to its very existence. They are kept out of jobs they deserve, left to destitution and dishonor, neither allowed to practice the Mosaic law nor the new secular religion of science and development of the rational faculties. “Yet it raises the most difficult of questions: Even here? Even now? ‘Why are they leaving behind a country with a constitution guaranteeing equal opportunity for all, irrespective of nationality or race?’ Bezverkhny rephrases the question: How can it be that even the most enlightened people, consistently to their own detriment, drive away their Jewish neighbors? The Germans alienated Einstein; Einstein helped defeat the Germans. Bezverkhny would not claim to be an Einstein or von Neumann or Oppenheimer, but he was accomplished and dedicated. On merit, he should have risen to the top of the Soviet academy and helped further the aims of the revolution, even if he seemed lukewarm at best about their utility from the outset. Yet the Soviets fell prey to the same disease of self-sabotage. They killed, banished, or alienated their brightest Jewish minds. Thankfully, for us if not Bezverkhny, this led to the downfall of the Soviet empire and enormous contributions to American wealth, health, and power. “Bezverkhny’s reflections on the recurring historical tendency of nations to make life miserable for Jews for any reason or no reason at all are newly brought to light by his grandson and namesake, Emil Pitkin. An entrepreneur and data scientist, the younger Emil has translated his grandfather’s writings skillfully, preserving their literary (and distinctly Russian) qualities, while producing an eminently readable book despite the barrier between the two languages. What results is a memoir—even if Bezverkhny insists he has not written a memoir but an attempt to unearth ‘the roots of today’s tragedy’—which places readers in the restless mind of a man who did everything right, suffered enormously, and was in the end let down by those who promised him utopia.”