Word: bernsteining
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...rellenos and refried beans. Banquets? In Los Angeles, the Queen ate papaya and heard George Burns tell jokes about octogenarian sex; at an official dinner in Golden Gate Park, goose-liver quenelles in pheasant broth were followed by the San Francisco Opera and Symphony performing a bit of Leonard Bernstein's Candide. A run on velvets and silks? For just one movie-studio dinner, velvet and silk and chiffon were turned into half a million dollars' worth of dresses; custom-made hats (at up to $500 each) and long white kid gloves ($150 a pair) were de rigueur...
Anthropologists admit that some scholars might not print anything at all about so controversial a subject. Field research in some totalitarian countries, says Columbia University's Thomas Bernstein, demands "a great deal of tact and sensitivity." He concedes: "If I knew that my publication of some material would cause my colleagues to be barred from China, I would think really hard." Some U.S. scholars working in India and Pakistan are careful not to offend their host governments for fear of being expelled. Americans who work as exchange scholars in the Soviet Union can afford to be a bit more...
...beyond the family concerns lay Bernstein's dislike for the "general atmosphere" of life in Russia. "In Russia, you have an atmosphere of lies," he says, eerily echoing the reports of dissidents one reads about in newspapers. "People say something and nobody believes it, and they themselves don't believe what they are saying...
Thus in 1979, Bernstein decided to apply for an emigration visa. He had to wait more than two years-"the most unpleasant years" of his life-for permission to come through. Again, Bernstein got on the early side of good fortune, as the visa came through just in time for him to join the last big wave of Russian emigres. With the recent cooling of East-West relations, emigration from the Soviet Union has slowed to barely a trickle, but Bernstein got out, and he came almost directly of the United States...
...unpleasant nature of the Moscow math scene is now behind Bernstein, as he settles down to a new life of research and teaching. He gives his plans for the future with characteristic understatement. "I want to study new things. I want to finish some new things. Then I want to look. That...