Foreign Affairs. January-February 2020

Recent Books

January/February 2020 195

Bucharest Diary: Romania’s Journey From

Darkness to Light

BY ALFRED H. MOSES. Brookings

Institution Press, 2018, 363 pp.

Most countries draw their ambassadors

from the ranks of professional diplomats.

The United States, in contrast, fills a

large chunk of its ambassadorial spots

with political appointees—since the

1950s, about a third of the total; under

President Donald Trump, up to two-

fifths. These outsiders account for some

of the greatest highs and lowest lows of

U.S. diplomacy, but their world is

rarely explored. Bucharest Diary

illuminates it well, taking the reader

through the journey of a serious,

responsible political appointee from

start to finish. After some background

on his earlier career, Moses traces how

he became the U.S. ambassador to

Romania in 1994 and what he did there

over the next three years. He offers a

welcome antidote to the cartoon

versions of American foreign policy so

prevalent in the popular consciousness,

showing exactly what U.S. relations with

other countries involve, day to day. In

this case, the main issue was how to help

a former Eastern-bloc backwater

successfully join the West and become a

thriving liberal democracy, so the book is

also an important firsthand account of

how the so-called third wave of

democratization played out on the

ground. The story is not sexy, but it has

the virtue of being true.

gideon rose

Rock, Paper, Scissors
BY MAXIM OSIPOV. TRANSLATED
BY ALEX FLEMING AND ANNE
MARIE JACKSON. New York Review
of Books Classics, 2019, 304 pp.

This short-story collection portrays
small-town Russian life and often feels
like a journey back in time. Osipov, a
practicing doctor, has been compared to
Anton Chekhov, owing not only to their
shared vocation but also to the
Chekhovian way in which Osipov
delves into the lives of ordinary people
in dismal circumstances. Many of
Osipov’s characters take solace in
religion—either Russian Orthodoxy or
Islam—or in a misguided celebration of
Russia’s renewed militarism. Osipov also
invokes an almost visceral love of the
Russian landscape. The story “The
Gypsy” depicts a doctor from the
provinces who supplements his income
by escorting sick people from Moscow
to the United States. On the plane, he
overhears an American steward
wondering why “the Russians always
stink.” The American doesn’t
understand how long it takes travelers
just to reach the Moscow airport. The
protagonist of the story rejects the idea
of moving to the United States,
preferring the pungent scent of Russian
earth. The collection also reveals the
sense of fear and mistrust that has
reemerged in Russia over the last two
decades. In the final story, members of
the Moscow intelligentsia discuss how
they would escape from Russia on short
notice—without mentioning President
Vladimir Putin’s name even once.
sophie pinkham