Brigadier General Peter B. Zwack - Swimming the Volga: A U.S. Army Officers Experiences in Pre-Putin Russia

Advance Praise

One of the great joys of serving as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation was working with General Peter Zwack. Every day, he demonstrated a deep commitment both to serving our great nation and to understanding Russia. The latter helped him do the former. Swimming the Volga* shows just how deep into Russian society, history, and culture Peter dug. Jumping from the analytic to the personal with ease, its a brilliant story.

Ambassador Michael McFaul

U.S. Ambassador to Russia 20122014
Author of Cold War, Hot Peace; An American Ambassador in Putins Russia

Loaded with great insights and stories from his days before serving as U.S. Defense Attach in Moscow and from his deep involvement with Russia, Brigadier General Zwack brings the past alive to help us understand what Putin is doing today. It is very rare to have pages filled by someone who really knows Russia and knows how to write about it.

Leslie H. Gelb

President Emeritus, Council on Foreign Relations

*Swimming the Volga is a lively, short memoir of life in the small Russian city of Tver (110m from Moscow) as seen through the eyes of a young captain in the U.S. Army during a summer program on Russian culture and language in 1989.

Over a ten- year period, Zwack continued his visits to Tver, even as he rose in rank and responsibility. In return, the city provided him with a unique window into the upheavals of Russia in the 1990s. Through Zwacks stories, we meet a set of Russian friends he met at the start of the difficult days in the Soviet Union, through the changes of todays Russia in their livesas well as the eternal characteristics of the Russian people. An informative and entertaining account by an unusually perceptive visitor.

Suzanne Massie

Personal advisor on the U.S.S.R. to President Ronald Reagan
Author of Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia and Trust but Verify: Reagan, Russia, and Me - a memoir of the years 19841988

This warm and evocative memoir of a Russia addled by change post-1989 is a remarkable chronicle of a U.S. Army officers disarming empathy for the young Russians he befriended as they sought to find their place in a new world. Never judgmental, the author captures the rich humanity of the successes and failures of unlikely friends and acquaintances observed during the tumultuous decade between Gorbachev and Putin. Moving and haunting.

Ralph Peters

Author of Red Army, Cain at Gettysburg and Looking for Trouble

This coming of age as a Russian Foreign Area Officer memoir is a phenomenal, warm and provocative story told by retired Brigadier Peter Zwack. Peter and I are friends and fellow soldiers; we served together in Germany during the Cold War and I was honored to observe his magnificent performance as the Defense Attach in Moscow during the start of what is now the hot peace. During the years in between, Peters professional demeanor, Russian acumen, and informed insight evolved, in part, as he swam the Volga every summer for a decade. This work provides unique understanding of that part of the world.

Lt. General Mark Hertling (Ret)

Former Commander U.S. Army Europe
Author of Growing Physician Leaders
CNN national security and military analyst

Few Americans understand Russians better than Peter Zwack. As a traveler, student, observer and head military attach to Moscow, he has come to know them in the many aspects of their lives. This memoir, seen through the prism of Zwacks experiences with the people of one city, Tver, is a sharp-eyed view of a complex, contradictory andyes, extraordinarynation.

Robert Cowley

Founding Editor, MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History
Author of the upcoming The Killing Season

Swimming
the
Volga

Other Books by Peter B. Zwack

Russian Challenges from Now into the Next Generation 2019

Afghanistan Kabul Kurier 2021

Kosovo Kurier upcoming 2022

Title page

Swimming
the
Volga

_____________________________________

A U.S. Army Officers Experiences
in
Pre-Putin Russia
19891999

An Unpublished Memoir
Ten Years Visiting Tver

Brigadier General Peter B. Zwack {Ret}

Former U.S. Defense Attach to the Russian Federation

Copyright 2021 by Brigadier General Peter B Zwack (Ret).
All rights reserved.
Zwack Eurasia Consultancy LLC
Newport, Rhode Island

Swimming the Volga

Brigadier General Peter B. Zwack (Ret)

U.S. Defense Attach to the Russian Federation 20122014

Woodrow Wilson Center Global Fellow, The Kennan Institute

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First Edition

ISBN: 978-1-7340060-2-5 (Paperback)

ISBN: 9781-73400600-1 (Hardcover)

ISBN: 9781-73400609-4 (Large Print)

ISBN: 9781-73400602-5 (ePub)

ISBN: 9781-73400608-7 (Audio Book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019913172

Zwack Eurasia Consultancy LLC

All photos are courtesy of the author unless otherwise indicated.

https://PeterBZwack.net

Dedication

To my parents - Iris Rogers Argento and Peter Zwack, Sr. - who inspired my lifelong fascination with Russia and greater Eurasia.

Table of Contents

Foreword

One of Russias best-known nineteenth-century writers, Ivan Turgenev, made his name with a series of sharp-eyed sketches of village life published under the title Notes of a Hunter.

Like Turgenev, U.S. Brigadier General Peter B. Zwack is also a keen observer of life in Russia, a country which he has experienced as a military man, academic, and frequent visitor to the ancient northern Russian city of Tver. He has seen the city, and its people in bad times and in good, first during the Soviet Union era and now in the New Russia.

In this personal memoir, Peter Zwack takes us into the lives of ordinary Russians swept up in the fascinating chaos of tumultuous political, economic and social transition between 1989 and 1999. Fluent in the nuances of the Russian language, he is both observer and participant, capturing the excitement, the dread, the fears, the dreams of his Russian friends and acquaintances. Epic change can sometimes best be revealed in personal details and stories, like the entrepreneur who still keeps a shotgun by his desk and a large Doberman on the premises. Or the old man on a train who told Zwack he was voting for his grandchildrens future.

Peter Zwack comes from adventurous stockhis mother met her second husband on the Trans-Siberian railroad. His father, a scion of the famous Hungarian Unicum distillery, fled with his parents to the West, carrying the digestif secret formula with them.

One of the first Americans that Tver residents had ever encountered, Zwack soon struck up casual friendships with some of the locals, who were happy to introduce their new American friend to their world. He returned several times between 1989 and 1999a period during which his friends, Tver, and the old U.S.S.R. underwent unprecedented change.

After his 1999 visit, Zwack never thought he would return to Tver, but in 2012 he made the trip againthis time as a Brigadier General, the Senior U.S. Defense Official and Attach to Russia.

His Tver friends were then in their 40s; some had disappeared, some had died, some were prospering in new jobs or new businesses. The old Russia he had experienced first-hand in the 1990s had moved on. The new Russia (to which he returned yet again in 2019) now lives in the world of existential threats, real, perceived and, also very importantly, he says, contrived in a way that is very hard for those of us in the U.S. and West to fully understand.