bout de papier, Vol. 11, No. 4 / Vol. 12, No. 1 (1995) — Spring 1995 // Printemps 1995, pp. 91–93
GEORGE COSTAKIS, A RUSSIAN LIFE IN
ART by Peter Roberts, published by Carleton
University Press, Ottawa, 1994, 216 pp.
$25.95.
Reviewed by Marshall A. Crowe
Peter Roberts has written an admirable, a memorable book. To begin with he writes in simple, elegant, flawless English, a rare talent indeed which has miraculously survived many years in the bureaucracy. His book is a biography of George Costakis and the story of his magnificent collection of the art of the Russian avant garde. But it also is an account of the early days of the Canadian Embassy, beginning at Kuibyshev on the Volga, under Mr. Dana Wilgress assisted by two officers, Jack McCordick and Arnold Smith, who, like Wilgress, became life-long friends of Costakis. There is much perceptive comment on the Soviet regime under Stalin and his first two successors, Khrushchev and Brezhnev, in particular its stupid and arbitrary corruption of all literary and artistic activity. Finally there is a history of the avant garde art itself, much of it put on tape in Russian by Costakis and translated by the author. The quotations from Costakis on tape are particularly moving and vivid for anyone who knew and admired him. I can almost literally hear his voice and see his gestures.
I suppose a reviewer should reveal his biases. The author of this biography is, and its subject was for many years, a close personal friend. My wife and I first met “Mr.” Costakis, as we called him throughout most of the years we knew him, when we arrived at our first posting in Moscow in October or November of 1948. According to Costakis’ recollections on tape for Peter Roberts that would have been just about the time when he disposed of his “old” collection of “so-called minor Dutch masters” and began the collection of Russian avant garde which was to consume the rest of his life. But at the time we knew nothing of this. Mr. Costakis was the locally-employed Greek citizen who had been hired by our first Ambassador, Dana Wilgress, as embassy administrator. He dealt for us with the infuriating Soviet bureaucracy on everything to do with the physical operation of the embassy and supervised the locally-hired Russian crew of drivers, household help and other employees. All the Canadians, from the clerks and secretaries up to the Ambassador, or as it was then, the permanent chargé d’affaires, took their administrative problems to Costakis. He gave his full and courteous attention to everyone, whether junior or senior, and usually had a solution. This side of his life, what he did for a living, is carefully described in Roberts’ book and corroborated by Mr. Wilgress’ memoirs, and by the experience of all of us who were at the embassy in Moscow. Particularly in those early years during and after the war life in Moscow without Mr. Costakis would have been very difficult indeed. Without him we would have had to spend a large part of our time struggling ineffectively with obstructive or indifferent officials. Everything the embassy needed in order to carry on its work had to be arranged through Soviet agencies. Even the important supplies took up days of Costakis’
Winetidings time, whenever a shipment arrived, to supervise and facilitate passage through the customs labyrinth in order to achieve the duty-free admission supposedly our right by diplomatic convention.
I emphasize these matters to support from my own experience what is set out in the book. Mr. Costakis had a full-time job at the embassy and earned every dollar and ruble of his pay.
Peter Roberts also disposes, I hope definitively, of the notion that Costakis could never have bought up his collection with money saved from his embassy salary and that somehow he must have been protected by the KGB or its predecessors. Some of this goes back to ignorant and ill-considered speculation at the end of an otherwise reasonable article in the New York Times Magazine by Hilton Kramer on October 11, 1981. Roberts deals with this in detail.
Anyone familiar with Moscow for at least the first fifteen or twenty years after the opening of the Canadian Embassy in 1943 knows the miserable hardships suffered by ordinary Russians in the struggle to survive. One consequence was that family valuables of all kinds turned up in commission stores where goods were sold to the public in return for a percentage kept by the state-owned store. Some of Costakis’ first collection came from this source. He had a natural collector’s eye for real value and it would not have taken large amounts of cash to make some important acquisitions. As for the avant garde, as Costakis himself has explained in his preface to Russian Avant-garde Art: The George Costakis Collection, published in 1981 by the firm of Harry N. Abrams, and on tape to Peter Roberts, the paintings were regarded as rubbish by other collectors and by Soviet cultural authorities. They were mostly in the hands of desperately poor relatives of the artists who were only too happy to meet someone ready to pay for them. Costakis dealt as generously as he could with these persons but the prices were minimal.
The chapter in the book, “Facing the Apparatchiks”, examines very thoroughly and dispassionately every aspect of any possible KGB use of Costakis. Anyone with doubts on that score should read it. The KGB and its predecessors hounded Costakis and his family from the beginning. He believed on good grounds that they had murdered his beloved elder brother. His mother and another brother spent time in the gulag. Eighty percent of his avant garde collection was expropriated before he was, in effect, hounded out of the country to unwelcome exile in Greece. In any case Costakis had no possible access to “diplomatic” secrets such as they were. In his thirty-five years at the embassy a very few of the hundreds of Canadians who served there got into “difficulties” as a result of their own proclivities and bad judgment. There has never to my knowledge been the slightest suggestion that Costakis ever had any involvement in any entrapment. As Roberts points out he used up a key position in the embassy which the KGB would have loved to occupy. The only protection he had was that he was a Greek citizen and a highly valued employee of the Canadian Embassy. Any of our ambassadors or chargés d’affaires, until almost the very end of his career at the embassy, would have vigorously defended him from improper Soviet interference with a non- Soviet citizen working for our embassy.
The chapter in the book, “Facing the Apparatchiks”, examines very thoroughly and dispassionately every aspect of any possible KGB use of Costakis. Anyone with doubts on that score sbould read it. And its predecessors bounded Costakis and his family from the beginning.
For many readers of this journal the section of the book on the “Canadian Connection” will be of particular interest. It has sketches of many of the remarkable and capable people who headed the embassy and of their relations with Mr. Costakis. As a key member of the embassy staff he worked directly with all the ambassadors and “permanent chargés” from Wilgress to Ford, and with the large array of secretaries, counsellors, service attachés and other Canadians. Among the heads of mission during Costakis’ years at the embassy Dana Wilgress, John Holmes, John Watkins, and Arnold Smith became very close friends, and Ambassador David Johnson always treated him, as he did everyone, with courtesy and respect. When we first arrived in Moscow John Watkins was the chargé d’affaires, a person every bit as remarkable as Costakis, and the first Canadian, I believe, to see and appreciate the growing collection of avant garde art. Watkins’ wide range of learning and outstanding skills as a linguist were matched by his down-to-earth manner and modesty. He certainly encouraged Costakis in his quest for the avant garde. Not only for Costakis but for the rest of us who were privileged to know him having John as a friend and colleague was unalloyed pleasure. Next to McCordick, a linguist of genius, John’s Russian was the best and most fluent of any of those I have known who served in Moscow.
Costakis’ various visits to Canada helped keep up his friendship with many who had known him in Moscow. He came in 1967 as part of an arrangement for longterm employees of Canada abroad to visit Expo’67, and again in 1973 as part of a lecture tour on his collection, a visit marred by a mix-up of dates for his talk at the National Gallery and by heavy-handed RCMP interrogators. His happiest visits were later when he came with an exhibition of his collection: in 1982, at the National Gallery, and, in 1989 for a major and beautifully presented exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. On all these visits there were happy reunions with his many ex-embassy friends. On two occasions he stayed with us at our farm and recounted some of the experiences covered in this book. At Montreal he was in a wheelchair but he came on to Ottawa for a reception with all his friends who could be rounded up. That was I guess the last time any of us but Peter Roberts saw him.
Canadians can be proud of their connection with George Costakis. From his work at the embassy he acquired security, employment, and many, many dear friends. Prom this base he literally saved a priceless heritage of Russian art from loss and destruction. Most of it remains in Moscow to be enjoyed, one must hope, by many future generations free from the hateful oppression of the Soviet system.
The saddest part of “the Canadian connection” is its end.
In the latter part of 1977
Costakis was under increasing pressure from the KGB, afraid that his collection would be seized and uncertain what might become of him and his family. His apartment was broken into and pictures stolen.
The saddest part of “the Canadian connection” is its end. In the latter part of 1977 Costakis was under increasing pressure from the KGB, afraid that his collection would be seized and uncertain what might become of him and his family. His apartment was broken into and pictures stolen. At about this point according to the book, “he was in effect dismissed from the embassy.” Only the Ambassador could have taken the decision to fire him and in any case he must be responsible for it. Canadians and Canada were shamed by this action. No reason is given in the book except the quote from Ford that Costakis “got too big for his boots.” Both the Soviet authorities, and apparently Ford, had become increasingly restive at the flow of distinguished visitors to see Costakis’ collection, in particular Senator Ted Kennedy who broke out of his Soviet organized schedule to view it. Even worse, his “thank you” invitation to a Kennedy reception in Moscow was addressed to Mr. George Costakis, Canadian “Ambassador,” an obvious mistake for “Embassy.” His Excellency received the letter, was not amused, and did not release it to Costakis until it was too late for him to go to the reception. In his memoirs, Roberts reports, “Ford does not mention Costakis or his collection at all.”
Both Peter Roberts and I accompanied Prime Minister Trudeau on his official visit to the USSR in 1971. I recall that Costakis was pointedly excluded even from a gathering in the embassy garden for embassy staff to meet the Prime Minister. I found him in his office where he had been told to stay and took him myself to be introduced. Later on that visit, Roberts reports, Mr. Trudeau went to the Costakis’ apartment to see the collection. I was not aware of that but I did arrange for Marc Lalonde and Jake Warren, also on the delegation, and for Christina McCall, then representing Maclean’s magazine, to go with me to the Costakis’ home to meet them and see the paintings.
Costakis was allowed later to return to the embassy without pay while he made his final deal with the regime to take about 20% of his collection and emigrate, leaving 80% behind, an arrangement he did not object to since he had always thought of his collection as a Russian heritage and he saw to it that many of the best items went to the Tretyakov Gallery.
The final episodes of the Costakis story are happier. Under the Gorbachev regime of glasnost he was invited back to Moscow, treated royally, and opened an exhibition of his collection. Peter Roberts’ fine book repairs the ruptured Canadian connection, does justice to Mr. Costakis, and will warm the hearts of all George’s friends.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 11, No. 4 / Vol. 12, No. 1 (1995) — Spring 1995 // Printemps 1995, pp. 91–93. Read the rest of this issue →
