In the Russia of the 21st century everything is different. Fundamentally so. It is difficult to exactly explain the transition, particularly to a generation born in the 80s who are trying to make their way in the world here.
Yet the transition was marked. From a sense that the State was there to somehow take care of you, to help you and there was a State-sanctioned, propaganda-led, State-perpetuated sense of solidarity where people were expected to take care of each other, to look out for each other and to help each other (because let's face it, the State could do little beyond oppress) they have gone to one of total isolation where they are on their own and look out for themselves.
Their view of the State has undergone a cosmetic transition in that they now know it is not there to help and unless they behave they can get into trouble.
At a time when Peter Mandelson highlights EU-Russian tensions it is interesting to note that Russians, as a nation, still know little about the world, are propaganda-led, State-controlled and live, despite the shift from collectivization to individualism, in a world where the old habit of checking on people to see what they are up to, still persists.
In the old Soviet Union this was fostered, subtly and pervasively, under the guise of openess and comradeship as a means of social spying. You never could do anything against the State because the State was everywhere, its eyes and ears in every place, cultivated through a subtle, intricate network of spies that were both real and imagined.
This has led to a society where even in large cities the habit of asking direct questions, stating open opinions on issues of judgement and 'nosing' (for lack of a better word) into each other's business, still persists.
What has this go to do with East-West relations and the EU-Russia thing? A lot.
It comes down to perception and expectation. From the outside we se this rumbling, massive, naturally wealthy nation and expect it in the 21st century to be like us. Maybe a few hang ups and maybe a few issues but catching up rapidly and getting to be like the West.
It isn't. With unemployment and illiteracy running high. With most Russians focussed on how to pay the rent and get a flat and find some stability and some security. The democratically elected government of Russia is bent on solidifying its hold on power and in a paternalistic, top-down manner tell its citizenry how happy they are, how proud and what a great country they live in.
This is a government that is insecure in teh way it is perceived by the outside world, exactly because it knows that its democratic label is only a label.
As a result it is full of mistrust. It fears being criticised. It fears being judged. It fears being cast in a poor light because it is unsure that it can control a citizenry that has grown richer and more active.
In terms of where we stand in the East-West perception nothing has changed.
Russia fails to understand that the West is interested in trade more than war, that nationalism is subject to profit and that national pride is subject to business success.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
The land of the free
I am trying really hard not to turn this into a political Blog or one that lives up to the old stereotypes of the west is better than the east, democracy is better than communism kind of single-minded, blinkered crap.
I am in Russia by default, not entirely out of choice and I have a huge respect for the country, its people, its culture and their achievements which are always so easily overshadowed by the fact that they have, as a people, allowed themselves always to be dictated to and presided over men who had never really had their best interests at heart.
The Tsars are a case in point and what followed afterwards only proves what I said and the government they have today is little better.
I'm a writer self-exiled in Russia trying to keep my thoughts together and this Blog was started for my sake primarily.
Then, on a day when I read on the BBC site about a teenager who abducted and repeatedly raped a 15-year old girl I get to talk to girls here, in the city of St Peterburg, who in broad daylight they are afraid of being abducted and gang-raped by Mafia types or locally connected youths.
In either case the Police will do nothing as they will have been warned that should a complaint be followed "it never happened" and the world goes on its way, supeficially calm, collected and civilised.
At least in Britain the boy got caught, he ended up in court and his life will be wrecked. But here...
There is a Russian trait not to think too deeply about events but to roll with the blows. The Mafia is so strong here that every business pays protection. And the Police are so ill-trained, poorly supervised and chronically underpaid that they are on the extortion business themselves in order to make ends meet and in the pay of every local Mafia gang, politician and underworld boss who likes to buy them.
What is tragic is that there must be many of them who want to do something about it and can't. How do you change a culture as endemically corrupt as that?
How do you learn to work in a different way when the different way can get you hurt or worse?
How can you learn to respect the law when every symbol of the law has stood and still stands for oppression?
I am in Russia by default, not entirely out of choice and I have a huge respect for the country, its people, its culture and their achievements which are always so easily overshadowed by the fact that they have, as a people, allowed themselves always to be dictated to and presided over men who had never really had their best interests at heart.
The Tsars are a case in point and what followed afterwards only proves what I said and the government they have today is little better.
I'm a writer self-exiled in Russia trying to keep my thoughts together and this Blog was started for my sake primarily.
Then, on a day when I read on the BBC site about a teenager who abducted and repeatedly raped a 15-year old girl I get to talk to girls here, in the city of St Peterburg, who in broad daylight they are afraid of being abducted and gang-raped by Mafia types or locally connected youths.
In either case the Police will do nothing as they will have been warned that should a complaint be followed "it never happened" and the world goes on its way, supeficially calm, collected and civilised.
At least in Britain the boy got caught, he ended up in court and his life will be wrecked. But here...
There is a Russian trait not to think too deeply about events but to roll with the blows. The Mafia is so strong here that every business pays protection. And the Police are so ill-trained, poorly supervised and chronically underpaid that they are on the extortion business themselves in order to make ends meet and in the pay of every local Mafia gang, politician and underworld boss who likes to buy them.
What is tragic is that there must be many of them who want to do something about it and can't. How do you change a culture as endemically corrupt as that?
How do you learn to work in a different way when the different way can get you hurt or worse?
How can you learn to respect the law when every symbol of the law has stood and still stands for oppression?
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Service with a smile
The title here is of course enough to bring a smile to my lips because, in Russia, service most definitely never takes place with a smile. This is a leftover from the Soviet regime when just living was difficult enough and though everybody worked, no one smiled.
Now it is even worse. There is real pressure to survive on your wits, no social safety net and no concept of connecting one's job with the customer.
I was at a supermarket called Patterson's (yes, I know, their website makes them look like they rival Waitrose but believe me Neto looks great by comparison). In Russia plastic bags cost. You pay for them. Fair enough, Lidl uses the same system. At Patterson's plastic bags are free. They are hair thin and awful and prone to bursting at the wrong moment so much that if you have anything heavy the assistants give you two bags at a time to try and strengthen them, but at least you do not have to pay for them.
Except on this day they did not have any. At this point you have to suspend your disbelief and accept that it is perfectly normal for a busy supermarket, part of a large chain, situated in a prime position near a very busy underground in Russia's second largest cityt to run out of plastic bags at 11.00am.
It happens. Plastic bags have this tendency to run out without warning. So any jokes about piss-ups, breweries and planning you may have in your head right now, just forget about them. It happened.
Bear in mind people are buying cans, fruit, vegetables, all the little things you buy in a supermarket. Kinda hard to carry home if you haven't got a bag.
I was in the queue at the checkout when I realised what was happening. I was next in line to pay. The guy in front of me had just paid and was looking for something to put the dozen cans and tins he had, the bread, the tomatoes and some odds and ends.
There was an unsmiling checkout girl who sat there looking at him floundering.
'Have you no plastic bags?' he asked.
'No,'
'Why not? How can you have no plastic bags?'
Bearing in mind that our custom there was making this assistant's job possible the reply stunned even me and I have become used to the madness here.
'Just go out and buy one. Why are you complaining?'
The supermarket is in a shopping centre complex and I guess it is true that you could go and buy a plastic bag elsewhere. But seeing how there had been no warning that they had ran out, the guy had already paid for what he had bought and he had no real way of carrying it, it was all fast becoming just another impossibility people here have to learn to cope with.
Eventually the checkout girl whipped up some non-descript transparent, ultra-thin, plastic bags and gave the guy two and because by now I was so overwhelmed by this that the expletives about this ******ing country were coming thick and fast, in English, she gave me two too so I could get my shopping home.
And though on the way back I could not help but laugh at all this because it really beggars belief and stretches credulity to breaking point, I also realised that throughout all this she had never even smiled.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
News from Russia
It’s a weird feeling waking up to get my news from the net. I have been used to a world where dissent is open and governments’ job is to make sure that things go along smoothly enough to satisfy the majority of people.
In the west are used to complaining. If we feel strongly enough about something we can voice it and if we are right or if it taps into an underling seam of dissent it raises questions which a government tries to address.
It is a clunky, messy process that completely satisfies no one except as an intellectual exercise in political and personal freedom. The view is that if we are proud of our country, and if we live in it, we really want it to be the best it can possibly be and self-serving as most of our motives might be, when we take to the streets or speak out publicly it is the direct result of a deep sense of indignation coming to a head.
Although not everyone of our actions is governed by a strong sense of public spirit, the very fact that what we do will be available to all and will be scrutinized by the world serves as a Darwinian principle of self-selection (or at least self-governance) – there is little point taking to the streets unless we feel we can rationally defend what we are doing and point out how what we are protesting against is either illogical or unfair or both.
Not so in Russia.
Despite if being labeled a ‘democracy’ the normal rules and laws do not apply. Before you smirk and nod your head think why this should be so first. It came from a world where for over 50 years repression was a way of life, where survival meant blending in and where the spirit of togetherness was fostered on an ideal that was underpinned by the collective efforts of the KGB.
When the Berlin wall came crashing down and we all welcomed the new spirit of openness and ever so naively though that’s all it took to foster democracy Russia sunk into a mire of debt, lawlessness and a collective loss of identity. As a people they no longer feel they know exactly who they are or what they are striving for.
There is no sense of the Great Russian Dream, no white picket fences or a house with a garden like you’d get in the UK. The great, non-descript projects-like block of flats still dominate the city’s skyline. People wear drab colours, no one smiles, everyone drinks as a way of letting off steam and there is a sense of directionless energy that has nowhere to go.
In this Russia the rich are very rich and the poor are unemployed or trapped in low-paying jobs they need to hold two at a time in order to pay the rent.
With average life expectancy for men being 60 and women 65 there is the constant sense that time is running out, though running out for what no one really seems to know. In this environment there are those who seek to escape. Men drink (and smoke). A bottle of vodka is just four dollars, a bottle Russian champagne is just four dollars too. Shops stopped selling high-alcohol drinks after 11.00pm at night just this January. Men go about the streets at 10.00am carrying bottle of Russian champagne or beer and drinking them.
Women use their looks.
Those who can’t find someone rich locally look abroad.
And then there are those few who want to protest. Living in the city I knew nothing about the protest, the TV channels did not cover it and the newspapers wrote nothing about it. This is not an open society and its democracy is only so as long as you do as you are told and do not question anybody.
In a country where there is a constitution and supposedly a law, protesters marching in St Petersburg against the incumbent president (Vladimir Putin) were attacked by police in full riot gear, arrested before they go to their demonstration and labeled as the modern day equivalent of dissidents the police here are thugs.
They are chronically underpaid and badly trained and those not in the direct pay of the Mafia use their position of authority to supplement a meager income with grafts. They stop motorists and impose on the spot ‘fines’ they check your papers to see if you are an illegal immigrant (and extort money if you are).
What is amazing is that no one does anything about it. Everyone quietly accepts it.
That Russia is not yet a democracy could hardly be surprising. I think, in the 21st century, running a very real danger of turning American and UK societies into police states under the kneejerk anti-terrorist laws we ran, it’s only the mentally feeble who still hope that democracy spouts like a shoot and grows into a mighty tree. And those who believe that it can be imposed from the top down have spent the last two hundred years living in a barrel at the bottom of the sea.
The rest know it’s a constant dynamic struggle between State and populace – beliefs and practicality. In the end logic and pragmatism have to win. Which, sadly, might be what’s happening in Russia where these two principles make it easier to keep your head down, forget to smile and hope no one notices you than to actually try and change a system so archaic, inert and entrenched that nothing short of a miracle can make it change any time soon.
So I get my news on the net and count down the days when I will no longer have to live here. The thing is I strongly suspect I am not alone.
For me leaving is an option. For many others it is not.
In the west are used to complaining. If we feel strongly enough about something we can voice it and if we are right or if it taps into an underling seam of dissent it raises questions which a government tries to address.
It is a clunky, messy process that completely satisfies no one except as an intellectual exercise in political and personal freedom. The view is that if we are proud of our country, and if we live in it, we really want it to be the best it can possibly be and self-serving as most of our motives might be, when we take to the streets or speak out publicly it is the direct result of a deep sense of indignation coming to a head.
Although not everyone of our actions is governed by a strong sense of public spirit, the very fact that what we do will be available to all and will be scrutinized by the world serves as a Darwinian principle of self-selection (or at least self-governance) – there is little point taking to the streets unless we feel we can rationally defend what we are doing and point out how what we are protesting against is either illogical or unfair or both.
Not so in Russia.
Despite if being labeled a ‘democracy’ the normal rules and laws do not apply. Before you smirk and nod your head think why this should be so first. It came from a world where for over 50 years repression was a way of life, where survival meant blending in and where the spirit of togetherness was fostered on an ideal that was underpinned by the collective efforts of the KGB.
When the Berlin wall came crashing down and we all welcomed the new spirit of openness and ever so naively though that’s all it took to foster democracy Russia sunk into a mire of debt, lawlessness and a collective loss of identity. As a people they no longer feel they know exactly who they are or what they are striving for.
There is no sense of the Great Russian Dream, no white picket fences or a house with a garden like you’d get in the UK. The great, non-descript projects-like block of flats still dominate the city’s skyline. People wear drab colours, no one smiles, everyone drinks as a way of letting off steam and there is a sense of directionless energy that has nowhere to go.
In this Russia the rich are very rich and the poor are unemployed or trapped in low-paying jobs they need to hold two at a time in order to pay the rent.
With average life expectancy for men being 60 and women 65 there is the constant sense that time is running out, though running out for what no one really seems to know. In this environment there are those who seek to escape. Men drink (and smoke). A bottle of vodka is just four dollars, a bottle Russian champagne is just four dollars too. Shops stopped selling high-alcohol drinks after 11.00pm at night just this January. Men go about the streets at 10.00am carrying bottle of Russian champagne or beer and drinking them.
Women use their looks.
Those who can’t find someone rich locally look abroad.
And then there are those few who want to protest. Living in the city I knew nothing about the protest, the TV channels did not cover it and the newspapers wrote nothing about it. This is not an open society and its democracy is only so as long as you do as you are told and do not question anybody.
In a country where there is a constitution and supposedly a law, protesters marching in St Petersburg against the incumbent president (Vladimir Putin) were attacked by police in full riot gear, arrested before they go to their demonstration and labeled as the modern day equivalent of dissidents the police here are thugs.
They are chronically underpaid and badly trained and those not in the direct pay of the Mafia use their position of authority to supplement a meager income with grafts. They stop motorists and impose on the spot ‘fines’ they check your papers to see if you are an illegal immigrant (and extort money if you are).
What is amazing is that no one does anything about it. Everyone quietly accepts it.
That Russia is not yet a democracy could hardly be surprising. I think, in the 21st century, running a very real danger of turning American and UK societies into police states under the kneejerk anti-terrorist laws we ran, it’s only the mentally feeble who still hope that democracy spouts like a shoot and grows into a mighty tree. And those who believe that it can be imposed from the top down have spent the last two hundred years living in a barrel at the bottom of the sea.
The rest know it’s a constant dynamic struggle between State and populace – beliefs and practicality. In the end logic and pragmatism have to win. Which, sadly, might be what’s happening in Russia where these two principles make it easier to keep your head down, forget to smile and hope no one notices you than to actually try and change a system so archaic, inert and entrenched that nothing short of a miracle can make it change any time soon.
So I get my news on the net and count down the days when I will no longer have to live here. The thing is I strongly suspect I am not alone.
For me leaving is an option. For many others it is not.
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