Politics in Moscow

Soundtrack – Владимир Высоцкий

Here are the questions that Russians will ask you. (Immediately upon meeting you and in this order.) 1) Where are you from? (meaning you and your extended family) 2) What are you doing here? 3) Do you like Moscow? 4) Are you a democrat or a republican AND Do you like Obama? Russians for some reason are remarkably fascinated with American politics, more so even than their own. Even now, even after the election and inauguration are over, people want to know where you stand. If you say you are a republican they ask you if you like George Bush. If you say you are a democrat they look at you suspiciously and say – ‘are you a liberal?’ in a slow, drawn-out sort of way, emphatically pronouncing each syllable of ‘liberal’ and even adding an additional syllable – just to be Russian. Explaining to them that you are neither or that you prefer a third party or no party is like telling them you would like a decaffeinated drink – it makes no sense to them whatsoever. All of this, incidentally, winds up in a conversation about race and racism in America.

One day I was studying in my room with the door shut and I didn’t hear that a guest had arrived. I came out to go make some tea in the kitchen and Maria, my host, was sitting at the kitchen table with her friend, Natalia. When I walked in I explained that I didn’t want to interrupt, I just wanted to make some tea real quick and get back to studying. Natalia insisted (!) that I try some of this Georgian cheese that her mother-in-law had made, and before I could even think about turning it down she handed me a thick slice on some brown bread. Natalia was a very tall, blonde woman with shorter hair and lots of makeup. She was quite fashionable in a way that is only believably fashionable in Moscow, with lots of gold jewelry and long painted nails. She had a loud and commanding voice that made me think, more than once, what an experience it must be to be married to such a woman. She insisted that I sit.

While I was eating she started in with this line of typical Russian questioning. She did throw in a slightly out of the ordinary question about my family and where they live, my answers to which brought her attention to the fact that my parents live in Texas. Natalia was trying to ask me something about Texas that I couldn’t quite understand and then she said quite loudly, in order to clarify, – Marlboros! (bringing two fingers to her lips to indicate smoking a cigarette) Cowboys! (pretending to ride a horse and lasso something) Hats! (saying this in russian but gesturing to indicate the space a cowboy hat might take up on her head) George Bush! (emphatically thrusting forward both hands) She used this as her segue into Obama.

You may or may not know this, but there are certain words here, pertaining to race, which are unspokenly, absolutely forbidden to use in the States, but in Russia are not only perfectly acceptable, but they are literally the only Russian words used when talking about such topics. All Russians want to know how we (Americans) feel about having a black man as a president. Truly that is the crux of all their questioning. And they don’t know the words ‘African-American.’ And “black” in reference to people means something entirely different here. “Black” in Russia means any foreigner, any non-Russian. And it doesn’t matter if your family has lived here for 6 generations, if you’re your family is not “Russian” since the beginning of time, you are part of this underclass that everyone accepts as just a normal part of life. And so Armenians, Kazaks, Uzbeks, (insert any ethnonational identity), are “black people.” This presents a huge problem in the Russian mind and so they use that word we just don’t even say, when talking about our President. I’m taken aback every time I hear it and I have to explain over and over why they just shouldn’t use that word, especially when speaking about American politics and history.

Race is a huge issue here. Everyone wants to know immediately where your family is from, and then they want to talk about your heritage and its place in their heartfelt myth of Russian supremacy.

And they want to know what it is like to have a ----r as a president. It is so completely wrong all over again, every time I hear it, I can’t even tell you. Forget the fact that Obama is truly a remarkable and dynamic leader who has changed the lives of millions of Americans and given new hope to the vast majority of an entire generation… let’s reduce it to a high-contrast discussion of race.

Maria’s friend continued on, asking me about where different colors of people live in my country, and isn’t racism a problem only in the South? Maria, thankfully, has been to the states and is quite a bit more understanding of our politics, and was able to help me explain to Natalia a bit more about the reality of race in the United States.

This woman, Natalia, then asked me what I wanted to do with my degree, would I work in politics or in a foreign embassy? I said no, neither of those was very appealing. Apparently those were the only two careers she could come up with because next she said, not completely without earnest, was I a spy??

Nearing this point in the conversation the kitchen had become entirely too smoky and the cheese and bread (and bewildering conversation) had nearly run out. She and Maria headed out into the entryway so Natalia could do what she had come to do – cut Maria’s hair.

There are Different Names for the Same Things – My first 24 hours. (Looking back)

Soundtrack – Radiohead, In Rainbows

The ride from the airport was so perfectly Russian I could hardly believe it. The driver was smoking nearly the whole time, the van was like an 80-something model with a gear shifter like a semi-truck and I’m pretty sure one or more of those gears were missing. There were random things glued to the dashboard and other random things (like religious icons and Disney characters) hanging from other places. And even though he was like 65, he played Russian pop/dance music. He had on a tank top (t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off) and a gold chain… if I didn’t know that he was hired specifically to pick me up there is no way in the world I ever would have got into a car with him.

My very first impression of Moscow was that I couldn’t believe how dirty and industrial and maybe even third world it felt. I mean this is an international, cosmopolitan city. It may not be renowned for its cleanliness, but it is strikingly filthy in many parts. The roads are absolutely awful. People have to slow down on the freeway to avoid losing parts of their car in huge holes or cracks. There are no lines on many of the roads… it was one of those points in life where you just have to take a big breath and say to yourself – ‘Alright! Let’s do this thing!’ Knowing full well that you have no earthly clue what ‘this thing’ is.

I was smiling the entire ride. True, I was pretty sleep deprived, and it isn’t very Russian to smile so I definitely fought it, but despite the ominous drive to town, I just couldn’t help but smile and say to myself, wow – Moscow!

We got to my host family’s house off of Prospekt Vernadskovo…

I am told it is a very prestigious part of town. Maybe it is the run down neighborhood just on the outskirts of a very prestigious part of town… the immediate area surrounding the house is all trees – thick like a forest with an uneven alternating dirt and concrete path, and is strikingly beautiful and peaceful juxtaposed with the 8 lanes of traffic bordering the green oasis. And there are walkways and some alley-like streets and parking lots that double as sidewalks that wind between the buildings. These are real, honest-to-god Soviet era buildings. In the states they would absolutely be condemned. It’s tough to say if they were ever modern and new, or if they were intentionally constructed in this way. The outside is a mismatched conglomeration of building materials, and the balconies are easily identifiable by the corrugated steel siding. Inside the lobby the mismatched floor tiles shift and clink under your feet, the plaster is peeling off the walls (not in a chic way), and the elevator gives you reason to shift your eyes skyward in gratitude every time you make it safely to your floor. Interestingly, the mailboxes have keys, but you can see right into them and know what it is your neighbors received that day. The elevator call button is placed immediately next to an identical button connected to a speaker/microphone where you call for help. (Don’t ever mix those two up.) And there is a very old, larger-sized woman with white, white hair, few teeth, and a brightly colored house apron, who stares you down whenever you enter or exit the building. She has decorated the lobby with a kitchen table covered in a piece of plastic, a few mismatched chairs, a couch, and a wall of houseplants. She also dragged her television into the lobby, the viewing of which she only takes a break from to track your brisk movement as you walk past her and mumble hello. It is quite cozy.

Our apartment is at the very end of the hall. The hallway walls are hospital-scrubs-green and those same clinky tiles from the lobby don the floor. The apartment doors are all covered in quilted fake brown leather with decorative gold buttons that were at one time probably evenly spaced in a diamond shaped pattern. There are various items outside people’s doorways, mostly really dirty doormats or towels doubling as doormats, but also an occasional small wooden structure of some sort. The lighting is a bright, though intermittent, fluorescent, casting an eerie, unnatural glow to the whole thing.

I am living with a professor of political science and history. She has somewhat recently published a book about politics in Moscow. Her twenty-year-old daughter lives here with her and attends university on full scholarship. The apartment is three rooms – a living room and two bedrooms. There is also one of those corrugated steel balconies, which actually makes the space much bigger seeming. The flooring throughout most of the house is a trashed wooden parquet that is pulling up from the ground in spots. The walls are lined with stained plywood cabinets and pealing wallpaper. All of it has been covered up with lots of pictures of my host when she was young or pictures of her daughter or her friend’s children. There are pictures of places visited, outdated maps of various countries, random scribbles and childhood graffiti, and other things that make my host family smile. There are piles of newspapers and books everywhere. The walls of the toilet are constructed with the same plywood walls as the cabinets, but have been painted white and are scrawled with things like “Ne Kuryu” (No smoking) and “Garfield” and “Don’t Worry, Be Hippy.” Technically the toilet works, but there is no lid on the tank and you have to both pull and then push this pin inside the tank to get it to flush. The adjacent bathroom is tiled – bright blue with a matching sink and tub. It also doubles as a laundry room (yes I cannot wait to hand wash all my clothing) and to make it just a bit more heroic to use, the sink does not work.

I could go on and on and on… the point is that in this modern, international, cosmopolitan city, everywhere you look you can still see Soviet influence, just like what you imagined it to be when you were a kid. The authority is still heavily felt, and in some places much heavier than others. Where I am living my bed is on the floor and it isn’t actually a bed. It is a fold-open couch kind of thing so there is a big slope towards the middle with a crack at the bottom. There are no shades on the windows so when it is bright as day at 4am I’m struggling to keep blankets over my head. There is a fridge but no freezer. There is hot water (!!!) but no one knows for how long. There are two pots in the kitchen, one with a handle. There is a huge basket of like 85 dirty potatoes next to the dorm-sized fridge. There is an old fashioned hand-crank sewing machine. The furniture is decades old and will probably never be replaced…

…but there is something really beautiful about it. As soon as I started unpacking and looking around the room, the first thing I thought was – we (in the States) have way too much money. I mean seriously this place is absolutely falling apart, but has everything that you need. My room has this amazing view of treetops (and a huge glowing Gasprom sign – lest I forget I am in Russia.) I wake up in the morning and have this really awesome Turkish coffee and Greek yogurt. I study lying on this mattress and looking out the big windows at the sky with a perfect temperature breeze blowing through my room. (And constant, noisy traffic whizzing by.) Living in this dilapidated building does leave something to be desired. But there is also something very subtly fulfilling about this place. At times I feel like I can almost understand why Russians get defensive of and semi-nostalgic for a Soviet past. I miss frozen food and real news and reliable internet and a bed and enough hangers for my clothes and all of those things. I think there definitely two Moscow’s. And being here in this city of two worlds is giving me a chance to learn a bit more about another way of getting along just fine. There is the very-fast-paced-everyone-running-around-in-high-heels-and-glamour-amidst-trash-and-grime, City, and then there is the City where people live where they have always lived, the way they have always lived, the way they always will live, for decades. Although something more exists right next door to them, they watch whatever passes them by, they have however many teeth they have, and they live, somewhat unquestioningly, in a world in which there seems little room to challenge. They believe whatever they have been told about themselves in both Moscow’s. Fast paced and glamorous with Prada and Lamborghinis and hedonistic debauchery, or communal and collectivist and grey, with random bits of red and yellow and weathered pictures of happy memories, the entirety of it illuminated with the purple-blue glow of a far-off oil company’s success – there is truly a status-quo feeling of ‘it just is what it is and that is all it will ever be.’

The Flight - Why not begin at the beginning?

When you fly in the United States, there are strict rules about what you can and cannot do on a flight. And if you cross onto the wrong side they let you know. And people listen. “Do not form a line by the bathroom.” “Take your seats.” Fasten your seatbelt.” “Your carryon is too large, you will have to check it at the gate.”

When a domestic airline flies to Russia the flight attendants are just trying to avoid major conflict and make it through the flight. The woman boarding the flight in front of me had, I think, five carryons including one stuffed shopping bag topped off with a globe. That’s right, a spherical representation of the planet. An odd sized carryon to say the least. (And I’m still confused as to why someone traveling from NYC back to Moscow would think this is a must-have. But whatever.) While I waited patiently for her to get out of the aisle she pushed and prodded all five packages, and a globe, into various overhead bins. No one seemed to find this frustrating; some nice young gentleman just helped her shove it into one of the overhead bins. The stewardess then brought to her seat her four cartons of duty-free Marlboros. She was a snorer for the rest of the flight, except for when she woke up to purchase more goods during the duty-free in-flight shopping portion of the flight.

So you are stuck in a plane, in a small, uncomfortable seat, for 10 hours. I couldn’t think of a better time to just get completely hammered. At least this was the theory of the man sitting next to me. There were a few of them on the flight: his friend in front of me, and two of his friends behind me. He was a jolly fellow to begin with, spoke no English but smiled politely and spoke cordially with the man sitting on the other side. When the flight attendants began the in-flight beverage service he ordered tomato juice, which always makes me think – ‘well what a good, health conscious individual!’ No. They had apparently purchased a large bottle of vodka in the duty free shop before boarding the plane. They all ordered tomato juice and water, quickly drinking the water in order to split the juice between two cups, then passing the cups to the man next to me who would take out this bottle of vodka, stashed under his coat, and fill the rest of the glass and pass it back. Eventually they also broke out the Heineken to supplement their operation because, after all, vodka without beer is like throwing money to the wind.

The announcements on this flight had a distinctively different tone than those on domestic U.S. flights. They went something like this, “Um, please take your seats. Please. In the United States it is illegal to stand and talk in the aisle ways and we would request, if possible, that you observe this rule on this flight as well, please.” This announcement was of course in both English and Russian and was usually followed by some pleading of the flight attendant with the particular chatty kathy who was only trying to pick up a girl or relive the best moments of the trip with a dear friend. All announcements were, of course, ignored.

Sleeping was a joke because the geniuses at Delta put touch screen tvs on the back of the headrests of all the seats. Russians have a really hard time with touch screens. The idea of “touch” is totally lost on them. It is more like poke-with-force screens. Incidentally the technology does not respond to this kind of usage. Usually being smacked repeatedly in the back of the head lulls me right to sleep. I’m not sure what happened here.

Eventually I gave up and joined the Russians for a drink and took the opportunity to practice my Russian. When in Rome…