A few reflections on Russia and America

As there are almost infinite things I could write about from the past year, I’ll just talk about something off the top of my head. It’s futile to try to summarize at this point. Russia… I love it and I hate it. I scoff at it and I revere it. I want to stay and I want to leave. I’m not going to start talking about how Russia is a goddamn mystery inside a riddle inside an enigma, and how you can’t understand Russia with your mind, you can only feel it with your soul. Maybe these quotes (*cough* cliches) hold some water and maybe they don’t. But really, I’ll just say I feel a lot of ambivalence toward Russia. But I feel that towards America, towards most people, etc., so I wouldn’t say it is a terribly critical thing to say, coming from me.

In all honesty, I don’t want to live here. That is one certainty. Mainly, I have a family in Ohio and I can’t just leave that behind for some language or aesthetic reasons. Or even for career. Maybe I could leave temporarily, but I couldnt do it for too long of a period.  I’m not that type of person.

But also, Russia is, well, a much less comfortable, luxurious country to live in. This is something I wouldn’t say to a Russian in conversation because any comparisons with America automatically cause most Russians to see red. But objectively, in terms of amenities, there a lot of areas where America blows Russia out– food, clean streets, good roads, cultural options, i.e. subcultures, music, films– with the exception of classical art like ballet, opera and symphony which Russia does very well– service in restaurants and cafes, even cost of living seems a bit lower in America relative to people’s pay. And it’s my country, where I understand people more or less inside and out, and I can feel what they’re about, where they’re from, etc.

And of course, even though our economy is pretty awful at the moment, we’re still an economic powerhouse and our standard of living is remarkable. People have it so good, in fact, that they complain about how good they have it. And being here has reminded me about how stupid that is, what a luxury it is for people to whine about all sorts of things that they whine about, and that I am guilty of it as well.  Russia also struggles with developing its democracy, which is all of 15 years old and rather undeveloped compared with the US, where censorship is comparatively non-existent, and people are *so* free (in media, in speech) that they are even prone to constant criticism and dissatisfaction. It’s like democracy on steroids. It’s not a utopia, but I think most of the real flaws are cultural problems, not flaws in the infrastructure and the system itself.  It’s a pretty great system relatively. And I have to mention that I think our country is at a real low point and if Obama is elected will improve significantly in the next few years (economically, foreign policy, etc.).

But Russia has a lot of very good things as well. Hospitality, warmth, generosity, openness, real raw emotions. There were moments here when Russian people did a bunch of really nice things for me without any good reason and I thought about how calculating and logical I and other Americans are in our personal interactions. I’ll do something for you and then I expect you to do something for me. If you don’t, I think you’re self-absorbed or using me or maybe greedy.  Russians, if they like you, will do all sorts of crazy things to help you, will give you all sorts of gifts with money they don’t really have, will even sometimes smother you with offers to the point of being overbearing. In my case, a little of this was probably because I’m an exotic (or helpless) foreigner. But I can more or less separate the foreigner-worship from the genuine gestures of friendship and there was plenty of the latter.

I love that Russians, for instance, really value simpler aspects of life. And a lot of this is probably out of economic necessity. But nonetheless, it is the way it is here and it’s better. People will meet in a park and just sit for hours and talk. People meet and walk around the town for hours, through parks, through streets, just takling. People will go over to each others house with a bottle of beer and sit in the kitchen and talk or joke around. That’s the whole event. No going to a restaurant, no movie theatre, no watching tv, no sports event, nothing. Just plain talking, no distractions (except beer, which really helps things along in my opinion). We really lose sight of how important this is in modern America I think, we’re too caught up with everything.  

So who’s better– Russia or America? Just kidding.

I suppose my interest in Russia is about the same as it was before I came. It’s a separate and very different country, far away from us, and I will continue to think of it as that. But it is also more than a mere intellectual curiousity for me now, it is something that I lived for a year, I know it, more or less, I came over for dinner and heard all the family stories and stayed the night in the spare bedroom. I feel a real fondness and understanding of it. And the better aspects of life here, the openness and generosity, the appreciation for simply interacting and connecting with people, are things I’d like to incorporate into my life back home. Not to mention I’d really like to build a Russian banya in America. They are god damn amazing.