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“…And we’re back live!”
Well there’s definitely a pulse, but other than that, who can say? I hope that you found the last four articles to be an interesting diversion whilst Calling Moscow took a break. There’ll be more of that kind of thing in future, but for now I’m returning to the series, with a view to finishing the subjective sketch of a modern Russia, dumped off the end of a turbulent 25-year-long conveyor belt, and still afloat.
The journey terminates on a plateau of normality (albeit Russian-style), to be honest… Nothing explodes in the end. The disparate parts coalesce into a functional, though idiosyncratic, whole and I stop typing – just in case you were expecting a conclusion or a moral to the story. The fact is, it’s still going on, out there, whether I’m writing about it or not. No conclusion, but new morals with every episode, I’m sure.
I’m jumping trains though: As Calling Moscow comes to an “end”, so Trips and Tales will begin, featuring highlights of the Trans-Siberian experience in detail, some general advice (for the trip, that is) and interviews with trip veterans on their own customised journeys – and resulting stories.
For now, we’re back with Neil McGowan, Managing Director of The Russia Experience. He’s been elaborating on his experiences in Russia before, during and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. We’re pretty much up to date, with a meld of the old and new ways, the native and the imported. An unholy, multi-way marriage that still manages to function for those who “know the ropes” and can’t or won’t see the contradictions. Just a little more clarity and breadth here and there, and we can wrap the series up.
“The other thing,” Neil continues, “a personal hobby-horse of mine… No matter how much I bang on and on about it, it never seems to seep through: the number of people in Russia who aren’t Russian, aren’t ethnically Russian.” We’ve touched on this before with the stern-faced bear-hat wearers, but he elaborates: “If you go back to the 18th century, the part of Russia that was “Russia” didn’t really go further than the Urals mountains – day one of your eight-day journey east on the Trans-Siberian express. Beyond there, you are in Asia, the local people are all Asiatic. Russia has this enormous Asiatic population of 136 different peoples, tribes, nations… And they’ve all got their own languages. Many of them have got their own alphabets. Just as tourists assume that glammed-up urban women are prostitutes, they also assume that Asiatic faces – Buryat, Evenk, Even, Chuchki, Tartar, Tuvan etc. – must belong to illegal immigrants.”
I learn that their vast cultural traditions have been watered down, partly through a lack of interest on their side, but also through disastrous enforced homogenisation by a Soviet state, beneficially bestowing “civilisation” upon elements of a supposedly backward populace. Whilst at the same time, of course, eradicating lifestyles seemingly in opposition to (or just different from) the Soviet ideal. Quite why the authorities thought that nomadic seal-hunters would adapt well to life in high-rise Stalinist slabs is unclear. It rings uncomfortable bells with the history of my own British culture and the once-modernist slabs ultimately brought to ground when drawing-board Utopia met reality… It appears that ignorant assumptions can go to even greater lengths, however: surprising, even for my low estimation of humanity.
“Many people in Britain, despite all the the stories of Roman Abramovich, Berezovsky, etc. still have the idea that the rest of Russia lives in mud and wattle-daub huts, occasionally managing to catch a pigeon or a seagull. Nobody lives like that. In fact, it would be nice if they did. Most Russians live in grotty municipal housing, high-rise housing. That’s the very typical picture. It’s something that happened in the Stalinist era. People were driven off of the land. Small farms and holdings were converted into massive state farms covering the area of small towns, and everybody was made into workers on those farms rather than owners.”
And what of the traditional “Red” that sent McCarthy and his believers into paroxysms of fear in the 1950s? Neil has another revelation:
“The number of people who were ever in the communist party never reached higher than 8% of the population. It was considered as a privilege that was given to the elite. And if you got into the party then you would have access to different shops, and different places that you could send your children for education, and different, better places that you could go on holiday – in exchange for which your loyalty to the party was expected.”
So this was essentially a mirror of the British class-system, Russian style? Was that the divide: 8% to 92%? How does that compare to today?
“Obviously it was an unfair system, but all class systems are unfair. They work in different ways. There were a very, very few private individuals: scientists, or surgeons or concert pianists, etc. They had something that could be sold in the West. They would get rights or royalties or payments, and so they legally acquired riches abroad.” This would raise these individuals’ standards of living above the masses. But for most, there remained an infinite gulf between rich and poor. Neil continues: “It all fell to pieces when the Soviet Union collapsed. And when Boris Yeltsin made the communist party illegal, most people wrongly believed it was the end of this very unfair class system that ruled the country. Now it’s strictly a money-based system. It’s turning towards a kind of political elite. Those in political power are the ones who get to control the country and therefore make the money. It’s the mayors and the governors and the regional administrative powers and so on. These are the people who’ve got the money now.”
Basically then, it’s still the “haves” and “have-nots”, which is pretty much what all class systems boil down to.
Next time: Calling Moscow (Part 12)
The minefield of mis-perception: them and us. Street life. I blame the media. And: so much for liberation – the blip of equality.
[Photo by Cavin]
