Globalisation
Back in England, I found myself unable to stop comparing our way of life to that of the Russians, and boring people with endless anecdotes of my time in Siberia. Of course, there are few better ways of appreciating the good and bad in your own society than living elsewhere for a while, and though I miss Russia and will surely go back I am thankful that I grew up a Brit during times which have afforded me the opportunity to live a materially comfortable life and to pursue some of the dreams which I cherished during my formative years. Time and again I find myself listening to people complaining about Britain, or arguing over the most meaningless of things, and smugly think that we live in a country that has really never had it so good, pompously congratulating myself on my newly-enhanced sense of perspective. In the UK I am also grateful for the opportunity to speak my mind freely and access a supposedly independent media, though of course my education may have simply led me to accept this as the truth. To most Russians, the truth of the wider world is served up by a media which, as the international community often complains, is heavily state controlled. Thus, to the average Russian, their federal forces are fronting the global ‘War on Terror’ in Chechnya. In the West, pictures from Chechnya show only rubble and despair whereas Russian television seems eager to depict life in the republic as returning to normal- think pavement cafes in Grozny- as the conflict dwindles.
The new millennium has seen globalisation reduce borders to interaction between societies, and I drew great interest from seeking examples of just how the process has touched even Siberia, traditionally viewed by Western society as one of the last frontiers of human civilisation. The hand of globalisation has clearly touched Chita. A few hundred kilometres away lies rapidly growing China, and Chita’s city streets and shops are bedecked with globally famous brand names. English, the international language, appears widely in advertising even while it is not widely spoken. Russian and European brands are often considered superior to their cheaper Chinese counterparts, though in the UK I have never encountered such firms as ‘Ahmad Tea- London’ or ‘Scarlett- England’ electronics, which are usually seen as of good quality in Chita. Advertising is abundant and dominates television yet many Chita shops still do not see the need to advertise their presence to passers-by with anything more than a discreet sign. Standards of customer service are, to say the least, different to those expected in the West and often give rise to the slang Russian expression ‘Sovdep’, meaning ‘Soviet-standard service’.
The
contrasts produced by the globalising, capitalist mode of production are
everywhere evident- teenagers wearing Chinese reproductions of branded jeans
handle the latest polyphonic mobile phone technology whilst standing in
crumbling concrete stairwells alongside piles of uncollected rubbish. The
city’s potholed and chaotic roads play host to an odd mixture of imported
Japanese cars and (barely) surviving Soviet models. On one occasion I passed a
young chap filling drinking water cans from a street hand pump (his home would
have had no running water) in my district, whilst playing with a
state-of-the-art mobile phone. I wished I had a camera handy- a phone like his
would have done the trick- though any photo capturing new building next to old
in Chita is a good illustration of how uneven the development can be.
The vast mineral wealth of Russia has granted the Kremlin renewed prominence on the global political stage. Russia’s economy and society are still very much in transition from the communist, command economy past. The country needs time to put itself fully on the path toward rule of law and a functioning, free market economy. Over hundreds of years the UK has evolved these institutions; Russia has been expected to build them in fifteen. Whether democracy as we know it in the West will ever develop in Russia, I do not know- membership of the EU will not happen in my lifetime as it would involve a dilution of the Kremlin's power. NATO is reviled as a vehicle of American strategic dominance over Europe. Even so, ties to the powerhouse economies of the European Union and China, and perhaps even to Japan if an ongoing territorial dispute[1] can be settled, must surely be built by the Kremlin if Russia is to prosper in the age of globalisation. Like all countries from the United States to Nauru, Russia cannot go it alone. ‘Russia for the Russians’, often used as a slogan by extreme right wing groups favouring economic autarchy and blanket bans on immigration- would be a truly self-destructive policy well suited to continuing some of the historical failures of Russian government.
Some speculate that, in the absence of Tsarist imperialism and Communism, Russia is still searching to redefine its identity and to find a defining ‘national idea’. The United States has its ‘American Dream’ of equal opportunity and people progressing according to ability and application. In the UK, the concepts upon which we build our national identity are perhaps less obvious, but I would argue that most Brits have a comfortable idea of what it means to be British, our traditions and society having developed over hundreds of years without the major disruptions imposed by the Russian ructions of 1917 and 1991. I have never been a fan of the Royal Family, though the Russians’ admiration for our regal traditions did illustrate to me how integral our royal heritage is to foreigners’ conceptions of Britain.
Russia is often portrayed as being caught, psychologically as well as geographically, between east and west. There have undoubtedly been protracted debates, over many centuries, as to which of these orientations has had the greater influence on Russia’s identity, and as to which way she should turn in future. Many are content with the notion of Russia as a bridge between those two broadly defined outlooks, and indeed for my students there was a conception of Chita being part of a continent they thought of as ‘Eurasia’- in their view, Europe and Asia were self-evidently part of the same whole- a view no doubt promoted by Moscow as a means of ensuring that this massive country does not fragment along a fault line roughly following the Ural Mountain range.
If one event unites the Russians in their view of themselves as a nation, it must surely be the Second World War, known to them as the ‘Great Patriotic War’. This traumatic experience, with its attendant sacrifices and triumphs, has for sixty years been a cornerstone of Soviet, and then Russian national unity and identity. The roles of the United States and the UK in the conflict are seen as peripheral- one student was convinced that the USA waited to see whether the USSR or Germany looked the likely victor before backing the winning side. War veterans are still revered and granted official privileges and anniversaries enthusiastically celebrated, yet as their generation dies out and Russia itself changes, it seems their country is searching for new symbols around which Russian society can unify and build its evolving identity. On occasion it seems that state-controlled television is quite keen on promoting President Putin as such a symbol. When not showing people shooting each other at any hour of the day, that is: the life expectancy of any character in a Russian drama is severely limited and to observe Russia through the lens of her television, one would surely believe even the worst horror stories of machine gun-toting mafia and rampant criminality.
Few go so far as to openly lament the lack of a clear ‘national idea’ to replace the vacuum left by Marxist-Leninist ideology[2], but those that do can sometimes go to rhetorical extremes which may explain the (limited, fleeting) popularity of chauvinistic politicians such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky. On many occasions Russians said to me that they loved their country, though they acknowledged its shortcomings. Though I appreciate the benefits of having grown up in Britain, I do not share such an apparently blind sense of patriotism- Russians rarely saw the need to think about why they are devoted to their homeland so. It seems that something in their education and upbringing promotes this love of their own people (if not a basic respect for strangers)- perhaps necessary to prevent the fragmentation of this shrinking nation with its vast territory.
The military, and the rules
Whilst many Russians would profess a desire to visit the West, few wanted to live overseas, many seeing a duty to help their homeland overcome its many troubles. For every young man, two years’ military service is a formal part of this duty. Conditions in the military are often described as resembling a prison in which conscripts are at the mercy of officers’ whims- stories abound of unpunished beatings and tortuous initiation rites. The prospect of active service in Chechnya still looms and many young men simply pay a doctor to produce a sick note to excuse themselves from service.
Russian society,
when compared to Britain, still appears relatively militarised. In Chita, the
past strategic and geographical importance of the city have left an evident
legacy of abundant military buildings and men in uniform. To an Englishman, in
whose society police officers in the street do not carry guns, the number of
uniformed individuals (soldiers, militia, omnipresent security guards…… even
railway officials wear military-style dress) is unusual, but the profusion of
weapons carried by such people (most often night-sticks and frequently guns) is
downright unsettling. Russians are often surprised to hear that, as a British
male, I have no obligations toward military service. Thankfully, such
considerations are simply not part of the lives of most young British people,
though of course the military remains a possible choice of professional career.
To take most of the young, able-bodied males from a (slowly dwindling)
population out of economically productive circulation and to place them each in
uniform for two years seems somewhat illogical in these times of increasing
globalisation and worldwide economic competition. Then again, my own Western
logic is often strikingly opposed to that of my Russian counterparts, and
perhaps I underestimate the psychological national scars of past invasions.
Even so, something seems amiss when a significant proportion of the population
of a state which is still a nuclear power live in wooden huts and crap in their
gardens.
One interesting use
of Russia’s military was demonstrated by one of my students who had had her
five years’ study funded by the local government on condition that she work for
three years after graduation in any location they chose to place her. Fearing a
posting in a remote and desolate village, she pulled a common ruse by paying a
military man (whom she had never before met) 200 dollars to marry her. Her new
status as a military wife apparently excused her obligations as regarded the
teaching contract. On the day of her wedding I returned home to find her
sitting with a friend, dressed casually smoking a fag on a bench outside my
building. “Congratulations. Where is your husband?” I asked. “At home,
probably” she shrugged and then explained that they had panned to divorce in a
year’s time.
This marriage of
convenience was a good illustration of how Russia is a land with so many rules
designed to govern everything that people had become adept at finding ways
around official obstacles. On the surface, five years’ funded study in exchange
for three years’ work may seem reasonable but my student had reasoned that for
the sake of two hundred dollars she could barely afford, she would be able to
avoid a period of exile to some dreaded outpost of the Chita region. Russians
often simply ignore the (impractically burdensome) rules- for example, during
my time in Chita the federal government passed a law forbidding the drinking of
beer on the streets. This would represent a major change in culture and was
simply ignored by citizens and police alike, though we were once told not to
drink directly outside the regional administration building and were shepherded
onto the square to join the other beer drinkers revelling in the sun. In
another instance, a friend was forbidden to travel abroad as he had previously
worked in military intelligence. He simply paid for a few forged travel
documents and made his merry way around Europe. Paradoxically, despite the
official strictures, this anything-goes attitude often made life in Russia feel
free, chaotic and easy-going.
I have been raised
in the Western tradition of rational thought, and whereas I have been taught to
favour head over heart, the ‘logic of the heart’ is often highly valued by
Russians. Superstition abounds, perhaps a reflection of how over hundreds of
years Russians have felt their control over their own destinies limited by
oppressive authority or the simple hardships of life. Many Russian seem to have
a resigned, fatalistic attitude toward the future of their society, believing little
can be done about such problems as corruption and bureaucratic indifference
toward individuals. Western youths are noticeably more idealistic, and it seems
clear that until expectations regarding the performance of the state and of
each other increase, Russians will always indulge in a certain amount of
self-defeatism.
Russian
superstitions are often taken very seriously: for example, unwed women must not
sit on the corner of a table or they shall never marry and hands must never be
shaken across the threshold of a door. Before any journey Inna would insist
that we sit down in silence for a few minutes to ensure our safe passage. On
one occasion I was amused by the behaviour of my friend Alyona when, us having
left her flat, she realised she had forgotten to phone a friend. I told her I
would wait as she went back upstairs but she informed me that one cannot simply
return home if something has been forgotten. She knocked on a nearby flat door,
explained her predicament and they readily let her in to make her call. She did
concede that in extreme circumstances a person may return home to collect
something but that they must look at themselves in the mirror and poke out
their tongue, presumably in order to escape some horrible fate. I asked how
long a person must be gone from their home before they can return without
befalling the grim reaper, but she did not grasp why I was being sarcastic
about such a self-evidently important matter. Other customs have a more
practical rationale: empty bottles should never be left on a table and if one
tries to pour from a bottle having failed to remove the cap then this is
gleefully taken as a sign of drunkenness. Russians are also utterly convinced
that if a woman of child-bearing age carries heavy objects or sits on a cold
wall, her reproductive system will immediately suffer irreparable damage,
further exacerbating the nation’s current demographic malaise.
Far more so than do
British people, Russian people believe in fate. Sudba, as is the Russian
term, is often seen to have the controlling hand over people’s lives. As one
who has always believed he has power over his own life- as our Western
educations tend to teach- this can seem like an abdication of responsibility
for one’s own actions, and I sometimes questioned why anybody would get out of
bed in the morning if they strongly believed their actions were being dictated
by sudba. The answer, I suppose, is that many Russians simply live each
day as it comes, lack of wealth and opportunity making it hard to think beyond
the now, and believing that ultimately the hand of sudba will guide them
towards their destiny.
I have always been,
and will always be, inexplicably drawn to Russia. Russia represents life in the
raw- warts and all- and though the downsides are often unpleasant, the sheer
delight of knowing Russian people makes persistence more than worthwhile. Some
Russian friends have asked if, nowadays, I feel slightly Russian, though they
know that I can never truly appreciate what it is to be Russian, their society
being so opaque from outside and so difficult to fathom even for the natives.
I do not feel that I
have become at all Russified. I feel, rather, that now more than ever I am a
citizen of the world. A person’s nationality should not determine how they are treated
by the rest of humanity. In Russia, those who did not know me would view me as
‘The Englishman’. Those who knew me would treat me, with open arms and open
hearts, as James- another unique human being who, whilst hailing from a
different society, shared the same needs, wants and dreams as any other
inhabitant of this shrinking globe of ours.
[1] Japan claims sovereignty over the four southernmost islands of the Kuril chain, the Soviet Union having occupied these in 1945. Russia steadfastly refuses to surrender her own sovereignty over these tiny islands
[2] Of course, by the Soviet Union’s
later days belief in Marxist-Leninism had waned significantly among the
population at large. I asked a university professor who had been educated
during the 1970s whether his class had believed in the official ideology- he
replied that “Only some stupid peasants from the villages” paid any more than
lip service to the official doctrine