From Russia with Love

Umom Rocciia Ne Poniat' (You can't understand Russia with your mind)

Last night, I had my first 'fight' with my hostess, Tatiana Nikolaevna. Somehow a conversation about a popular MTV show, Khodoki (about two pairs of Russians travelling across the US on limited budgets with specific tasks to complete) turned into a debat about Chechnya. We were talking about the need for passport control and how the Russian police randomly stop people on the streets, more often than not, people who look like they're from the Caucases. In the States, this is called racial profiling and is illegal. When I tried to explain this to Tatiana, she explained that this was necessary, asking me to imagine terror attacks like September 11th happening with the frequency that terrorist attacks happen in Moscow. Although insulted that she would compare the bombing of THE WORLD TRADE CENTER with, for example, the seige of a Moscow theater where more people died as a result of how Putin handled the situation than at the hands of terrorists, I held my tongue as much out of respect for how Moscovites' lives have changed in the past five years (as a result of these attacks) as for the fact that any rebutal would required vocabulary that I simply do not have. Instead, I said that it would be more proactive to end the war in Chechnya than harrasing people on the streets in order to stop the terrorism as these attacks in Mosow are usually carried out by Chechens.
End the war? Chechen Independence? Tatiana would hear none of this. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian lost a lot of territory that it had ruled for hundreds of years before communism. The idea of cutting up the former empire any more than it already had been divided was unthinkable to her. 40 million ethnic Russians have been left in these former republics where they have little rights and the standard of living is even lower than in Russia itself. Tatiana loves asking me about these poor people: "And what's to happen with them?" If its such a tragedy for the Russian people, why doesn't the state take their kinsmen home? Of course the government doesn't have enough money for this (as most of the money is laundered or stolen by oligarchs when it's not being used to fight wars), and the people themselves could never afford such a relocation. If the situation is so dire for ethnic Russians living in former satelites, I honestly have little pitty. Growing up in America, the idea of an empire carries very negative connotations. Maybe Russians should never have been in Uzbekistan in the first place. Maybe Stalin shouldn't have forced his people to relocate in order to create a homogenious society that was held together only by the threat of state-forced starvation or death. Maybe its time for Russia and Russians to take responsibility for its past mistakes.
The idea of independent states based on ethnic boundaries was not an option for Tatiana, citing the fact that Russia is a multiethnic country composed of over 150 nationalities (my vocabulary, again, prevented my from arguing the fact that of course Russia was multiethnic! After a millenium of empiric rule, ANY nation would be composed of the ethnicities they conquered). Any further division of Russia's boarders would leave behind even more ethnic Russians in countries hostile towards Russia. For Tatiana, the question of Chechnya was further complicated by the fact that "Chechens never OWNED that land.n What's the capital of Chechnya?! GROZNY! That's a Russian word! (meaning terrible, as in Ivan the Terrible) They're a barbaric people; they always lived in the mountains." Of course they lived in the mountains! Russians chased them off of any valuable land over a century ago! Even after the Chechens made it back down from the mountains after WWII, Stalin kicked them out again, deporting them to Siberia along with alll Chechen officers in the Red Army coming back from the front. Imagine that you just risked your life for the so-called Motherland only to have your home taken away from you, loaded into cattle cars for the ten-day train ride to Siberia where, even if you survived the trip, you had nothing and no one! I personally don't blame Chechens for wanting freedom from Russia, the source of their personal tragedies for over 200 years.
This is not to say that I'm necessarily on the Chechens' side as far as the war goes. I feel that the first war was justified. Like most former satelites, Chechnya wanted to finally be rid of all things Russian, and I sympathize with this longing. The Second Chechen War, which started in 1999 as a result of a series of house bombings in Moscow (some believe these bombings were staged by Putin himself for his own political purposes. It was an election year), has presented new problems for Russia, Chechnya and the world at large. The second war saw the arrival of Muslim reenforcements, namely Wahhabi fanatics, who have changed Chechens' view of the war from a patriotic endeavor to a holy battle. As a result, Putin has called the war in Chechnya a part of the international 'War on Terrorism'. This seems to have become a sort of catch-phrase for those governments wishing to keep/acquire territories rich in oil under the veil of a 'just cause' (does Iraq ring any bells?). Chechya's war crimes are just as appauling as Russia's: uncountable civilian casualties, frequent kidnappings by both sides and terrorist acts both in Chechnya and Russia at large. The war is unwinable for both sides, and people continue to die.
Russians are often the victims of their own government, whether is be Communist or a Monarchy or Democracy, and I feel that this mentality has woven itself into the fabric of the Russian mind. Tatiana made the ethnically Russian population into the victims of the independence movements across the former Soviet Union. "What will we be left with if you cut up our country into so many tiny pieces?" What country NEEDS to occupy half the world's latitudes? What country NEEDS eleven time zones? Maybe if Russia were smaller, the government could actually DO something for their own citizens instead of clinging to the lost grandure of its former Empire.
Tatiana also implied that Russia was paying reparations for losing the Cold War. This was confusing to say the least. I never heard of the Reagan-Gorbuchev treaty ending the Cold War much less 'war' reparations. She was refering to the fact that although Russia owns half the world's natural resources, all money from these resources resides in American banks. Whose fault is that now? Did America steal this money in some under-the-covers embezelling scheme? NO. Russia has adopted the market economy but without any of controls and with all the remnents of the Soviet 'every man for himself' mentality. As a result, a small portion of the population became millionares overnight. During the instability of the 90s, when some of these oligarchs lost everything they had, those who didn't put their money in a bank with a stable currency. Is America to blame for Russia's sad situation after the Cold War? I don't think Tatiana herself is sure. Some nights it's Gorbuchev's fault. Some nights it's Yeltsin's fault. Last night it just happened to be America's fault. I wanted to tell her that if her country's leaders and businessmen got some ethics, the Russian people would be much better off. Tatiana asked me why America invests so much money in China. American businessmen's choices obviously have nothing to do with ideological differences anymore. The answer was simple to me: no one trusts Russians. I wanted to tell her that the image of Russians in most of the world's imaginations is a Mafia boss or, in general, anyone who simply can't be trusted. I feel that we get back whatever we put out into the world, and the fact is that Russia's karma is simply shot to shit.
I went to bed angry. I hated Russians; I hated Tatiana; I hated myself for coming to the hell-hole of a country, for not being able to get my own thoughts across in the educated and well-spoken manner that I can in English, for being stuck in a country of fools whose own stubborn, antiquated and backwards view of the world was and forever will make them a miserable, damned people. I guess this is what they call culture shock.

posted by Misha Molodoi @ 5:30 PM