"How was Russia?!"
"Russia was... different"
"Yes, some corners of the earth is so different. Isn't that great, though? Live would be so boring if everyplace was the same!"
The above was a conversation between myself (middle line) and Ella, our program director (the inquirer). She often talks to me about my experiences here because she feels I'm more organized (and thus observant?) than others, and when she responded to my answer, I felt so... stupid. Of course it was different! Of course I wanted it to be different! How could I say in a quasi-complaining tone that the far-off place I had the amazing opportunity to go to was (almost unfortunately, I was implying,) just "different"?!
Well, because it was different. And that's really the only way I can explain it without going into great detail. As frustrated as I made myself with this answer and Ella's innocently brilliant response, I still come back to describing it as such. So hopefully through this blog post - which I am forcing myself to write now before I forget things, though at the same time I am still trying to digest what I experienced - you will have a comprehensive understanding of my interpretation of Russia.
(Give yourself some time to read this, as I'm sure it'll be long, but I'd really appreciate if you do read it, since for many it'll be the closest insight to the culture you'll have seen).
Memories of the distant past; Palaces
I did not expect this, but Saint Petersburg (SPB) was filled with tons of palaces. They were from the eras of the Czars, Catherine the Great, etc. Take for example, the Winter Palace, one of the city's icons which is today the Hermitage (the world's largest art museum - if you spent 1 minute at each piece it'd take you 5 years and 7 months to get through). The Russian State Museum, which is the museum for Russian art (as the Hermitage only holds the finest European art because it was a museum Catherine the Great started as her private collection because of her affinity for European art). This Russian museum is a former palace as well. In fact, one bank of the Neva River, SPB's main river, is ENTIRELY lined in former palaces. And don't think that they're old and decrepit inside - most are either museums or are used as nice office spaces for companies. Outside of nuclear SPB we visited the suburb of Pushkin which is where Catherine the Great had her summer palace. I can only speak for the summer palace, Hermitage/Winter Palace, and the Russian Museum, but these were by far the three most opulent and extravagant places I'd ever seen. Even individually they far outdid Versailles, and my classmates agreed. (for photos of these and a much better understanding, see my Flickr. I will post just a few here because it takes forever to upload them).
Interesting side note: during the Leningrad Blockade (I'll get to that later), the Nazis controlled Saint Petersburg and Pushkin, and stole most of the valuables from all of these palaces. In the case of Catherine's summer palace, they stole an entire room which had been made completely of amber. It took ages to rebuild, and now photography is banned in that room for fear that someone will heist the room again.
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| this is the staircase you use to enter the Winter Palace/Hermitage. It is completely gilded. |
Churches and Cathedrals
The churches and cathedrals of SPB were equally as opulent. Each one was really breathtaking, in their own special ways. It was clear that a great deal of time, energy, and money had been spent to restore these buildings, if not in the Soviet era then in the past 20 years. Second to Notre Dame, my next favorite church in the world is now the Church on Spilled Blood in SPB. It is a cathedral that was bult solely on the donations from the Russian people after the assassination of their beloved Czar, Alexander II.
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| myself and the Church on Spilled Blood |
St. Isaac's Cathedral is another famous church in SPB, it's a Russian Orthodox church and the interior is also completely made of mosaic, but this mosaic is made solely of precious and semi-precious stones. And as usual, the rest of the Church including the entire outside of the dome, was gilded.
Russian opulence meets Russian culture, or does it?
This is something that many of us found rather troubling about our experience in SPB. From what I described to you, if you had no US-education-system-engraved-preconceived-notions on Russia, you would think that much of the culture, or at least SPB culture, is very extravagant. And indeed, when being a tourist and just visiting these places, one can easily convince themselves that this is so.
However I had the opportunity to be not just a tourist but a student in this country, and interact and discuss with professors, Russian students, and my American classmates quite a bit. We were really troubled by how everything I just described to you cannot be ANY farther from the actual reality of daily life in Russia.
I'm not sure how to describe this "reality" in a cohesive manner because, well, it's anything but cohesive to begin with. So here are some examples.
- Traffic
Traffic jams are SPB's middle name. Driving anywhere is completely unreliable, because trafic is usually at a complete stop. The only time I really saw what you'd call a normal amount of traffic is out my window past 10:30pm. So, why not take public transport, you my ask?
- A completely inefficient public transport system.
The metro system has few stops in the city center is mainly for suburban commuters. That leaves us with the bus system. There are no bus schedules, so one must wait at the stop with complete unawareness of when a bus will come - it could be up to 40 minutes because of, yes, the traffic. We could take Bus #3 to school, but were advised to walk the 2 miles daily because it could take even longer to take the bus. When one boards the bus, you must have exactly 21 rubles ready to give the bus man/woman whose job is to remember who gets on where, and collect money from them - on this bus with not even room to breathe - between stops. (Our theory is that this was ridiculous a job created by the Soviets in order to achieve full employment, which just stuck).
- Filth
Next to New York (2) and Berlin (3), SPB takes the crown for the dirtiest city I've ever been to. Litter, broken bottles, endless cigarette butts, etc., make the already depressing landscape even sadder.
- Mortality rate
Primarily because of the healthcare system's disruption after the transition from the USSR, Russia's mortality rate is lagging. The male life expectancy is only 64, which is lower than that of India! Other large contributors are smoking and alcohol-related diseases.
- Poverty
Poverty in Russia is really bad. Since the collapse of the USSR, the socio-economic inequality has gone crazy, leading to (what I saw as) 10 poor women re-selling goods in the market for every 1 Land Rover or Lexus I saw on Ligovsky Prospekt.
- "You can drive a Lexus, but can't even drink the water?"
This was a common mind-boggling issue brought forth by many. It's an excellent example of my previous point.
- Shopping in the Galleria
The city's main shopping forum was located near our hotel. It contained 4 floors of some of the best brands on the market - companies from all over Europe and even the States were represented. Curiously, despite the financial troubles of the country, everything in the mall - even at H&M - was so expensive few of us bought things. I just wonder how the average Russian shops?
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| the large scale housing estates, similar to ones you've seen in my photos from the former GDR |
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| old soviet-loking tram car (sorry for the unintentional watermark) |
Historical and cultural understanding of this:
So, what I'm trying to say here is that there seemed to be two Russias that I felt I was experiencing simultaneously. On one hand there was the opulent palaces, churches, and historical sites that the state had visibly put a pretty penny into maintaining and showing off. But on the other side, there is visibly a suffering infrastructure, high poverty rate, low mortality rate, and rampant inefficiency in all interpretations of the word.
A classmate shared his interpretation of this that I found enlightening.
When you go to a third world country, you're prepared for the lack, the structural inefficiencies, etc., that you'll see. If someone told me I'd need to brush my teeth with water, I wouldn't think it's bizarre at all. It's because that's what we've psychologically established as the norm for such a place.
With Russia, we don't expect the same thing. As students of history, we recognize that the land (albiet the USSR) was a competing superpower with the US for decades, and the political power it still holds in the world. I wouldn't say we're mentally placing it at the same capability level as the US and West, but at least putting it on the same playing field. However we have to remember that from 1918 to 1990, the country was on a completely different playing field - completely incomparable. With no private property, no differentiation in wealth or income, etc., it was thrown into a capitalist world when the USSR collapsed, with its citizens never having known how to partake in a capitalist and democratic society.
As a result, as almost every Russian pointed out to us, they are still learning about how to and trying to make capitalism work in their society. It's been 20 years, and many of the old kommunalkas (multi-family apartments in the inner city) are still inhabited by the same 15 or so people that lived there in 1980, with no infrastructrual changes. Private companies are still getting the hang of efficiently renovating and selling to the few wealthy people who can afford to buy.
Therefore, I - we - have to stop looking at Russia in a way that places it on a level playing field as other Western European countries (and the US). Unlike the fall of the GDR, it did not have the FRG to pick up all the pieces and absorb it into its system. If there's one thing that Russians said to me the most, it was emphasizing how recent the change was and how people are still adjusting because of how drastic the change was. In the words of our guide, who said this with a smile "We're getting better and better each year"
To conclude...
So yes, Russia is different. I still find that the easiest way to describe it to people who don't care to hear about it in this detail. But I hope that through this lengthy post I've been able to show you how and why this is so, and that much of what I saw as "negative" parts of the society are really just results of circumstance that the Russian people, who so love their country, are trying to slowly but surely turn around.
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