Arrival at Moscow Sheremetevo international airport. My colleague tells me the international wing of the airport has been renovated but I desperately fail to see where. The only thing that I cannot fail but notice, since it is peering at me from every corner is the huge advertisement for Sberbank - the largest bank in Russia, incidentally state owned and incidentally inheriting its name from its predecessor in the former Soviet Union. For me who happened to spend some time in the former USSR, Sberbank brings forth memories of cement bunkers (ie. bank brunches), in front of which we, obedient Soviet citizens, lined up one one day the ruble was devalued such that my grandmother who managed to save even during Stalin's brutal rule saw her savings reduced to not even a good quality chapka. Well, maybe a chapka, but not more. So it is with some degree of surprise and might I say, scepticism, that I look at the smiling lady on the ad of Sberbank (which in Russian somewhat ironically means "savings bank") and register some words about what is allegedly Russia's leading bank.
Wondering through the airport, my feet on the soil of the former Soviet Union for the first time in over fifteen years, there is naturally a part of me that is curious - what's it like now? How much has it changed? are these obnoxious "new russians" which pop up in their three sizes too tight pants just an exceptional export of this country? How much has changed since we took a shaky Airflot flight from Kiev to Toronto? The realisation had started to dawn on me already at the airport, at the sight of Sberbank lady, people shoving their way though to get in front of us, the nationalistic looking border control guy examining my passport (so seriously as if there was any chance that a Canadian citizen would want to stay in Russia!), but it got confirmed over the days I spent in Moscow.
Everything has changed, but nothing has really moved from its original position. It's as if the pendulum has come back 360 degrees - of course, it has travelled in the meantime, but predictably, it arrived at its original equilibrium position. The Kremlin, all repainted stands in marked contrast with its depressing muddy coloured predecessor, but at its helm shines the exact same communist red star. The babushkas, at least in Moscow, are no longer dressed in Soviet garb - those "dresses" that resemble an old fashioned pyjamas - but they the walk the streets of Moscow with the same heavy step and probably equally heavy hearts. As in the old days, no one smiles or even looks ahead when they are walking on the street, and partly it's not surprising given that the roads have turned into black ice in minus twenty. But something tells me it's not just a question of ice. With a 200-300 dollar average pension, there is indeed nothing to smile about, as I realised when I was delivered twelve euro coffee to my hotel room. For the sake of precision, I'd like to note that it had the taste of the same ice, only melted.
Moscow proves its reputation as the most expensive city in the world, by-passing Paris, New York, and even Tokyo. Moscow's only difference from this trio is that like in the old Soviet days, the service remains generally noticeable by its very absence, while the prices remain noticeable - on the contrary - by the unashamed number of zeros which raised my eyebrows to the point where there were probably somewhere near my hairline. One evening when I almost ventured the courage to wonder out there at the risk of turning into an icicle, I was warned that Pushkin Cafe, the place which was branded to me as the trendy place in town (in my mind, all that meant was no borsh and mayonnaise salad), would set me back about five hundred bucks, apparently because the waiters are all black and the lights are dim. I wondered what Pushkin would have thought about it, but in the end decided to satisfy myself with hotel faire instead (not cheap either).
You might think by now: so what, all of the world's greatest cities have their rags and riches?However, the parallels between USSR's shady past and Russia's bright future, spoken of by Russian Prime Minister, who shoots random bears, forces oligarchs to Siberia like Stalin would have undoubtedly done, and changes the constitution like socks, does not end there. It can be seen in the small symbolisms like the building of the former KGB occupied by the Ministry of Interior or the omnipresent police controlling every intersection and indeed, as I found it upon my arrival to the hotel, not only the intersections. In fact, every "foreigner" - and don't be mistaken - there is still very much an "us" and "them" mentality in Russia - is controlled and monitored by the Russian police. People leaving passports at the hotel for registration receive a curious insert in Russian alleging that the hotel management shall notify the local authorities as to the whereabouts of a given intruder within 24 hours. I suppose I should have felt protected, but somehow I felt the objective of the little white insert was not to save myself from local punks and neo-nazi gangs, which Russia has become famous for.
And indeed, in my brief encounters with the Russian police (miliziya), I did not feel the love. The first time I came in face-to-face contact with the Russian police, is when my driver decided to ask them for directions and was promptly told to get out of the car and surrender his driving licence. After some back and forth and desperate pleas, he temporarily disappeared in the police car nearby to negotiate the settlement. In all my pity for the man, I almost piped up but the idea of this boar subjecting me to the same treatment kept my mouth shut, pretty much with fear. The second incident with the Russian police was at the gates of the British embassy, and served to wipe out any doubts about things having changed. There, after going through all the security ordeals, just as I was ready to sneak in the building, I got intercepted - for the lack of a better word - by the local police which appeared out of nowhere. He promptly disappeared behind the black box where I strongly suspect he took copies of our passports, and as he gave them back to us, even my frozen brain could not help but be shocked by the realisation that all the embassies in Russia are controlled, just as in the good old days.
Twenty years can be nothing or everything. They can change everything on surface: resurrect churches, dismantle communism, introduce goods on selves of stores, spring up restaurants, make the wear of jeans legal, but in a way all these changes are like cosmetic surgery trying to mask a larger disease. That disease has multifaceted symtoms - the unwillingness to give up on the idea of great Russia, the nostalgia for Stalin years when everyone was supposedly "equal", the blind belief in any nationalistic propaganda that Putin and the likes serve on a silver platter, the centralisation of power in the hands of few state organs, who from the offices in central Moscow, operate this theatre called new Russia like a puppet show, lifting hands and feet of the local population and those few foreign souls brave enough to brace the new Russia.
And even that, in and of itself, would not be so strange - after all, there is the great China where Facebook and even Google are controlled and monitored. The paradox of the new Russia is not that is entirely controlled or entirely free, it is that it stands like a bear on skates, uncomfortable at its own sight, straddling from one side to another, between the inconsistencies of new flashy residences and the realities of old communal flats, between a modern Ministry of Interior and KGB, between a soviet style cafeteria and Pushkin Cafe, between a justice system and what the president terms as "negal nihilism". Grosso modo, it looks like Russia today is somewhere between being a part of a global village and a big bear standing outside the global village, wondering what to do next. Insofar as in new Russia, old habits seem to die hard, the step into the global village seems a little off the agenda.
