Visiting Russia … 20 Years On

If you are considering a visit to Russia, this story is for you — BoomerCafé co-founder and editor Greg Dobbs recently was there, on assignment for HDNet. It was his first visit to the country since covering news there for ABC in the 1980s.

It must be twenty years since I last came to Russia — ominously, in retrospect, it was the Soviet Union back then. So since getting to Moscow on Columbus Day a week ago (which they don’t celebrate here; go figure), I’ve been watching for what’s new and what’s not. There have obviously been changes on major levels — capitalism has taken over, personal freedoms can be exercised, and the politics of the nation have been like a ride on a roller coaster. Both on the surface and deep down, this looks like a New Russia. But it would be a mistake to assume the Russians look just like us.

My initial image of the New Russia came before my Aeroflot flight even took off for Moscow from London. First of all, it wasn’t a creaky old Tupolov, the homemade aircraft that was the mainstay of the Soviet airline Aeroflot (we used to nervously joke that “Aeroflot” meant “Will it float?”). Now, it’s a shiny new Airbus 321, complete with toilet seat covers in the bathrooms. And since my trip was destined at best to be 26 hours door-to-door, Colorado to Moscow, I was happy to note that in contrast to the old days, we left London pretty much on time. Nowadays, it’s not an all-proletariat plane either; there are two classes of service, although in a nod to the good old days, the front section where everything from the seats to the service is clearly First Class is humbly called Business Class. I wasn’t up front of course — I get no frequent flier perks out of my comfort zone — but even back where I sat in coach, there was a meal. Kind of an Old Russia meal but still — United, listen up — it was a meal!

More important, I saw the New Russia in the plane’s passengers. Because Aeroflot still doesn’t have a first class reputation, foreigners generally try to take any other airline in and out of Moscow, so almost everyone else on the plane was Russian. And many of them were young, 20s and 30s. The first thing I noticed was their mood. In the Soviet era, people generally looked dour. They had their share of laughs at home over a vodka but publicly, they were conditioned to keep everything — their opinions, their grievances, even their moods — to themselves. That has changed. It was like watching a group of vivacious vacationers leaving Las Vegas (the winners, anyway).

The next thing I noticed were the women. In a Russian sort of way they were sexy and stylish: bare midriffs, spiked heels, jeans that must have been ironed on. But I looked at them, and the young men with them, with a kind of cautious curiosity. That’s because I was heading here to do a documentary on an already divisive youth movement supported by President Putin that appeals to the nationalistic dreams of young people to restore the old glory of Old Russia. The movement is called “Nashi” which in Russian means “Our team,” “Our people,” or just “Ours.” I had to wonder, could these attractive, modern, stylish young people be part of Nashi’s core?

There is nothing wrong with the dream of nationalism, unless it is misdirected. In fact, wherever I’ve been in the world, I’ve always sensed either a strong sense of nationalism, or almost none at all. After all, nationalism is about more than one’s birth within a set of political borders. Nationalism is borne of pride in a nation’s history, whether it’s a history of empire or innovation. What I’ve found over the years is, Libyans, for example, aren’t particularly nationalistic, nor are Nicaraguans or Venezuelans or Kenyans or Kuwaitis. They may be proud of something their country has accomplished and feel supportive of its present policies. But that’s not necessarily nationalism. On the other hand, in a nation like Egypt, which is now an economic and political mess, the people I’ve talked to through thirty years of visits there, right down to the lowest of the low, burst with nationalism; that’s because their ancestors once accomplished things we don’t understand even today. It’s the same in Iran, you hear it in Peru, you see it in China and India and Israel (remember, the word “nation” defines people more than territory). Of course the Brits and the French are great nationalists. As we are in the U.S.A.

The fear of some in Russia right now, though, is that the nationalism of the young in this long-strong, long-suffering, long-proud nation will be channeled the way nationalism was channeled in Germany in the years before World War II, to support whoever leads them and trample those in opposition. There already are signs of it. Today’s young Russians are the first generation to come of age since the collapse of the Soviet Union. They haven’t been told stories of the bad old days of Communism so much as they have been told stories of the good old days of Superpowerism.

One of the first small signs I saw that modern times haven’t completely swept the country came the moment I got through Customs at the airport upon my arrival and walked into the baggage hall — there were so many people smoking there, the place could have been on fire and you wouldn’t have known. And, picture the amenities of Old Russia in the airport men’s room: the sole bar of soap on the counter was one of those little round jobs, not an inch across, the kind of thing you’d expect to find in someone’s powder room. And there was one hot-air hand dryer … which didn’t work. I often rail against all the electric-eye contraptions you have to use these days in airport restrooms in the U.S. to turn on the water and squirt your soap and take your towel. But Moscow’s airport (this was the old airport; there’s a new one that I assume is more modern) could use a few of them now.

But there also were visual cues for the New Russia in the first ten minutes riding into the city, like shiny showrooms for Ford and Audi and Nissan. They were dazzling, as if neon is a magnet. This is a far cry from the old days, when most people didn’t have cars at all and when they did, they were made by the same factory that made the country’s pots and pans. Once when I came here for ABC News, our bureau needed a new Volvo and our Moscow-based American producer, Maria Casby, had to fly to Helsinki to buy one and drive it back. She told me a funny story about that drive that helps define Old Russia. Maria was making better time on the road than she’d anticipated, so she passed the exit ramp for a town where she had a hotel reservation for the night, but within a couple of miles a police car raced up behind her and stopped her and the officer got out and said “Miss Casby, you missed your exit.” The authorities knew not only exactly who she was from her license plate; they also knew precisely where she was supposed to sleep, and when (that’s how police on street corners used to track our movements around Moscow; you’d see them glance at your plate, whose color, letters, and digits identified you, then call ahead to the cop on the next corner).

A car and driver had met me at the airport, and when we got into the car, he pressed a radio button and who pours from the speakers but Frank Sinatra! Western decadence at its finest. I assume the driver tuned into this particular station in deference to me, but when I seemed to show little interest, he pushed a new button and for the rest of the ride, the radio blared music to which you might see Cossacks dance. New Russia and Old Russia meet on the radio dial.

Anyway, those bright automobile showrooms in New Russia — not to mention not one but two ubiquitous McDonald’s in those first ten minutes from the airport, and even a huge theater featuring IMAX — are a huge change from Old Russia when there was virtually no retail advertising because there was no competition; the state owned everything (even, believe it or not, the shoe shine kit that some kid would use to shine your shoes on the sidewalk). If you went out to buy shoes, the store had an unlighted sign out front that just said “Shoes.” Not “Greg’s Shoes” or “Macy’s Shoes,” just “Shoes.” Or “Food,” “Toys,” whatever. Why advertise when there’s no place else to shop?! But nowadays on the façade of GUM (“whom”), Moscow’s venerable department store directly across Red Square from the Kremlin, bright lights advertise for Dior and Louis Vuitton. Who’d have thunk it?!

Almost everywhere I’ve ever gone, lights have helped define a place. When they are bright, they often are a symbol of peace, and prosperity, and life. On the other hand, the worst place I’ve been in recent years is Liberia, west Africa, in which the national infrastructure was destroyed by 15 years of civil war, including the hydroelectric dam that powered the whole country. As a result, aside from generators, there is no electricity and at night, no light. Lights aren’t just about illumination; they are a sign of civilization. But an even more vivid illustration of the symbolism of light is burned into my memory from a night in 1981 when I boarded a train for Poland; it was the night after martial law was imposed to quell the Solidarity revolution, and Warsaw’s airport was shut down. ABC had found a Polish train stranded in West Berlin and they were selling tickets to go home. I flew to West Berlin and got to the train station and got on at midnight; we would cross through East Germany and roll into Poland. The sky was dark but the tracks traversing the Berlin Wall were elevated (and flanked by barbed wire) and no one had to tell me when we were passing from West to East. There was a clear line of demarcation in the lights, bright and even garish on the west side, glum and dull on the east. Aside from its illuminated monuments, the Moscow of Old Russia used to be like that. Not any more, not in the New Russia!

To the contrary, the New Russia is like a flattering copy of our richest institutions. For instance take that department store, GUM. Dior and Louis Vuitton on the outside, and inside, everything from Levi to LaCoste. The prices are an even better example than the names. I wandered into the Levis store, figuring that I could do a fair price comparison of a pair of Levis in Russia with a pair in the United States. But there was no comparison. Converted from Russian Rubles, a normal pair of Levi jeans in Moscow costs $140; $140 at home would keep me in jeans for a lifetime! Just outside Red Square facing the Kremlin wall is the National Hotel, a stalwart house of bourgeois quality through all the years of proletariat Soviet rule. At the National Hotel, Beef Stroganoff is $50, a Rib Eye steak, $100. If you go there to dine, go for the Beef Stroganoff; that’s the bargain.

The cheapest decent hotel room I found available on short notice in Moscow is $1,600 a night; some kind of gathering was taking place and it was too late to get anything cheaper. So a colleague found a flat — a rent-by-the-night apartment in a middle-class neighborhood about three miles north of the Kremlin. It was cheap — about $250 per night for three of us, and perfectly clean, even fairly spacious. The trouble is, the building is like some discredited U.S. public housing project from the ‘60s, complete with the smell of urine in the dirty, dark, cement stairwell. A Russian colleague who went with us to get us settled told us, Do not under any circumstances open the door! There were four metal doors to traverse just to go in and out, but his warning was, If it isn’t a career thief who takes your property in Moscow, it might be a cop, so do not open the door.

Well, on the second night, a buzzer rang, and rang and rang. I figured it might be our camera crew, who had dropped us off only 30 minutes earlier. Or, the rental agent, who had to return some registration forms. So after weighing the options, I did undo the locks on the first three doors and stepped into the stairwell, only to face one guy in a black turtleneck and black leather jacket and black pants, and another in a police uniform. “Passport, passport” the plainclothes guy demanded. My colleague came out behind me, and he knows a little Russian, and was able to demand IDs from them, but whispered to me that we had to keep them out of the apartment. The story has a happy ending — they had had a complaint about noise, evidently because of our predecessors in the rented flat. But when we told our Russian colleagues about this later, they said we really lucked out; that no one is more dangerous than the local cops.

Still, this is a better place without the Soviet system. I think almost all would agree. Despite the way Putin has chipped away at political democracy, personal freedoms in the New Russia, so far at least, are protected. The very fact that we were able to sit and interview five different critics over three days in Moscow, with a camera rolling, proves that. It was a stark contrast to how things were back in the days of the Old Russia, when I had people approach me a couple of times to tell me about something they wanted to protest. But they didn’t just walk up and start talking. More like a Cold War spy film, they might make your pace their pace as you’d walk down the sidewalk, and try talking without moving their lips. Or they’d look carefully and sometimes constantly over their shoulders as they’d sidle up to have a fast conversation. People always thought they were being watched, and if they were trying to interact with imperialist journalists like us, they probably were.

Today in the New Russia, they can not just speak openly, but they can read once-forbidden books, travel out of their government’s sphere of influence, and even hold public demonstrations, at least small ones. Just yesterday, we were driving through Moscow when we passed about a dozen men from a town outside the city, standing silently on a sidewalk holding printed signs. It turns out, they were right across the street from the headquarters of United Russia, Putin’s political party. We stopped to videotape their demonstration and find out what it was about. They were there to protest the government granting a rich supporter the right to develop a piece of property which they had been using for many years to park their cars. Not exactly an issue of global import but nonetheless, it never would have happened in the Old Russia; trust me!

But there was still a touch of the Old Russia in these New Russia demonstrators. At a certain point while I was talking with their spokesman, another man suddenly noticed that some of them had their heels on the grass beyond the edge of the sidewalk. He quickly told everyone to make sure they kept their shoes on the cement and off the grass; he obviously was still mindful of the days when the authorities might use something as small as stepping on the grass as a pretext to arrest people for trespassing and destroying public property (and of course everything in the bad old days was public property). This small incident reminded me of a December day in the early ‘80s when we got word that there would be a human rights demonstration not far from the Kremlin, which amounted to activists stepping anonymously one at a time out of a rush hour crowd during a blizzard and placing a flower at the base of a statue. To do that, they had to step over a chain maybe ten inches above the ground and put a foot in the dirt around the base, which was enough for the KGB to roughly pull them away and bundle them off (we knew they were KGB when we got there because they were the only guys standing around with three inches of snow on their shoulders; no one else was crazy enough to just be hanging around in a blizzard. We also knew because they all had the same shoes!). They also tore TV cameras off the shoulders of our crews and even kicked in CBS’s lens. Ours was the only video to survive; we surreptitiously got it into New York and made it available to our competitors.

I’ll end with one more comparison of the two Russias, Old and New. It is comparatively trivial, but deliciously symbolic. In Old Russia, you wouldn’t have found a public porta-potty on the street. The Soviet government, after all, was infamous for its failure to proactively improve people’s lives. Now, in New Russia, I have seen several. But unlike porta-potties in the U.S.A., which anyone can walk into for free, I noticed at least two here that had babushkas — little old ladies — sitting on the toilet seat inside one porta-potty with the door open and snow and sleet blowing in. They were the attendants, all ready to hand you a piece of tissue and take your kopeks — a few pennies — before you do what you need to do. So New Russia meets Old Russia again — Just don’t forget to pay!

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