On Ukraine
Recently a good friend bowed out of drinks. She struggled to reconcile her Ukranian identity and my Russian one, given the invasion.. We have since reconciled, but this was my first personal experience with an ongoing international disaster.
I was born in Moscow and moved here to start 7th grade. I spoke 3 words of English and was clearly an emigrant. All my memories and upbringing were Russian, becoming an American would take years.
When I realized that my friend was avoiding a Russian, I was conflicted, because I haven’t embraced my Russian self for a long time. I’ve also never imagined living through a war, much less one where my homeland is the aggressor. The feeling of shame, on this scale, was new, as was the absolute dissonance of, “I am not the bad guy here, but I’m definitely not the good guy”.
The history of our people was catching up with me. That senseless, banal evil that my parents shielded me from, ultimately by moving to America, has reached out across the ocean and thrust its ugly face back into my life.
A friend asked my thoughts on the conflict. Why is it happening, what are Russians thinking? A proper story would require me to share a century worth of abusive culture, over a drink.
How do I explain the lack of value that the Kremlin places on human life, whereas America will practically go to war over a citizen (at least in theory).
The American dream, fleeting as it sometimes seems, lets everyone shape their destiny. Whereas in Russia, your savings accounts may just magically disappear. Running a business without bribes is impossible. Getting anything done from a driver’s license renewal to a travel visa, requires working through a bog of bureaucracy where every minor official is out to ruin your life because their’s didn’t turn out.
One has to imagine generations of people being shitty to each other because society has beaten the hope out of them. Then replace optimism with a bitter void, resembling a frat bro who hazes a newbie out of spite rather than comraderie.
And as shit surely flows down hill, the Kremilin does onto everyone else. Whether it’s the tzar in previous centuries, the bolsheviks after the revolution or the gangsters of the 90s who became the oligarchs of today, the few at the top of the pyramid treat the rest as nothing but proverbial, and now literal, cannon fodder (but also have a high propensity to fall out of windows!).
Putin sits at the apex. An ex-KGB agent who survived the ruthlessness of the post soviet power vacuum and brought his circle to power (he used to be a part of a thieving crew in St. Petersburg). It’s obviously impossible for a normal person to enter the sanctum, but for those who do, you must commit a crime (as with any mob) that gives the leader power over you in case you need to be brought to heel.
So any oligarch that gets too independent will eventually find himself arrested for embezzlement. Everyone knows everyone’s crime but prosecution, like shit flows downhill.
This creates a culture of fear and subservience. God knows what Putin read and thought as he sat in a COVID bunker for two years, but there was nobody that would have the balls to call him crazy when he decided to reclaim the old empire.
America was built on freedom of speech. You go to a protest expecting to fully vent (I know my privilege is showing), but in Russia you will get arrested and could spend years in jail on trumped up charges. Security forces are showing up to people’s home fore merely “Likes” of anti war messaging. Russians recently faced repressions after protesting the poisoning of a popular dissident.
Those who speak agaionst the war today, do so knowing that they will be fined, beaten and imprisoned. They will still go, despite the fact that their life savings just got wiped out, again, by the sanctions.
They will fight their own people on the streets, the voices of reason against the propaganda kool-aid-drinkers (imagine if every outlet was Fox News ). They will fight against the establishment knowing that it carries a 20 year sentence, because they see their sons and brothers coming back in body bags from a war of fratricide that doesn’t exist.
Generations of Russians grew up under communism where it didn’t matter that you worked the hardest. The rewards of your toil may go to the laziest guy, because he quote - needs it more, “From each according to his ability to each according to his need”.
Why do Russians drink so much? Imagine, putting in a year to get that top account at work, only to see the commission go to the guy who never showed up to the office, because he is a (communist) party member and you are not. If your performance doesn’t matter, why not treat life like a vacation. If you know that your best effort across your best years won’t make a difference, then the bottle doesn’t sound so bad (I prefer the non alcoholic, Athletic).
As I read the paragraphs above, each strikes my American self as bewildering. It’s hard to believe. You would just sort of let it go in polite society. When you combine a few of them together it comes off practically alien.
So when friends ask, I usually give them a paragraph, to process and understand a little bit more. I think the luxury of being here is that you don’t need to understand the dark context (or the dark Russian humor). Understanding each other as Americans is challenging enough.
Yuri