Since this country is in so much flux, I thought it would be interesting (for me at least) to put down my observations of life here, so let's start with the first time I got to Russia.
Communism and state ownership disappeared (?) overnight. Those who were fast, or clever, or simply in the right place at the right time snatched up the shattered pieces of the country and became the new leaders. If you managed the milk factory under the Soviet system, it wasn't hard for you to declare yourself the owner of it in the new Russia.
So, in those tumultuous years immediately following the end of the Soviet Union, as the country was being redivided among the privileged few -- many of whom were the same privileged few in the previous system -- life changed very little for the average citizen. Of course, with the accumulation of wealth at the top and new access to Western products, the old babushka trundling across one of Moscow's wide boulevards with her groceries had to run twice as fast now to avoid being run down by some rich oligarch's new Mercedes, but her life was not so different otherwise.
Grocery stores looked much the same as they had in the Soviet Union. If you wanted dairy products, you went to the "Milk" store. Meat and fish were found (however rarely) at the "Meat" store and "Fish" store. We foreigners were sometimes allowed to shop at the so-called Beriozka, or "Birch," stores. This is where, in Soviet times, foreigners and members of the Communist Party shopped. At the Beriozka you could find western vodka, chocolates (frequently expired), chewing gum, all the things that were unavailable to the 96% of Russians who were not Party members.
Shopping whether it was for books or clothes followed the senseless Soviet payment system. If you wanted to buy a book, you'd go to the bookstore and when you spotted the one you wanted behind the counter, you'd ask the saleslady if you could look at it. If you decided you wanted it, you'd note the price -- say 10 rubles -- hand the book back to her and then go wait in line at the cashier in some other part of the building. You'd give the cashier 10 rubles and she'd give you a receipt saying you'd paid 10 rubles. Then you'd go back to the book counter, show the saleslady your receipt and she'd give you the book -- making a small tear in the top of the receipt to show that you'd paid. Very tedious.
Customer service in general did not exist. If you went to a clothing store, for example, you were summarily ignored. If you did decide to buy something, the cashier treated the interaction as a huge inconvenience to her -- often barking at you and refusing to complete the transaction until you produced some change to make her math easier. Where we have smiles in the U.S. all you got in Russia was eye-rolls and sighs of disgust.
It was hard to be a student in a summer language program in Russia in 1995. There were simply no cafes, bars, coffee shops, dance clubs, restaurants, or other public places to gather or to get a meal. There were occasional cafeterias where you could get a meal (lunchroom-style), but the food was pretty bad. Chicken was almost always a tiny bit of meat attached to a strange knot of tendons and bones. As a result we had to do nearly all of our cooking in the dorm or eat in the university cafeteria. With the poor quality of the kitchen in the dorm, that meant I subsisted almost entirely on soda crackers and Balance bars I had brought from home. Our group leader did manage to get us access to breakfast at a dormitory just under a mile away from the one we lived in. That was a very long walk in the snow (yes, in May) to get kasha and tea, and maybe a hotdog. Of course, if we had lived with a family, the food would have been fine. It still would have consisted mostly of potatoes, cabbage, and dill, but it would have been warm, buttery and home-cooked. It was mostly a function of poor cooking facilities and an absolute absence of restaurants that made that a lean summer.
Other conveniences that we take for granted just didn't exist or were far from what I was used to. There were no ATMs and Western Union was too difficult to use, so we had to travel with several thousand dollars to cover all of our expenses in the country. That meant wearing a stuffed money belt all the time. It was possible to use traveler's cheques, so I would go to the western-style Grand Hotel Europe where they had chairs you could sit in and a proper toilet, not the squat-style ones that were only occasionally to be found elsewhere in the city.
Letters coming to Russia took forever, and ones going out took even longer. I believe I beat several of my letters home. With an unreliable phone system and no such thing as email or cell phones, it was easy to feel very isolated.
In other ways, it was great to be a tourist here. The dollar was quite strong against the ruble. A super-fast ride on the efficient and clean metro only cost about 11 cents. Beer from Finland was excellent and cheap. And souvenirs could be hand for a song.
Respect for the family and the elderly was noticeable. I recall being at the philharmonic theater one time and the two young girls next to me were giggling to themselves. The old man in the row ahead of us turned around and said "girls, you are being a bother!" Since in the U.S. any time someone criticizes us or reprimands us, the automatic response is to be defensive or to sass back, I was stunned with the girls simply fells silent. There were no more giggles or mutterings about a "stupid old man." They just quieted down.
When you talked to Russians at that time, they seemed cautiously excited about the changes happening in their country. They were acutely aware of how far behind the rest of the world they were in terms of quality products and a productive economy, but they could sense that great change was possible.
They were also very skeptical of anyone who did become successful. That person was immediately assumed (often accurately) to have connections to the Russian mob and to have probably compromised on their ethics along the way. The average person just tried to stay away from these "New Russians." On several occasions, my short hair (and perhaps stern look) got me mistaken for a mob member and I was ushered to the front of the line at the store so that I'd get my business done and be out of their hair more quickly. With the daily mob killings around the city at the time, that was probably a good move on their part -- blood-soaked shelves are hard on business.
Considering all these challenges, isn't it odd that I've come back so many times over the years?
