Russians face up to prosperous reality

news.bbc.co.uk ^ | 05/28/2007 | Bridget Kendall

[WesternCulture]

In the first of three special reports, Bridget Kendall, the BBC's diplomatic correspondent, reports from Russia on life and attitudes in the provincial city of Nizhny Novgorod.

Nizhny Novgorod, like much of Russia, has changed significantly

At 7 am on a sunny spring morning I step down onto the platform in Nizhny Novgorod.

The other passengers on the overnight train from Moscow are well dressed and carrying briefcases - businessmen and women returning from meetings in the capital, it seems.

[2banana]

“What’s the main difference between a Russian and an American? An American passionately and with all his soul loves his country and his people, and is offended when any foreigner doesn’t share his feelings. A Russian in the same way, with his whole soul hates his country and his people, but gets very offended when some foreigner shares his feelings...”

[Virulas]

The article starts out promisingly enough. The writer compares the bleak Nizhny Novgorod she saw eight years prior with the modern one, which looks more prosperous at first blush.

Then the article takes a most displeasing turn. She meets a young family who are unaquainted with the poverty of the Soviet system. She then proceeds to educate them on how little progress they’ve actually made. She makes mock of their one-room flat, as if to say “This is all that your wage slavery has earned you?”

Then there is the obligatory visit to the pensioners who are barely scraping by. Who feel abandoned by capitalism, ground underfoot by greedy money-grabbers. It is a variation on the journalistic canard about the war on poverty - “So much bleakness in the midst of all this prosperity. Such a cold and unfeeling culture.”

The Berlin Wall fell on Novermber 9, 1989. Western journalists, feeling betrayed by the collapse of the USSR, minted the “old pensioner” cliche on November 10 and they’ve been writing those articles ever since. Flash forward 50 years:

“Petra in Novosibirsk recalls a simpler time, when there may have been only sand to eat and the air was choked with radioactive particles, but there was heat. But the collapse of the Soviet system changed all that. Now Petra lives in a cramped one-bedroom flat and has to pay the electric bill herself. ‘Unless I keep working,’ she says, ‘I may not be able to pay my bills!’”

Such a cold and unfeeling culture!

[goldstategop]

"Everything is decided for us in this country."

Russia may have a Western veneer but habits of submission to the state remain strong. There is a middle class but its growing slowly. Russia remains a world apart psychologically from Europe, that is reinforced by history, culture and the vast spaces of Russia that seem to distance the country from the liberalizing effect of European civilization.

Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus