I’ve been doing a lot of
presentations recently about life after the Soviet Union. For a lot of American
Jewish audiences, there’s one recurring question, which is usually phrased
along the lines of, “why don’t the Jews leave?”
So … it’s a good point.
Surely life is better in Israel, or in the States? Or anywhere?
But it’s not as simple as
that. For one thing, “better” is a really difficult term to quantify. I think
life is “better” in Israel – but does that mean that all American Jews should
move there? (Don’t send me your angry responses on that one). How do you force people
living in some countries to move if “we” decide they’d be “better” off somewhere
else? And how do we compare living
conditions from one place to another.
Into this mix, there was a
terrific article the other day in the Moscow Times, outlining “Ten Good Things About Putin’s Russia.” Some of them made me laugh. Some of them are so
blindingly obvious that you forget about them until someone points them out. Well-worth
reading …
The news out of Russia
has mostly been bad — and deservedly so. Things have been going
steadily downhill since the great protest march on the eve
of President Vladimir Putin's third inauguration
in May 2012.
But some perspective has been
lost in the process. There are good things about Putin's Russia as well.
Here is the top 10:
1. You can leave. Andrei Sakharov, leader of the Human Rights
movement in the Soviet Union, insisted that the No. 1 human right was
the right to leave your country, otherwise you are living in a
prison house. It is unfortunate that some people still have to flee
Russia, but it is fortunate that they can. Customer service has improved,
there is less anti-Semitism and Russians are free to pray
and leave the country if they want.
2. You can pray. In my experience, it is a lot easier
to find believers who are intelligent and fun in Russia than it
is in the U.S. A Russian can be a member of the
intellectual class and still follow the Orthodox Church's complex
schedule of fasts. For all the cozy hypocrisy in the
relations of church and state that the Pussy Riot punk rock
group mocked in its prank at Moscow's main cathedral, it must be
still counted as progress that believers can openly worship now without fearing
social or economic loss as in Soviet times. That also raises
the question of how long today's Russia should be compared to a
Soviet yesterday.
3. You can open
a business. What once were capital crimes are now career choices.
The streets of some Russian cities now are now displaying more
individual capitalism, the little stores with personality that lend color
and variety to street-level life. Shopping is no longer
an expedition. All sense of adventure has been lost. If you want
something, you buy it — including on the Internet. E-commerce is
a booming business in Russia. All you need is money, the new
tyrant.
4. The Internet is free. My
rule is that a country without a free Internet can never be called
free, whereas a country with a free Internet can never be called
entirely unfree. The perverse irony here is that modern authoritarian
regimes may actually prefer free Internet and social media because it
makes it easier to track and monitor dissidents. Case in point:
Protesters on the barricades in Kiev received the following text
message: "Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant
in an unsanctioned rally."
5. You can eat. When I used
to travel to the Soviet hinterland, I always carried a salami,
bread and a knife. It was perfectly possible to end up in a town
where there was no restaurant open and no food in the stores.
Recently I had a few nice meals in Murmansk in the Arctic
Circle. Everywhere you look there are sushi restaurants, which somehow has
become the emblem of modern dining sophistication — much like
being pro-gay rights has become the emblem of the modern, civilized
mindset. We'll know that Russia has arrived when we start seeing gay sushi
restaurants popping up not only in Moscow, but in the conservative
hinterlands as well.
6. There is less
anti-Semitism. Or maybe it has simply been exported to western Ukraine
and Europe. In reality, of course, Russia's xenophobia
and bile has been refocused on Central Asian guest workers
and natives of the Caucasus. From time to time, you can see
Orthodox Jews in black coats and hats, long beards and payis
walking down city streets unself-consciously, lost in their own
conversation and oblivious to the fact that they are in the
country that gave the world the words "pogrom"
and "Pale of Settlement."
I was amazed and gladdened
when there was no detectable outbreak of anti-Semitism over the fact
that so many of the oligarchs were Jewish. Of course, there is still
some anti-Semitism in Russia, but perhaps only just enough to prove
the old bitter maxim that anti-Semitism is hating Jews more than you
should.
7. Weak commies. In a
country once totally dominated by Communists, it is a pleasure
to see them now as a mostly toothless opposition — often
literally — whose existence helps keep up the appearances
of tolerance and democracy. It also gives Westerners who remember
the Cold War the opportunity to look at real Russian
Communists who still sincerely believe all of that ideological claptrap.
Their spectacular historical failure has now sent some Communists back
to their original function: helping society's poor and forgotten.
8. Smiles and good
service. In the bad old days, smiles were rare in general and service
was often called "unobtrusive" — meaning that the waiter or
salesperson was nowhere to be found, having simply disappeared probably
to stand in line for chicken or toilet paper. Service with
a smile was outright inconceivable. Now Russians smile more often
and more easily, and service is definitely speedier, probably because
chicken and toilet paper are readily available in stores.
Nonetheless, you can still get
the old-fashioned service with a scowl. On the bullet train
between Moscow and St. Petersburg, the stewardesses are quick
to bring you a surprisingly tasty lunch, but they slap it down
on your tray and disappear to deal with things more important
than customers like gossip and makeup. The Soviet Union dies hard.
9. Alexei Navalny. It's wonderful that today's
Russia could have a wise-cracking corruption-fighting whistle-blower like
Navalny. He is a person of intelligence, integrity
and sufficient stature to worry Putin, especially after Navalny won
an impressive 27 percent of the vote in September's mayoral
election in Moscow. There have already been efforts to cripple him
with phony criminal charges resulting in a conviction that may disbar him
from any future political runs for office. There may even be efforts
to crush him even more completely than that. At least he can leave
the country — as of this writing anyway.
10. Everything that always made
Russia wonderful no matter who rules from the Kremlin. The list
includes vodka, jokes, excellent conversation, passionate friendship, vodka,
heroic hospitality, banyas, a love of art and music,
a sense of vastness reaching from steppe to space, vodka.
