Petersburg 2015

[n00bofblogs]

X-ray vision from a public bus

I was late for every class of the first week. After I began taking public transportation, things didn’t get much better. Buses ran unpredictably, with schedules offering an arrival every 10-15 minutes at best. I had grown used to what I had always considered a highly efficient, tightly scheduled, remarkably transparent bus system in Montreal. Nevertheless, at times my favorite part of the day was my 50-minute bus ride. At first I tried reading, but the situation felt too unstable, the scenery too engaging. For example, I was overjoyed to have given a meek old woman correct directions, all in Russian.

That small anecdote invites a tangent - three weeks in Russia revealed no rude Russians. The closest thing I saw to rudeness was the aggressive scolding of the elderly female guards at the Russian Museum -- at least with them, one knows where one stands.

Any search or inquiry about, or discussion among, North Americans living in Russia seems to turn to the country’s supposed lack of smilers. Personally, I noticed little difference in smiling procedure. Perhaps much of the smiling one expects in a North American context involves job pressure on low-level service employees.

I wouldn’t claim to believe that Russian society is more authentic or genuine than American or Canadian society, nor would I have the bona fides to say so. It should be obvious that we need to take care in making such broad statements. I’ve often heard of a Soviet-inherited ignorance of customer service standards. On the other hand, when I encounter canned remarks and tense smiles in North America, I tend to want to release pressure and somehow humanize the situation. So I guess I experienced a friendly normalcy in Russia, even a noticeable warmth and relaxation in response to my bumbling attempts at communication. With my poor Russian, most people in St. Petersburg simply giggled to hear me speak. But they still wanted to communicate. I’ve had far rougher treatment in Quebec, though maybe that makes sense given the province’s famously torturous linguistic history.

Anyway, the bus trips gave me a much-needed chance to relax and look around me.

Stamped on sidewalks and footbridges around St. Petersburg in red or yellow paint, I often saw a woman’s name and phone number beside or within a heart. Sometimes they just said, “девчонки“ - “devchonki,” a diminutive for “girls” - and provided a phone number. The implications were clear.

Human trafficking is a major, persistent problem in Eastern Europe. Probably, to some extent, the market has developed to serve North American and West European males seeking thrills and brides, though everything I read suggests that the mail-order/online bride business is not typically linked directly to the sex trade.

One day, on the bus that runs along Sadovaya, on one block I noticed that everyone seemed particularly tired, run-down, and sapped of cheerfulness. A man in a parka huddled on a stoop, trying to light a cigarette. Two women speaking with him seemed concerned. My eyes caught a pale man with a swollen face striding quickly, almost aggressively down the street. His expression made him seem as though in another world, or maybe his puffy cheeks and eyes just indicated a serious hangover. Just after I noted his odd appearance, he rolled a large stick of glue on the back of a flyer and stuck it on a light pole: “Девчонки,” it said, with a phone number.

Further on I observed a man facing outward from the sidewalk. This was notable because nearly everyone else seemed to face forward, move quickly, and mind their own business. He was stout, stood straight, was older and mustachioed. He seemed stereotypically upstanding. Then I noticed his eyes moving quickly back and forth, his mustache frequently twitching. And an index card was clipped to his coat with something written in black permanent marker. I strained my eyes to read, and could make out the Russian for “silver,” “gold,” and “watches.”

The slow-moving bus had given me the something like x-ray vision. I could see St. Petersburg’s underground currents running through its busy public streets in daytime. I suppose what struck me most of all is that such silent, subtle means of conducting illegal business must reflect a rather frightening law enforcement apparatus. Or maybe it was my newcomer’s eyes that made it difficult to spot such illicit activity. The two men were like slightly off-color bricks, or stones, in a rigid, unchanging facade.

[n00bofblogs]

Shawarma, beer, and complimentary song

On my first morning in St. Petersburg, Nadia offered to make me breakfast and show me the nearest bank machine, where I could withdraw rubles. She brought me down the street and into the small, busy lobby of a medical clinic. I inserted my card into the machine, which prompted a series of error messages - in English - and the appearance of a common Windows desktop. A countdown appeared warning shutdown. I informed Nadia, who responded with anxious outrage, and told me to hit cancel, or anything, to get the card to come back. A line began to form behind us. People were getting frustrated. A debate began. The ATM restarted, only to show "НЕ РАБОТАЕТ" - not working. Nadia sarcastically invited the others to try for themselves, defending us from judgement by the mob. I stood by, silent and hapless. I could do nothing but accept the card's permanent disappearance.

Anyway, the consumed debit card was only one of two I had brought to Russia, but it would still take me another day to find cash. I borrowed 36 rubles from Nadia to take a bus downtown to the university. All guests to Russia are required to register with their host or inviting agency within a working week of their arrival. This registration is approved by the local authorities and must be renewed in any place a foreigner stays overnight. In addition, the original visa application is supposed to include all planned destinations and accommodations. The punishment for violations is, invariably, a fine of around 1000 USD and/or deportation. One unusual twist is that attempting to leave the country with an expired visa may lead to detainment pending application for a special exit visa.

I haven't found legal rationales for these restrictions in English, but one wonders if the consequence - Russia seems like a forebodingly complex place to visit - is intended. I heard it suggested that the policies are relics of Soviet laws restricting the movement of both citizens and foreigners. In that light, I came to wonder whether the Russian government seeks in some part to shield its citizens from foreign "exposure," as in Soviet times, and thus maintain an alternate, state-directed reality. Russian state propaganda would certainly support this theory.

With Nadia's bus fare in hand, the time had come to confront the available modes of transport: the metro, a 20-minute walk from the apartment; the city buses, around the corner; or the marshrutkas, commercially operated minibuses lined up just across the Fontanka River. I would soon learn that marshrutkas carry several disadvantages. First, they are slightly more expensive than the city buses. Second, they are remarkably uncomfortable, with thickly stained seats and a constant, teeth-rattling tremble. Third, their abundance does not compensate for their slow speed and constant stopping, as they can be flagged down seemingly anywhere and will likewise stop to unload passengers on demand.

For the first few days, I opted to walk, first along Sadovaya Street, somewhat drab but scrappy and active, and then along the frozen, white Fontanka, longer and more picturesque. 

The high point of Sadovaya is bustling Sennaya Square, crowded by food kiosks and semipermanent storefronts as well as constant foot traffic from the metro on the square. Sennaya has a high concentration of fast food shawarma shops, as does Petersburg in general. I would visit one of these after a late night working and a few drinks. None of the shawarmas I ate in Petersburg qualified as particularly tasty or satisfying, only conveniently available. But this restaurant also offered karaoke. At least, the set-up resembled karaoke. But the singer, in his late 60s, proved to be the only performer, apparently the restaurant's official entertainment. He sat in one of the dining booths, reading lyrics from a screen at his table with little visible excitement but plenty of emotion in his voice. The songs seemed distinctly Russian to me, sounding like 1980s renditions of old gypsy ballads - slow, mournful, and masculine. Meanwhile televisions near the ceiling played a Russian reality show, all hot tubs and catfights. The overload of trashy stimuli resulted in an environment somehow improbably wholesome, lively, and special. I left the place thinking that such self-assured cultural amalgamation could conquer at will, that Russia had little doubt of steamrolling Europe under cheap shawarma, beer, and complimentary song.

[n00bofblogs]

"The mob that is ruling us"

I had been planning to visit, study, or work in Russia for about six years. I majored in Russian Studies, and my maturation has coincided with that of Putin's regime.

I was initially attracted by 19th-century Russian literature, particularly Ivan Turgenev and Fyodor Dostoevsky, as well as Soviet history. Putinist Russia seemed dull in comparison, Putin himself as part of what I saw as a wave of bland neoconservative leaders elected in the early 2000s out of timid complacency.

This perception of Putin was rather inaccurate, in that neither Putin's rise nor his persistence could be considered the result of mere "elections," and, besides, Russia under his leadership has since followed a rather ominous path of development, displacing his regime from the realm of the bland.

Suffice to say that my first step onto a Russian city street felt like a weighty one, shadowed by years of anticipation that had turned, I admit, to pure dread.

With a mixture of disappointment and reassurance, I discovered that my first impressions had been correct - Russians live normally. Late at night, my neighborhood near the Fontanka River felt subdued and rather dull. Couples and dogwalkers were out. I thought I saw a rat poking around just outside an alleyway - it turned out to be a plastic bag (of all the cities I've been in, New York remains by far the rattiest).

Petersburg has a dense concentration of elegant structures. It can be difficult to tell, from building to building, which ones may have been built to imitate the city's original architectural style (circa 1700s), and which ones followed the template of Stalinist/Soviet utilitarian elegance. The former, propagated to some extent throughout the empire, were meant to portray the empire's modern sophistication and strength; the latter, likewise reproduced both in big cities and provincial towns, displayed the fruits of socialist triumph. Certainly, Petersburg has a lot of beauty, mingled every now and then with cranes, smokestacks, the bleak cement guts of Soviet industry. The buildings tower high, their facades simple and unending, but neither uniform nor joyless. The roads are wide and the sidewalks are narrow. The canals give you views of distant structures, usually onion domes, billowing smokestacks, or both, and in general walking feels like endless drudgery, with everything seemingly modeled for beings much larger than humans. Petersburg's pleasantness is superficial; a description simply of what the city contains conceals that the atmosphere is overwhelmingly stolid and bleak. I can't explain why this is so, but the city has this same reputation in literary history, at least as far back as the 19th century.

It was not long before I encountered politics, though not of the shade I was expecting. With Putin's oft-reported astronomical approval ratings (85% at last count), seeming only to balloon as the current crisis intensifies, one might think it hard to hear native criticism of his government or his actions. Maybe I just got lucky, but one of my first conversations with Russians turned quickly to grocery shortages, attributed to the policies of "the mob that is ruling us." I can't speak to the usual quality of selection in Russian grocery stores, but produce sections indeed looked grimly sparse, with careful scrutiny required to avoid half-black or shriveled vegetables. In August 2014, Putin banned food imports from countries that had levied sanctions on Russia for its annexation of Crimea and prosecution of war in southeastern Ukraine, cutting off channels of high-quality EU items. As a result, food prices have doubled or tripled (I can't be sure without reference points). Some EU food has supposedly been imported via Belarus, which has audaciously sold the goods to Russia for high profits. Even the Soviet Union used to buy U.S. grain. 

As if that were not enough, I soon heard news of the mother from Vyazma, a town west of Moscow that, coincidentally, has a history of blunting foreign invasions aimed for the capital. The mother of 7 children, Svetlana Davydova, was being charged with treason for calling the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow after noticing that a military base near her home was empty and overhearing a commander, drunk, in the version I heard, explaining that they had been sent to fight in Ukraine. The news, which I had not as of yet found in any Western outlets, had been gleaned through use of Tor, an anonymizing web browser which conceals an internet user's identity and allows them to circumvent web-blocking censorship used in countries like China, Russia, and Iran. Tor is both funded by the U.S. government and intensively targeted for cracking by the NSA. Likewise, Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs has offered a large reward to any enterprising Russian who may be able to crack Tor and provide the government with information on users' identities. All that said, I personally did not encounter web censorship in Russia, which leads me to believe that the government has so far been quite selective in blocking websites, targeting primarily or solely Russian-language blogs and independent media.

I often read of Putin's approval ratings with skepticism, and my encounters with real, live Russian critics of his government deepened the feeling. As far as I know, all such approval ratings come from the Russian polling agency Levada Center, widely respected and cited in Western media. It's not so difficult for me to believe that a majority of Russians support Putin, particularly given stable economic growth occurring during his rule after the chaotic 1990s, coupled with widespread, pervasive propaganda and the silencing of most high-profile critics and all viable political opposition. But I do grow skeptical of approval percentages that reach into the 80s, bolstered by news articles predicting that were Putin to face election today, he'd win with over 90% of the vote, if only because politicians in electoral democracies simply don't see those numbers, to my knowledge or memory. A worthy endeavor may be to seek other such instances of astronomical approval in election-based systems.

Another explanation for my apparently exceptional experience with Russians' opinions could be that I was visiting St. Petersburg, historically the most "Western" Russian city, and the one that still, to my knowledge, attracts the largest number of foreign students. Moscow and St. Petersburg are noted as the most concentrated centers of opposition to Putin, with much more unanimous support in the provinces. If roughly 15% of the population does not approve of Putin's performance, that leaves about 22,350,000 Russians one might meet with something negative to say about the current government. That more than covers the two metropolises combined.

[n00bofblogs]

"Full Service"

Having passed through a lax customs checkpoint, I proceeded, on the instructions of my future landlady, to the official airport taxi desk. I fluently rattled off the address I wanted in Russian, but dropped the facade at the first question asked of me. The tired man at the desk obligingly switched to English. A slip was provided with my fare information and the license plate of the taxi that would be waiting for me outside.

The exit led into some sort of cavernous mall, but I turned on the blinders and began moving straight for the exit, as a cluster of men stood just outside the passengers' area calling "Taxi, taxi." Evidently, these were the "illegal" taxi drivers I had already been warned against several times. A prominent sign in the baggage collection area even asked passengers not to take these prohibited taxis, whose drivers nevertheless waited within the airport for all incoming travelers. Warnings in travel books and government websites abound of "taxis" used as means to lure tired, lost, and/or overburdened tourists into an inescapable mugging, and not only in Russia - it seems I read of such tricks being pulled in every non-Western nation, but there are scant means for an ignorant foreigner to identify "official" versus "scam" taxis, especially in a place like Russia, where private cars are often known to be used as informal/temporary taxis.

I ignored the rogue drivers, or vocally rejected their offers when it felt necessary, but having passed through the gauntlet, I continued hearing entreaties behind me. I turned to see a very tall blonde man, with a blue tag hanging from his neck. I answered, "Nyet," several times, until he switched to English and began asking me if I needed help with my bags. He followed me outside to the parking area, and I walked toward an official-looking booth in hopes of finding some authority to protect me in my haplessness. "It is a normal taxi," he said, and at this I almost relented, with my hands full, unable to look at the receipt with the plate number I needed. "I already have a taxi," I said, putting my bags on the ground, and finally he either grew impatient or had heard what he was waiting for.

With some effort I located my appointed car and drew the attention of the driver, who was talking on a cell phone. He got out of the car and helped me place my bags in the trunk. "Full service," he muttered in English.

His radio quietly played what sounded like a live performance by Russian band ДДТ (DDT), formed in the '80s and a stalwart of Russian rock. I recalled the familiarly underwhelming sense of passing through urban sprawl after arriving, at long last, in a new and interesting place. So this is it...a gargantuan, glittery casino, furniture stores, a Gulf station. Traffic moved quickly and efficiently, and it sunk in palpably that life, at least from an outsider's perspective, does not proceed so differently here as opposed to any large city in the West.

St. Petersburg is a large city, of a particular size with which I am unfamiliar. By most definitions, it seems to be nearly twice as big as Montreal and somewhat more than half the size of New York, the other two major cities I have lived in. But by any account it is between them in size. Perhaps unlike either of those cities, it has had dramatic fluctuations in population, with gigantic drops during the Civil War (1917-1922) and the brutal Nazi siege of 1941-1944. According to Petersburg (actually, Leningrad)-born author and musician Solomon Volkov (in his St. Petersburg: A Cultural History) , St. Petersburg dropped from 2,347,000 people from before the revolution, in 1915, to 779,000 in 1920. Volkov references the lithographs of Petersburg artist Mstislav Dobuzhinsky as an evocation of the city's spirit and appearance at the time.

The city starved and shrank again during the Nazi siege. This time, according to Volkov, an estimated population of 3.5 million would reach about 700,000. Estimates are incomplete, probably due in part to Stalinist-era propaganda and attitudes towards (dis)information, but, according to Volkov and Wikipedia, between 1 and 2 million people died, at times thousands per day.

So, for St. Petersburg, in addition to the usual uncertainty about what defines a city and how it can be delimited, must be taken the acknowledgement that at various times, for various reasons - usually the arrogant whims of petulant and unsophisticated tyrants - the city has lost most of its organic life, only to grow again.

All this to say that it took quite long to get from the airport nearer to the center of the city with no traffic, but not much longer than in any other city I have visited, and still I was surprised to reach the Fontanka when we did.

After some trouble finding the apartment - the driver was not inclined to believe me about the location, but drove around searching for the address, which I took to be a protective gesture - I dragged my bags to a nondescript metal door and typed in the entry code as prescribed. "Hello?" An expectant voice came through the intercom. Thus I met Alexander, and shortly thereafter, his wife Nadia, two exceedingly friendly Russians in their 50s or 60s whose room I would be renting.

On the basis of bits of unreliable knowledge scraped up online in the nervous lead-up to my journey, I turned down offers of tea and food (though hungry), offered them a box of chocolates, and generally muddled our meeting in a misinformed attempt to avoid rudeness.

Along with the many so-called "myths" about Russian culture held by Westerners, there are several sources online advising behavior, i.e., "Turn down X when offered, but always accept X or risk offense, and expect a ritualistic argument over X, or Russians will consider you rude." I was asked to remove my shoes (something I do in nearly every apartment or home I visit in the U.S. and Canada) and I was offered slippers, but, as usual, authoritative-seeming calls for extreme delicacy and strict codes of behavior ring false. I was stupid to have absorbed any such advice, but having read it once, it simply sunk into my memory, augmenting my natural instincts in a moment of anxiety. More on this later.

After a warm welcome, I emailed loved ones about my arrival. Though tired, I had not yet adjusted to the 8-hour change in time. More or less an entire day had slipped out of my grasp. I decided to take a short walk around the neighborhood, to occupy my mind and tire my recently liberated limbs.

[n00bofblogs]

ПАСПОРТНЫЙ КОНТРОЛЬ    passport                   control

You could say I started my journey via e-mail over two months ago, as any American's entry to Russia begins with a visa application involving, primarily, the collection of identity documents but also, in my case, an HIV test and original invitation document. The length of processing actually had most to do with the wait to receive the invitation, issued by the Federal Migration Service of Russia after application by an inviting institution, i.e., a university, company, etc.

But my travel began a few days ago, in dark, frigid Montreal. Montreal's Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport offered the usual array of pre-flight shopping and entertainment - inexplicably expensive food and alcohol, inexplicably large candy and chocolate, and a luxury setting that remained inexplicably uncomfortable and stress-inducing. British Airways greeted me with a smile and two $95.00 baggage fees for placing two bags in stowaway, one of which qualified as overweight. I didn't find anything interesting about the following nine or so hours except that I was handed a vegan meal on the plane, an impressive selection of quinoa with sweet potatoes that unfortunately tasted like paper, and that alcohol was complimentary.

Heathrow proved as dystopian as some of England's novelists might have predicted, with large bank ads promising passersby that "your data will be your DNA," and a maze of escalators and tramcars leading to a locked door on the tarmac. A shuttle bus picked up passengers and played us a cartoon of a family cheerfully riding a conveyer belt into security inspection, surrendering bags and clothing, and suddenly being encapsulated by a flying jumbo jet which materialized around them. My security agent and I did share a chuckle when a full body scan suggested something suspect hovering just below my right knee.

A Finnair crew, all blonde and wearing black uniforms with black-and-white silk scarves and black leather gloves and boots, took me on a smaller plane to Helsinki, which looked snowy and idyllic from the sky, with tall firs scattered around cozy wooden homes. We reached Vantaa Airport in a shroud of black night, with snow lightly falling.

My layover at Vantaa felt more relaxed, with less sweat and biosecurity than Heathrow. Finally, with a seemingly all-Russian group of passengers, I boarded an even smaller jet bound for St. Petersburg. The plane was less than half full. Maybe this is normal for the Helsinki-Petersburg route on a weekday in January, and as far as I know, this trip can be completed reasonably overland. Or maybe this is a consequence of the Western propaganda war. To be sure, none of my flights were full - I never had to sit next to another passenger. But this one felt empty.

As the plane rolled to a stop, I admit I felt some trepidation at the sight of uniformed men in the telltale fur hats marked by insignia.

A shuttle bus took us to the terminal, where I followed the signs for "Passport Control." Separate booths were reserved for citizens of the Commonwealth of Independent States, who face fewer entry restrictions. I found an empty booth for general entry.

I came face-to-face with a rather stern woman through a glass partition and waited for questions. "Zdravstvuyte," I tried, my voice cracking. I realized I was disoriented and sheepish, and finally handed her my passport. In Russian, she asked me a question of which I only understood the word "glasses." So I removed them to allow her to inspect my face. And that was it. She gave me the all-important migration card, and I entered the Russian Federation.