So this weekend is the G8 conference. They have been cleaning up the streets for the last week, and there are street cleaners spraying down and sweeping at all hours of the night. Also, there are significantly less bums around the metro stations since they’ve been rounded up for the weekend. I heard someone say that some of the slummy suburbs were emptied for the weekend as well. Additionally all those wild dogs and cats I’ve been seeing around were rounded up and killed. Oh Putin. Human rights and anti globalist protestors have had a very hard time getting here because of a) the difficulty of getting a visa (required to come to Russia) and b) the police here are very scary. Officer Friendly (as you knew him in America) is not your friend in Russia. You do not ask the police for help or ask them questions. It’s best to stay as far away from the police as possible.
There have been far more police here the last week as well, shipped in from all over Russia. The special police force has been brought out as well. I like to call them the Omen police, because the word омон in Russian is on the back of their blue camo police uniforms. Professor Dorontchenkov told me how this special police force was created by Gorbachev, and that their big beating sticks are called “democratizers.” Awesome. There were a lot of these fellows outside the major hotels, shutting down and whole streets and asking for documents from whomever tried to enter.
Transportation in the city was also crazy. Certain bus and trolleybus routes were closed and I think even some of the metro stations were closed. Everything was very slow moving. I think a whole street was shut off so Putin, Bush, and Chirac could go biking together. In anticipation of the G8 Petersburgers completely fled the city. Thursday night walking home was practically empty. Everyone had intelligently gone to their dachas in the country. The unsavory characters were still being rounded up and I saw a few policemen busting a guy for drugs, pulling up his shirtsleeves to expose bruised holes from needles on his inner arms. It’s unfortunate but true that if you look like you’re anything but white (I think Asians seem to fair better, however) you will be stopped and made to show your documents and possibly asked for a bribe. It’s especially bad if you’re male. On more than 5 occasions I have seen this happen, like while exiting the subway a policeman stopped a mixed race man and his girlfriend in front of me for absolutely no reason. Racism, along with drug abuse and AIDs, is a serious problem here. But those are other stories. So in any case, you always have to carry around copies of your documents with you including your passport, visa, your customs slip, and your documents saying your reason for visiting here (like I have my documents from the Nevsky Institute which is sponsoring me).
It has been funny in the last week to pick up newspapers, both in Russian and English. If you’ve been watching/reading the news at all you probably know more than I do about the G8, since I’ve been living in a practically newsless bubble the last month. From what I’ve gathered Russians love Putin. My professors do not like him so much, comparing some of his policies to things Stalin did. But hey, Putin is a former KGB officer after all. He’s supposedly done some good things for the economy, but if you talk to an average Russian they might say that they have seen little improvement in their own lot since much of this money only goes to the top strata of society, which is horribly corrupt. Russians’ relationship with their country’s past is a strange thing here, which I think explains the mixed feelings people have about Putin nowadays. Some Russians bemoan contemporary times and miss Russia’s important place in the world during the Cold War, missing the Soviet days when there were no homeless people (they were all given jobs) and such. Others remember the Soviet Union with horror, and many young people just seem to see it as a joke.
Awww. Putin Love:
It’s always been strange to me when talking to some Russians and seeing how much they treat Stalin and Soviet Russia as some kind of embarrassing joke, when Stalin supposedly killed more people than Hitler. No one can make jokes about Hitler, and you don’t see Hitler inspired cafes with campy concentration camp décor like you might see some restaurants here modeled after things from the Soviet Union. I’m not sure if it’s some kind of coping mechanism, or whether people here still cannot fathom all the souls who simply disappeared from this country and from what were once Soviet States, or if it’s because Stalin’s acts were less “methodical” in comparison to Hitler’s, even if they were premeditated. Or maybe it’s because the Soviet Union lasted far longer than Nazi Germany, so people acclimated more, made more excuses and explanations, or because different rulers would play a give and take with this nation, making them believe that their ideologies were actually paying off. Hard to say, but it’s very peculiar.
Russians have a very negative self-image, something that has plagued them both before and after the Soviet Union, and the Russian insecurity complex can pretty much characterize all of Russian history. The G8 conference only exposed this more, showing how desperately Russia wanted to be liked and accepted, yet at the same time showing Russia’s stubborn chauvinism and arrogance (as if trying to mask that deeper layer of insecurity). The way Russia treats its own problems gives evidence to this, with the attempt to try to hide the AIDS problem here (even donating extravagant amounts of money to African AIDS groups rather than admit its own growing AIDS problem). Health care here is also terrible and the life expectancy rate for men is in the 50’s due to alcoholism and bad health care. The general lack of hope and emasculation many Russian men seem to feel also most likely contributes to these very issues. Corruption is also rampant and basically every business is run by or pays protection to the mob. In many ways Russia is still a very backward, secretive, insecure, and schizophrenic nation.
So yeah… It was very funny reading the newspapers after the G8 and before where they basically treated these political figures (especially Putin) as celebrities in a tabloid magazine, repeating snatches of personal conversations, how they interacted with each other, funny little anecdotes, etc. etc. Despite Putin’s scariness, he’s obviously extremely clever, has wit, and his own sense of humor. For the G8 he opened up more, like allowing himself to be asked about his personal life. For example, when asked if he remembered the first time he had sex (the second most popular question sent in by Russians) he responded that he didn’t remember the first time but he remembered the last.
Putin is super popular among Russians, seeing as Russians seem to hanker after strong rulers, and Putin certainly fits that criteria with the tight grip he has over the country. His being young, handsome (by Russian standards), and an avowed light drinker also make him popular. Whatever faults he has (and there are many), he has at least done good things for St Petersburg (his hometown). Much is being restored and he has thrown tons of money into the city, especially a few years ago for the city’s 300th anniversary. Some feel his policies smell of totalitarianism, like his strict control over the media and his Super Governors. Russia has major issues, but could have a bright future with its rich natural resources (unless their control continues to fall into the wrong hands). Despite this possibility, average citizens seem to feel as if Russia is over, (a common response I get when saying I am studying Russian).
St Petersburg anyways looks more capitalist, and is still suffering growing pains, despite things from the Soviet Union still peeking out. There is a large disparity between rich and poor here. My guidebook says that about a third of Russian people live below the poverty line of $53 a month. The top ten percent of the population have 23 times more money than the bottom ten. Russia’s population is also a serious issue, as its birth rate is low and its death rate high, making the population decline at a rate of about a million people a year. Putin has made some policies to try to encourage people have more babies, such as offering monetary incentives for women who have a second child or even the possibility of a free apartment for those who have a baby born on the city’s anniversary.
An anti Putin sticker I found in one of our classrooms. It says "enough Putin."
It’s difficult for women here to have children and be mothers, especially when men are such bums and die so young. Many women have children out of wedlock and abortion is rampant (for every ten births there are 13 abortions). Due partially to Russia’s rapidly declining population and China’s rapidly growing population, immigrants from the East have been pushing to come into the country and work. But due to very strict and at times very racist immigration policies, relatively few people have been let in to make up for those dying. AIDs has also affected the population, seeing as it is faster here than in any other European country. It is estimated that half the city’s prostitutes are HIV positive and there has been a 16% increase in street children who are HIV positive. Hospitals here are bad and there is only one hospital in the city that treats people with HIV, yet it has no anti-retroviral drugs that could hinder the virus’s proliferation. Really terrible.
The Russian army is a whole other depressing story.
The other night I asked my host father whether he liked Putin, and he said he liked him in principle but did not necessarily like how he goes about doing things. I asked him about the police arresting oppositional parties to Putin and protestors, and he asked where I’d read that. After telling him he told me that those were all leftist newspapers that didn’t like Putin and that it wasn’t true about the arrests. Haha. I’m not sure if I believe him.
But this post is getting way too long and boring…
No comments:
Post a Comment