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In Which I Fight For The Freedom Of The Roosian People
October 29, 2006 by Mike
St Petersburg
This is a very special city in a beautiful country. There are some amazing people here. Why, then, do I wake up every morning with a pang? Why do I feel sad for Roosia?
Because despite McDonalds and Coca-Cola and Chelski and free elections and despite everybody telling me how much St Petersburg has changed since I was here in 1983, the truth is things haven't changed that much.
The elite are no longer weighed down by row upon row of Soviet medals, old men who knew only how to hold on to power. Today the elite is younger, more energetic and hugely richer. The power is economic rather than military-political. But it's just as real, just as iniquitous and the lives of the great majority of Russians are relatively speaking just as bad.
The sadness is there at the border: degrading queues, empty contempt on the faces of the officials, five people to do the job of one, but doing it ten times slower.
It's there at every checkpoint: the state's need to know (or to imply to the people that it knows) what they are doing and where they are doing it.
It's there with every uniform on every street - fat, slouching policemen huddled round their cigarettes, a pair of soldiers here, a sightseeing group of sailors marching to the front of a queue, a troop of schoolboy cadets there.
It's there in the face of every pensioner: the men fishing in the canals and rivers of the city for dinner, not for pleasure; the babushkas who work for pennies, sitting in every room of every museum, dead-eyed, doing nothing.
It's there in the mother and young child walking home, bucket and spade in their hands, from a stolen hour in a sandpit full of god knows what next to a traffic-clogged main road - going home to a smelly, damp, cramped flat with inadequate heating, overcrowded and their only choice.
It's there every time some working joe's car breaks down -- again -- on his way back to his flat in ablock miles out of town and as he sits abd waits for the friend with gaffer tape to come and perform another miracle he's rocked in his car by the huge 4×4s racing past him on their way to their dachas.
It's there not just in this glorious city of museums and palaces and learning and intellect but in Murmansk, those stulltifying apartment blocks I can't get out of my head; in Nickel, where industry rapes the countryside and treads down on the people who cannot escape; and in a thousand cities and a million villages across this vast, harsh land, so far removed from the 21st century.
It's there in the water supplied not only to the people of St Petersburg but to the tourists - we who know this is unacceptable:
And what's being done about it? President Putin can't be elected for another term so he was on TV this week staring into the cameras and reassuring (really? He thinks this is reassuring?) his people that he'll still keep his influence even when he's out of office.
The state is a sham. The country is a sham. It's a crying shame. The people deserve so much more.
--
The packaging on goods has ingredients in Russian, of course; also, and this serves as a reminder of the scale and scope of the old USSR, in Latvian, Lithuainian, Estonian, Kazach, Georgian, Azeri, Armenian, Uzbek.. and on and on. Many goods also have details listed in German. For the ethnic germans of the Volga? Are they still speaking (and reading) German?
I was reminded of this by two things.
One: the wrapper of a Snickers bar in my pocket (I'm afraid I haven't limited myself to eating the local fish *every* day.)
Two: the Museum of Ethnography.. a vast former palace. Quite enough to make you want to start a revolution of workers and peasants to bring the aristocracy to their knees. When I remember that someone already did this, and that the palace of the aristos is now a palace of ethnography, I can relax and enjoy.
There is no space in the museum to mention the Stalinist mutilation of entire peoples, moving millions of people to Siberia in a genocidal effort to break the back of national or tribal identity; but there are some pretty dresses from around the old Roosian Empire. (They haven't bothered to take the Ukranians and Lithuanians out, for example.) The dresses are on models that look authentically like the people they represent. And they represent so many different peoples.
There are Latvians and Armenians and Georgians and others from places we've heard of, but also from many of the minority nations of this country. And so there are Andis and Archis, Chamalals, Chulym and Chukchis, Marys and Didos and Veps, Yazgulamis and Yukaghirs.
There are Volga Germans and there are Swedes. There are Saami and there are Jews and there are Muslims from the Caucasus. (These models all sport guns. Are they trying to tell us something?)
I can't hide from you, dear reader, that there are Khakass and Khants too.
(All the models wear hats, by the way. Clearly lost art in the 21st century.)
The plainest dress of all belonged to the Russians themselves - too busy conquering everyone else to sew pretty patterns on their smocks.
It's a wonderful place to wander. Hughly recommended.
--
Leaving the museum, I wandered across Nevsky Prospeckt, St Petersburg's main thoroughfare (McDonalds, BMW adverts, boutiques, five star hotels) and round the back of the main department store, Gostiny Dvor. The glitz and the bright lights disappear. In fact, electricity disappears. The pavements are chipped and scarred. The shops have no names; they sell tracksuits, umbrellas, fake handbags. Then row upon row of market stalls. Leather jackets. Plastic shoes. Loo seats. Metallica t-shirts.
And all the faces I had seen in the Museum of Ethnography: all the faces of the Russian empire. Latvian, Armenians, Andis, Archis, Chamalals, Chulym, Chukchis, Marys, Didos, Veps, Yazgulamis, Yukaghirs, Germans, Swedes, Saami, Jews, Georgians and Muslims from the Caucasus - but they keep a low profile these days. Central Asians and Slavs and all inbetween. For a long moment I feel like celebrating this great diversity.. but I soon realise that I can't see a single black face.
Racist killings have become a feature of life in the city. Last week, the third trial in a row of a hate killing ended with the jury delivering a not guilty verdict. The clear implication given in the liberal St Petersburg Times is that Russian juries are not convicting Russian defendants of the killing of non-Russians.
--
I appear to be strangely attractive to a particular type of Roosian woman. Not blondes, not brunettes, not tall or short, thin or fat, smart or sultry, teens, 20s, 30s or 40-somethings, not graduates or Orthodox Christians or Pisceans or vegetarians or smokers (all Roosians smoke) or socialists or lefthanders. But bar girls.. that is, the girls who work in front of rather than behind the bar. They're everywhere here.
I'm not going to let my new-found attractiveness go to my head.
--
One of the English-language freesheets listed the week's entertainments, including the "Priyut Komedianta Theater" presentation of "Who Scare Of Wirginia Wulf?"
Theater? Theater? What kind of appalling English is that?
--
To the Peter & Paul Fortress (that's Saint Peter and Saint Paul to most of us.) It's a tourist must-see, the cathedral with its sheer gold spire and an unruly jumble of Grand ducal crypts, an exhibition of the history of St Petersburg, Petrograd, Leningrad, Petrograd and St Petersburg and outstanding views across the river Neva to the Winter Palace.
Sadly, visitors are not allowed in to the Trubetskoy Prison at the moment (which is, on reflection, better than not being allowed out of it). The Trubetskoy was Imperial Roosia's most secure prison -- Dostoevsky, Lenin's brother, Trotsky -- back when Siberia was so far away nobody considered going there, rather than so far away that nobody could consider coming back.
In one room there's a poster recording the round-the-world bike trip of "world record-holder A.P.Pankratov" -- Anisim Petrovich Pankratov (1889-1916) -- who completed his trip between 1911-13. I can't find anything on him on the Net. But I'd love to know more. Please email me if you know anything!
--
On Sunday evening, two good people were in town. I missed seeing Syl Johnson in London last year, so he kindly came to play St Petersburg while I'm here. Something of a poor man's Al Green. He was on top form, loving the size of the audience and their enthusiam for his music.
And Jenny turned up. Really, I shouldn't have been surprised. I first met her and her partner Mike at the Jazz Cafe in London for a Pinetop Perkins gig. (At 92 years old, all his songs were still about sex.) We next met in Memphis, where with Colin and Nikki the five of us celebrated the unsung heroes of rock and soul at this year's Ponderosa Stomp. So St Petersburg was just the latest gig on our World Tour.
And she's an ABBA fan!
(Bright red ears not model's own)
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By Ricky Leaver | October 31, 2006 7:12 PM
Really enjoyed this piece, Withy. Excellent stuff.
Got worried when you hadn't posted for two weeks. Thought you'd come a cropper on your bike.
Ricky