Miriam,
Understood. But I can't recall a time when Americans really knew what
Russia or the Soviet Union was actually like.
But then, I shouldn't be surprised, seeing that a huge percentage of
Americans have twisted views about the government that we live under.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/13/21, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I think that her point is that Americans are mistaken about Russia today, if
they think that it resembles the Soviet Union in any way. She says that for
a while, after the fall of Communism, young Russians were really doing well
under Capitalism. But now, that is no longer true. She also makes the point
that there is little difference between the current Russian government and
its opposition.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2021 12:27 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Evgenia Kovda: "My thoughts on Russian
culture"
So, it sounds to me like Evgenia Kovda finds Russia to be half a step behind
the US, a copycat of all that glitters.
What I get from this article is a glum feeling that the great Russian
Revolution took a wrong turn from the outset. The revolution leaders sold
the concept of a People's Revolution, even as they purged their own
leadership ranks, and jockeyed to divide up the revolution's spoils.
If factual, Evgenia Kovda reinforces my belief that Communism in Russia/the
Soviet Union, only existed in name.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/12/21, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Evgenia Kovda: "My thoughts on Russian culture"
Putin might be flexing Russia's muscles in Syria and Russia in general
is acting more like a powerful state in its foreign policy. But
internally, culture wise, nothing has changed from the 1990s.
Evgenia Kovda
Jun 12
I've started to work again on the script for a film I plan to make:
"Наследство" - or, Inheritance. Yasha and I wrote the first draft a
few years ago and I'm reworking it a bit. It's a Soviet zombie horror
film that tries to make sense of the surreal environment in Russia
today and its Soviet past. It's a genre film, yet it's a personal
story that's in part based on my ambivalent relationship with Moscow
and my somewhat traumatic time there as a teenager. I don't give away
too much away, but the film is fantastical reflection of what it feels
like for me to be in Russia. As Adam Curtis would put it, it's an
"emotional history."
I've been getting into the right state of mind for the film, so I
wanted to write a bit about the Russia I know.
Watching and reading the news here in America, many people get the
sense that Russia is still very much the USSR, a formidable communist
enemy state that's out to destroy American democracy. The media
constantly uses hammers and sickles, red banners, and Soviet imagery
to describe Russia, as if America, the leader of the Free World, was
still locked in combat with the Evil Forces of Collectivism.
________________________________________
When I was teaching at Hunter College in New York a few years ago, one
of the brighter students in my film class asked me once if Russia was
still communist. I was surprised and couldn't help but laugh. But then
I remembered that even Soviet immigrants here in the U.S. refer to
Russia as the Soviet Union and imagine it to be no different from the
place they ran away from. If former Soviets think Russia is still the
evil USSR, what can I expect from Americans at large?
I even noticed that some people on the anti-imperialist left also
think that Russia has a bit of its old Soviet spirit left in it. They
think that Putin is out there on the world stage opposing American
neoliberalism.
When I tell my friends back in Moscow that a lot of people here in
America think Russia is still the Soviet Union, they can't believe
it's true. They think I'm exaggerating. They like - and some of them
even love - America, so they can't really fathom it. This new American
Red Scare - and the ongoing conflation of Russia with the Soviet Union
- makes no sense to them.
The idea that modern Russians are a bunch of nefarious, retrograde
communists who hate the western liberal way of life is weird and can't
be further from the truth. Many Russians shudder at the mention of
socialism and equate democracy with capitalism. Most Russians I know
personally hate socialism and the Soviet Union as much as the American
establishment does, maybe even more so.
________________________________________
I was born in Moscow and lived there for first twenty one years of my
life.
I got most of my schooling there, including a BA in Iranian studies -
which isn't worth much here in US, unless I go work for the State
Department.
I haven't been living in my motherland for a decade now. But I do take
long trips back to Moscow every year or so - sometimes twice a year.
And I keep in touch with my friends and follow most of the major
political and cultural events there. Every time I went back, the city
seemed very lively - and was getting better every year. There was a
good feeling there. The buses and subways were being modernized and
expanded. There were new parks and movies theaters, cafes and art
museums, and even a brand new film school. People were becoming
political, joining protests movements. Things were improving, people
were positive about the future, enjoying the bounty of western
consumerist society.
My friends in Moscow were doing better and better, too. They were
still in their 20s but some of them already had successful careers -
some had switched career tracks on the fly. Things were flexible and
fluid and easy for them. No one had any student debt - they got their
college education almost for free. They became entrepreneurs, climbed
corporate ladders, opened cafes and bars, bought apartments and
dachas, travelled for six moths at a time. So while I was still very
confused about what to do, had no real job, and had no straight path
to follow as an immigrant in America, they were doing great. In fact
they were doing much better than most Americans I knew their age.
There was a particularly intoxicating feeling you got there from being
in a place where young people run the cultural side of life. You can
be an editor-in-chief of a major magazine at twenty. At twenty five,
you can be at a point in your career people in America only reach at
forty or fifty - if they are lucky.
Russia seemed to be at the peak of its game.
So I was surprised that when I moved back in 2016 for a year and was
considering staying for good to see my friends shocked at the thought.
Why would I ever think of returning? Why would I come back home to
this crappy Russia from America, the Promised Land, seemed to be the
refrain.
They couldn't understand any emotion but excitement about America.
Excitement that was based on spending a month sightseeing in Los
Angeles and New York and San Francisco and Las Vegas and going on a
cross-country car trips. They thought America was real thriving
democratic society - that it was a "normal" country, unlike Russia.
My friends simply did not want to hear anything negative about
America. I was very annoyed with this persistent attitude. I was also
annoyed by their constant complaining about their life in Russia. They
definitely were not checking their privilege.
Then I started noticing something. I began to see that everything that
seemed to me to be dynamic and alive and happening in Moscow only
appeared that way because I had been passing through as a kind of
tourist - there for a few weeks or a month and then gone again. My
reading of what was going on was superficial. Once I had spent some
real time at home, I started looking more closely at what was going on
and very quickly realized that my positive assessment of recent
Russian cultural growth was misplaced. What I was seeing wasn't
dynamism. It was stagnation papered over with derivative American
cultural and material imports.
It wasn't just the nightlife and entertainment and general consumer
lifestyle stuff - like cross fit studios and boutique boxing gyms and
cold press juice bars and gourmet burger joints and hip pour over coffee
shops.
It was also culture in general. By that I mean everything from TV
shows to films to books to visual art and art galleries and museums.
It all looked like a cheap copy of what was recently the rage in New
York and Los Angeles
- things that were already not so great to begin with, considering
that today's American culture is itself stagnant and stuck in a
consumerist death trap. I mean, some of the most progressive political
ideas that hit the mainstream in the last years has been a rehashing
of the New Deal of 1930s combined with watered down 1960s radicalism.
Even America's preeminent global entertainment industry is stuck in a
cul-de-sac, dominated by never ending film franchises, remakes, and
dull algorithm-driven television series.
Back in Russia, I started referring to this Russian cultural copy
phenomenon as evrostandart. Or as Russian liberals like to say it,
they're doing things "like in a normal country."
What I found curious about this is that no one in Russia seemed to
notice this evrostandart copycat phenomenon. Their colonial mindset
was so internalized that it didn't even register for them.
You can see it in the way that coolest and hippest Russians consume
American entertainment content. They passionately discuss all the
latest shows on HBO, and are elated if America produces Russia-themed
shows like "Chernobyl"
or "Queen's Gambit." The coolest and hippest Russians swoon when an
American TV series focuses its eye on them. They're flattered that
people in Metropole seem to be interested in them, a small people on
the periphery.
This seems an embarrassing sentiment considering that Russians were at
the forefront of early cinema and Soviet filmmakers were one of the
best innovators and theoreticians of film theory, whose ideas are
still taught at film schools all over the world.
This turn of events testifies to the general hegemony of the American
popular culture. And similar attitudes can be surely found in Paris or
Berlin as well. But in Moscow, this is particularly pernicious. The
creative class here is obsequiously pro-American. When you hear them
talk - their conversation is full of English words injected frequently
with an American pronunciation. It's considered very very trendy among
the trendiest people in Moscow, even though it reminds me of the
Russian immigrant parlance you hear in Brighton Beach.
My American friend from New York visited me in Saint Petersburg when I
was living there, and found it embarrassing how obsequious people were
to her, an American. She genuinely wondered, "shouldn't they hate me?"
"Hate you?"
I
replied. "Very funny - You are a native English speaker!"
________________________________________
I grew up watching Tom and Jerry, Popeyes, and Disney cartoons
cartoons which I preferred to the Soviet ones. I ate Snickers, Mars,
Skittles. I listened to N'Sync and Britney Spears. I did all this not
because I sought out to steep myself in mass American culture, but
because I was naturally surrounded by it. Russia was flooded with
western goods and western advertising and western cultural content. I
mean, MTV Russia appeared when I was 8 and from then on I watched
everything the channel showed: the new music videos, Beavis and
Butt-Head and Cribs. Other Russian channels showed American films
every day. I couldn't get away from it, even if I wanted to.
I remember how at 11, I watched and absolutely loved Don't Be a Menace
to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood. I didn't
understanding that it was satire. But it was funny and interesting. It
felt like a window into a magical colorful faraway world.
Yet despite being surrounded by all things American, I spoke Russian
and lived in Russia where it wasn't so colorful. Moscow seemed grim and
gray.
It
wasn't festive like the world that America projected - like what I saw
on MTV or in Don't Be a Menace or in Olsen twins comedies. So I
naturally thought of everything that was in Russia as sort of second
rate - like the black and white life from those TV shopping
commercial. You know the grey and frustrating image of what life is
like before you buy that new blender or pillow or super sharp kitchen
knife.
That was twenty years ago now. And this basic sentiment still has not
changed.
Sure, Putin might be flexing Russia's muscles in Syria and Russia in
general is acting more like a powerful state in its foreign policy.
But internally, culture wise, nothing has changed from the 1990s:
Russia is still the colonized society, in thrall of everything
western, treating every new western trend with an almost religious
zeal.
Russia's creative and liberal class feels like a new expat community
in itself. Once I moved back there, I realized that they had replaced
American expats, who mostly left home during the mid-to-late 2000.
With them gone, Russians ran their own western-style businesses and
made their own copies of metropolitan artifacts. In fact, Russians are
much more effective at introducing western trends into their home
country than the expats. They are well-traveled and well-steeped in
everything western, and they're also Russian and so know better what
will work in their own domestic market.
They
don't need people from Metropole telling them what to do anymore. They
know perfectly well themselves - just copy what already exists -
adapt an American show, open a chain of third way espresso shops,
build out some Moscow apartments in the style of upscale Meatpacking
District lofts and sell them at a ridiculous premium to a fawning
clientele.
The more avant-garde clique of Moscow's creative class might make
slightly higher quality copies. But it's still copy, copy, copy.
There's nothing else to it.
Just look at the list of the latest hit shows and films to come out of
Russia: Optimists (a Mad Men ripoff), Sputnik (an Alien ripoff),
Sleepers (a Homeland ripoff). I can go on an on.
________________________________________
There's another thing about Russian cultural production that's just as
destructive and stagnant as the evrostandart copycatting: it does not
want to look at the present.
Even the most avant-garde liberal "creators" working the scene don't
actually want to look at Russia as it is - because it's too
uncomfortable, because there's nothing evrostandart about it, and
never was beyond the tiny centre of Moscow that they've retrofitted in
the image of a western city.
They deny the importance of the October revolution and try to paint
the 70 years of the Soviet Union as some kind of horrific mistake of
history. They do not like to be reminded of their Soviet past or their
radical two-generations-removed peasant heritage. It's only a source
of embarrassment for them. They like pretending to be some sort of
royalty and align themselves with the Romanov family, which was
officially canonized as saints in 2000 just when Putin took power.
They're in denial and don't want to look honestly at their own
society, so it makes sense that they're so drawn to making shitty copies
of imported western culture.
What is interesting is that the people who are in power - the Putin
clan types that most of Russia's creative class viciously opposes -
have the same exact cultural values. Because they are liberals, too.
And it's the hardest thing to explain to someone who is not Russian.
The difference between the Putin's power clique and the opposition
that's now represented by Alexei Navalny is rather minimal. It is not
even cultural really - not everyone in the Kremlin is some brutish
goon in a gold plated armchair, as they are often portrayed. It's one
clan against the other. The liberal clan is a bit more technocratic
and has more Western MBAs under their belts. But even that doesn't
fully explain it.
The Russian political landscape is so confusing to the outside
observers that it's hard to describe it in a straight manner. I think
Imaginative fiction does a much better job. The 90s Russia is best
captured by Victor Pelevin in his novel Generation P - or, Homo
Zapiens. While Russia today seems to elude all the Russian writers for
now. No one really pinned it down well. Vladimir Sorokin tried to
portray Russia of the mid-oughts as a semi-medieval brute monarchy in
his satirical novel Day of the Oprichnik, and there is some truth to
it. But even Sorokin - the best that Russia's liberal creative class
has to offer - misses the mark. Because he fails to see that Putin's
people are actually like him.
Surveying Russia's cultural scene, I can't really find a single recent
film or book that reflects the schizophrenic reality of Russia today.
It's something I'm trying to fix.
-Evgenia Kovda