Writing for the Russian Media

For almost a year now I have been writing for the respected Russian news media RIA Novosti.  I and about six others write weekly columns on various subjects. My column is called “Musings of a Russophile” and comes out each Friday. The subject may be a nostalgic epic, usually humorous, like how to take a hot wash down (I can’t call it a bath) when the city turns off the hot water for several weeks in the summer. Or they may be about thoughts on the poet and writer Boris Pasternak  (“Dr. Zhivago”) and my visit to his suburban home and what is story means today. There is even a report from the banya, the hot steam and massage experience. Whew!

 The columns of other writers are about a variety of things, all having to do with Russia, often critical and often cynically funny. Russians are good at laughing at themselves and particularly at their leaders.  I get good comments on my columns, particularly Russians who say I tell it like it is, but with respect and humor. Two of the favorites are “Moscow , a City of Dogs” and “St. Petersburg, a City of Cats.” Both Muscovites and Petersburgers love these, laugh, and say I got it right.

 You can find me at www.en.rian.ru.  Go to “Features and Opinions” then “Columnists.” Read the others, too.  All are good. My latest is http://www.en.rian.ru/columnists/20110812/165710036.html .

 And don’t forget “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman is Russia.”

Heroes! —“The Great Patriotic War”

I have always admired the veteran Russian men and women in their baggy suits and medals from WWII, “The Great Patriotic War.” They suffered so much—and survived. Several of these men were the “guards” at a desk by the door to our office building in Moscow. If they knew you, they would shake their head in their gesture of acceptance.

One day, during the time of celebration of the end of the war, Victory Day,I was invited down into the basement where there was a lunch room and was asked to give a talk. I made it short and said wars were not started by men like them, and me. It was politicians who made wars. They all applauded and shook their heads in agreement. When I told them I drove a tank in the Army, then I was really accepted.  Then they gave me a poster, one like we had in America. It was a woman with a red head scarf and a finger to her mouth with the admonition “Don’t Talk.” (See above.) The American one read “Loose Lips Sink Ships.”

That poster hangs in my office today.After that, I was always treated with extra respect.

Learn more about Russians. Buy here “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”. Your comments are welcome.

Changing Russia~ Patience Pays!

The American or Western visitor or businessman has a special challenge in fitting into the colorful and exciting environment of an evolving Russia. The world is not really so flat as to obscure the character of a people, though superficial similarities make these defining traits less visible. Even in this high-tech world, we need to understand the deeper meaning of a people, including those cultural elements that make them on occasion behave differently. Although Russia is in a great state of change, the effects of a thousand years of history are not erased in a decade or two—if ever.

After over thirty years doing business in Asia and Europe, I went to the new Russia in 1991. The contrasts with the rest of the world were amazing and at the same time stimulating. I was fortunate to gather around me in Russia some of the most dedicated, hard working, ethical, intelligent, and enjoyable young people I have ever worked with. I found a mutual sense of understanding and a team spirit toward the common goal. I started a telecom company and lived there for six years, managing the task in the cauldron of the chaotic residue of the Soviet Union and the stumbling progress of an emerging New Russia. With such smart men and women in Moscow the venture was successful, providing advanced telecom services to Fortune 1000 companies in Russia, to major Russian businesses, and to diplomatic offices, including the American Embassy.

Russia has been the highlight of my international business career—enriching and enjoyable.

Learn more. Buy here  “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”

The Wonderful Moscow Metro

Russia can’t build a decent car. But it can build the best rockets, incredible fighter planes, all kinds of technology, and the world’s best subway, the Moscow Metro. You’ve heard about them. They are works of art. In the main Metro ring and stations in Moscow they are filled with statuary and frescoes. The architecture is superb.

The Moscow Metro was built in 1935,  is 301.2 km (187.2 mi) of length, 12 lines, and 182 stations. The highest passenger traffic is highest on weekdays, when the Metro carries over 7 million passengers per day. Of course you know about the dogs that ride the Metro daily to visit their favorite dining grounds.

Ride the Moscow Metro. It is a treat. Get a guide book and top off at the most artistic stations. But do it on the weekend.

Learn more. Buy here  “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”

Meeting a Hero from the Elbe

April 25 was “Elbe Day,” when Russians and American soldiers met and shook hands over the Elbe River in Germany, marking a major step toward ending that bloody and wasteful war. The impact on the Russian memory of World War II must be understood—yes, even today. When you mention “The War” to an American, depending on his age, he thinks of Vietnam, Korea, or if over seventy, World War II. If under forty he may think you mean Iraq or Afghanistan.. But to a Russian “The War” can only be “The Great Patriotic War.”

The American public, far from the action and involved only in what the media brought us in those black and white newsreel days, still today do not understand what a cataclysmic happening World War II was for the Russian people and the sacrifices they made. Over twenty million Russians died to help turn the war into victory for us all. History is slowly setting this right. For them the color of the war was the color of the blood of their men, women and children.

I met a hero of that war on that Victory Day. It was May, 1995. Sitting proudly across from me on the Moscow Metro was a wrinkled veteran with a kindly face, his threadbare oversized suit coat burdened with medals, including the red-ribboned gold star of Hero of the Soviet Union. As we stood to leave, he asked, “Aren’t you Russian?”

 “No,” I answered, “I am an American.”

He stopped in the push of the departing crowd and faced me. With firm hands, he grasped mine and shook them hard. He looked directly into my eyes, said, “Americans brave soldiers. I meet—Elbe River.” He was at that historic meeting of the two allied armies fifty years before. We congratulated each other warmly for being allies fighting a common enemy and went our different ways—as did our countries after that time long ago. I felt small, and yet honored. I remember the feel of his hands, firm, smooth, and warm, friendly hands. He stood and walked straight as an arrow. There was a hero.

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What is it about Russian Women?~ Part 4, the “Barbies” and the “beaten.”

 This is the Part 4 of my weekly series about Russian women.  It’s about those I call the “Barbies” and the “beaten.”

 There is another kind of woman in Russia today, which, unfortunately, is nothing to brag about–the Barbies. Out of the same age group of the young Russians who are so promising, there are the Lady Gaga wannabes with more on their face than in their head. The Barbies sit dumbly in the street kiosks, bored, chewing gum, reluctantly responding to questions about the pirated DVDs on display. With a cigarette hanging from over-painted lips, they are lost in a cheap world of making money, conspicuous consumption, and Hollywood B flicks. Down Nevsky Prospect, they walk as onto a couture stage, the teen-aged bare-bellied Barbies, arm and arm, lost in their cheap fantasy of who they want to be. We have them, too. They are not the hope of the new Russia–but maybe will get in line with the winners.

One kind of woman in Russia, one too often obscured, is the tragic–the beaten. She is the victim of the violent side of Russian culture, the deep-seated crudeness and cruelty present in many Russian men. The Moscow Times reported once that fifty percent of all murders are committed by husbands killing wives. Rapes, not as prevalent as in America, nevertheless go unreported because the police and courts are unsympathetic to the rape victim who is chided for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I’ve seen the faces of women on the street, going about their chores with a battered face¾as if the system itself was not brutal enough. Alcohol is often to blame. In a country where drunkenness is a cultural right and vodka subsidized by the state, what can you expect? The women are tough survivors. They have to be tough to survive the infamous birthing clinics that treat women like accomplices to a crime. Until recently, there were thirteen abortions for every ten births. Only those with money and contacts can use the modern maternity facilities.

Check here next week for the “winners.”

Comments are welcome.

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“For every fence, there is a hole.”

Fences can appear overnight in Russia. But that does not necessarily change one’s route from the apartment to the store. There is always a way around a fence. A fence has a purpose in most societies, and those it intends to keep out understand the reason and respect it, unless their intent is to get on the other side, like thieves. In Russia a fence is just a fence, something put there by workmen who were paid to do it. It does not necessarily have any relevance to those who, although it has inconvenienced them, do not intend to alter their habits.

The building next door to my apartment building was under remont (repair, reconstruction) for four years. First it was rumored to be a high-end haunt for rich Chechens, when it finally emerged from the dust of several plan changes. it was the Tibetan Embassy. A sigh of relief went up in the neighborhood.

The road along side the building, next to the new embassy, and down the steep wooden stairs to the embankment was our straightest pathway to the corner store, the Moscow River and the bridge over it to Kievsky Rail Station and the Radisson Slavanskaya Hotel. So when a fence appeared one day blocking the road, it was a momentary cause for concern. But, not for the babushkas. With burdened shoulders and determined heads, they walked undaunted toward the fence as if they were blind, then sidled to the end of it, where, unseen to me, there was a babushka sized gap against the wall. They slipped right through and continued on their way.

The workmen, pretending to work, said nothing. What could they say? Their job was to erect the fence, and that was done. Was it their fault it was not quite long enough? End of responsibility. For every fence, there is a hole. I followed through.

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Moscow, a City of Dogs

Don’t take offense, Muscovites. The subway riding dogs have made Moscow famous. We have seen this canine phenomenon on TV. Moscow is a city of dogs. There are two classes. Much like the city’s underclass inhabitants, those affected by the need to move out of the modernizing city can still be seen in vagabond packs or stalking alone, scheming to sur­vive, begging,. But now they ride the metro.

They sleep in the suburbs and shop in the center. Russian scientists say that Moscow stray dogs became much smarter. Once they arrive to the downtown they demonstrate different new, previously unseen dog skills. They know how to scare people into dropping their hotdog.     They don’t miss their stop while going on the subway. Biologists say dogs have very keen sense of time which helps them not to miss their destination. Another skill they have is to cross the road on the green traffic light. “They don’t react on color, but on the picture they see on the traffic light”, Moscow scientist tells. Also they choose often the last or the first metro car–those are less crowded usually.

There is of course the upper class of dogs, the canine elite, who walk their masters, regardless of rank, in the parks each morning and evening. (In my book, see the essays Dogs and My Name is Dog in the Essay Collection.)

But then there is the big picture. Moscow is a masculine city. It has muscle. It is an explod­ing powerhouse of opportunity held together by threads of per­sonal energy and ambition. It is a beehive of lives stacked twenty stories high, living the happiness and sins of people anywhere—only at the extremes Moscow hardly sleeps. It has a burly aggressiveness unique in Europe. In time, Moscow is destined to be one of the great cit­ies of Europe. The one word that describes Moscow is power.

With an energy unmatched anywhere else in Russia, Mos­cow is a sprawling, brawling, dynamic throng of eleven million people embracing dozens of races, speaking scores of different tongues and struggling to make enough rubles to survive. Not only are there two Russias, there are two Moscows, one whose people thrive and one whose people strive to survive. Not far outside the latest Outer Ring, you might think in some ways it is still the 1930s. And then there are the dogs. Maybe there are three Moscows.

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St. Petersburg is a City of Cats

St. Petersburg is a city of cats. From the streets at night, you can see their shining eyes, peering through the arches from the inner decay of “Dostoevsky’s St. Petersburg,” the faceless blocks of communal flats behind the Italianate buildings on the main streets. The cats hang comfortably in the dead trees, dine elegantly in the overflowing garbage, sit regally on the broken steps. In front of our office, in the winter, the last car to park was identified by the presence of the cats, healthy and fat, curled up on the warmest hood.

Petersburg is a proud city which keeps itself as different from Moscow as possible. On one hand it disdains the crass commercialism, the naked power of Moscow and on the other is jealous for some of it. But with Messers Putin and Medvedev and their colleagues from the city, changes are taking place.

St. Petersburg is a feminine city. She is an elegant and noble woman sitting draped with the jewels of her youth waiting for her prince to return. It is the most beautiful Italianate city in Europe. This “Venice of the North” with its symmetry, canals, architecture, statuary, museums, performing arts, palaces, gardens and languid summers with endless days make it a city never to be forgotten.

St. Petersburg is all things, but one wonders at times if it really exists. Beneath the 300-year-old veneer of classical European architecture and fantasy lies the decrepit relicts of communal communism, the “the Dostoevsky St. Petersburg”―and the satisfied cats. To me, it is the most thrilling city in Europe.

(Moscow is a city of dogs. Stay tuned.)

Read more about St. Petersburg. Buy the book here  “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”

St. Petersburg and Moscow ~ Cats and Dogs

These two cities define what most see of Russia, and they are so different, yet in some ways the same. They have forever been in contest with each other, and are today.

 Moscow is a masculine city. It is an exploding powerhouse of opportunity held together by threads of personal energy and ambition. It is a cocoon of lives stacked seven stories high, living all the happiness and sins of people anywhere – only at the extremes Russians are so capable of.  Moscow hardly sleeps. It has a muscular aggressiveness unique in Europe and traffic jams that make Los Angeles look easy. The one word that describes Moscow is power.

 St. Petersburg is a feminine city. Her historic personality is as an elegant and noble woman sitting draped with the jewels of her youth waiting for her prince to return. This “Venice of the North” with its symmetry, architecture, statuary, art museums, performing art, palaces, gardens and languid summers with endless days make it a city never to be forgotten.  St. Petersburg is not Russia; it is the historical myth of Imperial Russia.

 Moscow is a city of dogs. There are two classes. One can be seen in vagabond packs or stalking alone, scheming to survive, begging, much like the city’s underclass inhabitants. The other is the canine elite, who walk their masters, regardless of rank, in the parks each morning and evening. The disenfranchised class lurks around the apartment blocks sniffing the garbage for anything to swallow.

 St. Petersburg is a city of cats. From the streets at night, you can see their shining eyes, peering through the arches from the inner decay of “Dostoevsky‘s St. Petersburg,” the faceless blocks of communal flats. The cats hang comfortably in the dead trees, dine elegantly in the overflowing garbage, sit regally on the broken steps. For some reason, the cats always look healthy and fat.

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