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Joseph Burke

Impressions of Modern Day Russia Part 1 Dispelling the many misconceptions about life in modern Russia

• September 30, 2003 •

I had the opportunity to visit Russia in mid September 2003 for a software conference being held near Moscow in a small city called Chernogolovka. Several hundred Russian software developers attended the conference and a few dozen American and European business people like myself that work these developers. Since our own Rose City Software company does a lot of business with Russian developers, it made sense for me to attend this year. Three of our developers, Dmitry Ustyuzhanin, Konstantin Golovatsky and Alexander Khoroshev attended the conference and were very pleased to assist me in every element of this trip once I arrived by air to the Sheremet'evo airport in Moscow, a large modern gateway to Russia.

These young men spoke English pretty well. It's a good thing too, as few people you come across speak any English at all and communication is very difficult without translation available. Unlike European languages, few Russian words bear any resemblance whatever to their English counterparts.

And unless you know the Cyrillic alphabet, you cannot read a thing. No signs, menus, or packaging. It may as well be Chinese characters. Worse perhaps because sometimes the letters look like western letters but are entirely different so trying to pronounce something can often come out absolutely wrong. I've never felt so helpless as sitting down in a restaurant with a menu only in Cyrillic Russian and no one speaks any English.

A translator is highly recommended and for touring the cities, get an English speaking guide. An experienced one will cut through the 'red tape' for you (pun intended) and can make your touring far more enjoyable. We were able to rent a guide and car for 5 hours for a couple hundred dollars a day in St Petersburg... well worth the modest investment to get the most out of a few days stay.

Let me preface this brief chronicle of my impressions of Russia by saying that a great deal of the information I allude to is based on what I observed or was able to learn from our developers and guides. These have not been verified by any authority and as such, some of it may be in error. I apologize for any gross errors as they are the result of my ignorance of this very foreign land and not intentional.

Russia is a huge and mysterious country stretching all the way from the west side a short hop across the Gulf of Finland from that European country all the way to Mongolia in the east. It would take years to explore it all. This brief overview is intended to record my impressions of a country which is nothing at all like I had expected. The purpose is to dispel a lot of the gross misconceptions which exist among the American people as to what life in Russia is like. It is not intended to be any kind of exhaustive or authoritative view of the country now known as the Russian Federation since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. It is simply a collection of impressions from an all too short stay in this interesting land. It is also not intended to be a travel guide... there are plenty of those available and I was not there long enough to be recommending places to visit.

I visited Moscow (pronounced Moss-koh) and St Petersburg and both cities are well worth seeing. Red Square in Moscow is memorable with the monolithic St Basel's Cathedral, the huge open square,

and of course the Kremlin (a vast museum and archive of Russian history and art) and the monuments.

But St Petersburg is the crown jewel. Former capital of the Soviet Union and various renamed to Petrograd in the early 20th century, renamed to Leningrad for most of the later 20th century, and finally back to the original St Petersburg in 1991, this fantastic city is home to some of the world's most beautiful architecture, palaces and museums you'll see anywhere.

The Hermitage in downtown St Petersburg which includes the fabled Winter Palace, and the magnificent reconstructed palaces of Peterhof and other surrounding towns are unforgettable. These former homes to Russian emperors from Peter the Great and later on to Catherine the Great, on down to Nicolas, last of the great emperors, are simply not to be missed.

Having travelled all over Europe and in various places in the Far East, I found St Petersburg to be among the grandest places I have ever visited. Having just a tantalizing taste for a few short days, my appetite is whetted to go back and stay for three months. Even then you could never take it all in. It's just an extraordinary place. Billed as the Venice of the North, one ride on the beautiful canals of this grand old city will change your perception forever of what a city should look like. We don't have cities in the US... we have collections of buildings connected by roads and managed by politicians. St Petersburg founded in 1703 and designed by the great and benevolent Emperor Peter the Great is a monument to all that a city can be in its design and execution. I hope Russia is able to successfully upgrade its infrastructure and transition into the western world on an equal footing so that more Americans and other western people will be able to visit and appreciate this incredible place!

Early fall was a good time to visit. The summer crowds of tourists are mostly gone, but the weather was lovely. Clear and sunny most of the time. I think we only had one rainy day, although it rained a couple nights and cleared up majestically during the day. Temperatures were in the 60's during the days and down in the 40's at night. Very pleasant weather all together. I'm told I was fortunate, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend you take my word for it, but I did indeed have lovely weather for my visit. I gather it gets pretty warm in mid summer and as cold as 30 below zero Fahrenheit in the depths of winter.

Russia has undergone a lot of change in the last decade since Perestroika when the USSR or Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991. It went from total suppression under a totalitarian communist regime to a democracy avidly courting western capitalism and expansion. The economy is having a difficult time shifting from communist suppression to western style freedom, but it has made some remarkable progress, nonetheless. There's is a great deal of wealth in Russia, and like many western countries, there is a huge gap from the elite wealthy class to the working class and the very poor. In a small town an average working class person may make a couple hundred dollars a month and live modestly well, I'm told. Below that you are at the poverty level.

In the big cities like Moscow and St Petersburg, I'm told it takes a salary more in the range $1200-1500 a month to live reasonably well. You are part of the wealthy class with plenty of discretionary income when you earn $15,000 a month or more. Unlike in the US, professional people are far from wealthy. A physician for example may only earn $500 a month; an attorney perhaps $1200 a month. The people who become wealthy are mostly successful businessmen.

Most of the people live in high rise complexes which look like our tall city apartment buildings in the USA. Most are plain structures without any decorative touches. Almost bleak in their stark straight lines and often lack of careful maintenance. Formerly all buildings were owned by the state and people simply paid rent. Now they are still state owned buildings but people are able to buy their individual "flats". Prices can vary greatly depending on the city, location and age of the buildings like anywhere else, but a fairly common price in the big cities would be about $500 per square meter or perhaps $50/sq foot, not much by western standards but pretty high for working men's salaries. So people's homes tend too be quite small consisting of a couple small rooms in a tall housing structure. Wealthy people do live in single family homes. But these are very expensive indeed, I am told and the ones I saw looked like European villas.

Hotel accommodations range from 5 star hotels in the cities where you can easily pay $300 a night and up I am told. We stayed in more modest "western style" hotels under $100 a night. Definitely not deluxe, single beds are the norm and not new ones either. Linens and such are more European style with comforters with cotton duvets, square pillows, and scrawny towels that were a long way from the plush oversized bath towels we are used to in the US. Bathrooms often contain bidets as in Europe but not the antiseptically clean and immaculate bathrooms we tend to expect for that kind of money in the US. Rusty pipes, cracked tiles, missing molding, dim lighting and so on. One room I stayed in had a shower but no shower curtain! Not even a rod to indicate the shower curtain was missing. Just a small square foot tub and a hand held showering nozzle, Euro style. I'm not a picky person so I did not complain, but more finicky visitors may wish to gravitate to higher end accommodations.

There is a lot of urban decay visible in Russia. Buildings and roads neglected for decades by an ill-conceived Communist government will take decades to upgrade and a huge investment. It remains to be seen whether the democratic leadership of Russia has the stomach for it. The Russian people all believe their government is very corrupt and that little of the taxes and national revenues are invested back into the country for the benefit of the people. Corruption in government is everywhere, but nowhere is it worse, I guess, than in Russia.

There are many cars today on the roads in the big cities, with the numbers mushrooming exponentially I am told. This does not bode well for traffic congestion. Russian cars are relatively inexpensive, $5-6000 I'm told is fairly typical. Brands include Lada, Volga, Moscovich and other strange names never seen in the USA. A lot of Japanese and European cars are also seen around the cities... especially German cars like Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Opel and VW. One sees the occasional American car on the road but they are few. Most of the cars are very small because of fuel economy and the fact that many roads in the small towns are very narrow. One doesn't see many SUV's though most of the ones you do see are Japanese. The only large American SUV's I saw like Tahoe, Suburban, Escalade and Expedition were all black limos. Those seem to be the high end transportation of choice. I never once saw a stretch limo.

Traffic is a big problem in major cities. I was in Moscow and St Petersburg and traffic jams are an all-day phenomenon. Not in the least limited to "rush hour". Taxis are plentiful with reasonable rates. Very few have any meters so cab fares are charged as a flat rate in most cases. These fares can vary greatly so be careful not to get taken. Once cabbie wanted to charge us $100 US for a 45 minute ride to the airport. A quick call for a cab yielded a fare of $20.

There are also plentiful buses and trollies, but the underground Metro system is the primary means of transportation in these cities. I rode them in Moscow and St Petersburg and found them to be clean, fast, efficient and cheap. You can go almost anywhere on the Metro:

The trains are also very nice. Clean, well maintained with a very smooth ride on the rail systems that we rode between Moscow and St Petersburg. We travelled first or business class which was very pleasant indeed. Indeed I wrote the major portion of this chronicle on my laptop on the train returning from St Petersburg. Walking is indeed a common method of transportation and people walk everywhere. Because traffic in the big cities can be so heavy, it is often faster to walk than take a taxi for short distances. I recommend comfortable walking shoes for anyone visiting the cities.

The currency in Russia is rubles and the exchange rate on my trip was around 30 to the US dollar. So a price of 600 rubles may sound high for dinner, but it's only twenty bucks. If quick mental math is not your strong suit you may wish to carry a calculator. 30:1 is a fairly simple mental calculation but had it been 27:1 or 34:1 I would have need a calculator myself. Generally the people seemed pretty honest to me. One friend of mine was pickpocketed in St Petersburg and warned me to be careful especially in crowds. So I wore a long trenchcoat which effectively covered my pockets and kept me quite safe. Probably better safe than sorry, but generally speaking I have been in a lot more intimidating places when it comes to personal safety and security, including some places right in the good old USA.

Russia is a fascinating cross between the turn of the 20th century, 50's, 70's and the new millennium. Since the Soviet Union was dissolved back in the early 90's, the younger generation of this vast country is rushing headlong into full tilt westernization. Yet the money isn't there (yet?) to upgrade the vast decaying infrastructure of this antiquated country. The government is clearly intent on upgrading some of the decay. Right now they are focused on important monuments, cathedrals and other national structures symbolizing the tradition and heritage of this one great country.

The Russians are a very proud people, and rightly so, but everywhere you look there are crumbling old buildings, shabby factories and dilapidated huge living structures that look like huge cream colored high rise apt buildings liberally tinged with rust, peeling paint and decay. Not every one, to be sure, but more common than not. Contrast this with glittering shopping malls filled with western merchandise pitching western fashions, music, food, and general merchandise of every sort.

Advertising is everywhere, like in America and around the cities, billboards abound pitching high end western goods like automobiles (BMW, Lexus, Audi, etc), fashionable clothing, perfume and of course Vodka. Goods are often advertised with a healthy dose of sexual innuendo and imagery. Looks like Madison Avenue has taken hold in the Russian economy, I guess.

I ate pretty well on the trip, and I'm happy to say I had no digestive problems at all. I was warned to drink only bottled water and drinks and I did so and was quite comfortable healthwise throughout my ten days in Russia. Well except for one episode with the Wodka! I also drank fountain soft drinks and hot tea and coffee and had no problems at all.

I only had a couple opportunities to savor the better examples of Russian cuisine. Food at the conference was certainly edible but it was mostly, well, conference food. My Russian developer friends were given to inexpensive fast food restaurants and cafes. But on two occasions in St Petersburg I treated my one Russian friend Konstantin to a nice dinner in a better restaurant. One one occasion I had stroganoff which was excellent, and on another pelmeni. a traditional Russian dish referred to on one menu as a sort of Russian ravioli. It looked more like a tortellini and was stuffed with a very tasty bits of venison and covered with a mushroom creme sauce. Mmmmm... highly recommended! The spot where I had the pelmeni was an intriguing spot called Russian Fishing where guests may walk out on the restaurant's cement docks and catch their own fish for dinner. I've never see that one before!

Fast food restaurants abound... McDonald's, Sbarro Pizza (looks like cbappo in Cyrillic characters), coffee house chains,etc. But these have only the food in common with their American counterparts. Most of them serve alcohol, especially beer and wine, and the atmosphere in the early evening resembles more a TGI Friday's bar scene than a pizza joint! Oh and TGI Friday's is also very popular over there. The places are brightly lit and colorful, with western music pounding out of expensive sound systems. The music is very interesting... Russian traditional music is rarely heard in public places unless some spectacle designed for tourists or historical purposes. The music in the malls and restaurants is all pop music, Russian and American almost exclusively. Both sound pretty much the same except the words are in one language or the other. But neither is like much of what is heard in the USA these days. Far from it.

Let me say that I have lost my stomach for most of what is played on the radio and television today in the American pop music genre. I listen to oldies Rock and Roll, contemporary country (which mostly resembles older style rockabilly) or jazz and classical music. Call me an old fogie perhaps, but this droning tasteless stuff they play today in the US leaves me cold. The music in Russia, by contrast sounds like disco music from the 70's. Your basic Beegees or Donna Summer style music. This was never my favorite era of music but it was always enjoyable and pleasant to listen to and can easily set your feet to tapping. Probably the most danceable music of the second half of the 20th century when music was still melodic.

Think Saturday Night Fever or Flashdance and you have the music of contemporary Russia. I can't decide if they are 20-30 years behind the US in musical taste, or leading the way for a revival of melodic music. Call me an optimist, but I am hoping for the latter. American music (if we can even call it that) seems to have sunk to the absolute depths of self indulgent anti-melodic pounding and droning delivered with either anger, despair or sexuality and very little talent or adherence to any traditional interpretation of musicality. My visit to Russia gave me hope.

In the bars, and fast food restaurants with this disco music playing at comfortable listening levels, couples and groups of young men and women sit and talk, read, eat and drink and generally strut their stuff. And much to my continual surprise, the ladies here have some serious stuff to strut! In deep contrast to American malls filled with sloppily dressed teenagers, girls and young women with frayed jeans, baggy sweatshirts, tattoos on all the exposed skin, half a dozen earrings, nose piercings, deliberately distorted hairstyles in every color of the rainbow, the girls here dress to kill! No sloppy frayed clothing here... not in the cities and in the malls anyhow... sleeping under bridges or in cardboard boxes perhaps but not in the public domain. The fashion here for the ladies is the "poured into" the slacks or jeans look. No "relaxed fit" jeans here. NONE.

Clothes are high style like in the 70's, one of my favorite eras for clothes, really. Black Gabardines are a dominant choice for the ladies, skin tight thru the hips and seat and gracefully flared legs down over the high heeled shoes. PEdal pushers or 'capri pants' were very rare and looked pretty silly against the elegant attire of most of the young women I saw. Form fitting blouses and sweaters were the norm, no exposed midriff. Long silky hair is a popular theme though all hairstyles are visible. Normal hairstyles... No spiked, moused, raggedy, tie dyed hair here for the ladies. The girls are going for the cover girl look in coiffeur and makeup and the Nordstrom's or Neiman Marcus look in the clothes, not Halloween.

Plenty of blue jeans to be seen, but not "levis" like we are led to believe. Not from what I could see... same fit as the dress slacks, the girls pour themselves into their jeans whether faded blue or dark blue, with or without the trendy bleached areas on the hips and thighs. And worn on the waist too... I saw very few women wearing hip riders and most that did were very young. The ladies mostly wore their slacks and jeans at the waist and skin tight thru the hips and seat showing off their well maintained contours. And very few tennis shoes to be seen on the ladies either... Most wore more fashionable leather shoes and boots fitting with their more elegant attire and tailored look.

What is quite extraordinary is the percentage of highly attractive young women. Perhaps it is just that these girls try harder, but more than half the girls in a public area would quality in most men's book as attractive with a striking percentage of drop dead gorgeous thrown in for good measure. It totally breaks the stereotype which portrayed the Russian women as heavyset, somberly dressed plain janes. Maybe in some small farming communities that may still be the case, but in the cities... in Moscow and St Petersburg, in the malls, railways stations, walking the main avenues and city streets, the women here are a refreshing contrast to the bleak trends which dominate US fashion or lack thereof these days.

And I have yet to see a single tattoo, whacked out hairdo or pierced body part other than fashionable earring sets. Quite amazing really. Same thing with weight control. Weight loss drugs would grow stale on the shelves here. Only a small percentage of young women could be classified as 'chubby' and gross obesity was nowhere to be seen. Not once! Perhaps the old Beachboys tune "wish they all could be California Girls" should be updated to "wish they all could be sexy Russian girls."

Yes the ladies are sexy... but not overtly... The sleazy tramp look is nowhere to be seen except perhaps at a downtown hotel where a few 'working girls' hang out. But in the malls and public places, the ladies are quite reserved and elegant in their form fitting clothing and tailored leather coats. And while I'm sure they are approachable in the right circumstances, the "come one come all" come-hither look is not in vogue at all. If I were in my late twenties and single I'll bet I could fall in love a hundred times a day walking around the city streets of Moscow and St Pete.

What about the guys? Less to say really. Pretty normal looking guys... normal for the 70's and eighties, not the late 90's and 2000's. No backward baseball caps here. None. No gangbanger look with acrylic hats pulled down over their ears when it is warm enough to have your head exposed. No wearing pants way down off the hips with the crotch at the knees, one of the absolutely most ridiculous trends in American youth dress in the last decade. No baggy jeans for the that matter. and no shorts, even though we had weather in the 60's. Teenagers are wearing baggy shorts falling off their butts in mid winter in Oregon... No shorts on young men at all here.

Comfortable reasonable attire seems to be the only theme for the men. Pants are worn at the waist or just below and straight leg slacks and jeans are predominant. Men wear their hair normal length, like the 50's I would say. Very few long haired men or boys that I could see, perhaps one in a hundred, though I understood it was common enough some years ago. And once again, no tattoos, body piercing or whacked our hairdos. Young men are generally very western looking and comfortable with themselves... not a lot of airs or machismo or attitude to be seen either.

But for all their style and appeal, the people don't seem happy. Not much laughing joking or carrying on at all. It's more than reserved...it is stern and somber in the facial expressions and demeanor. Especially in people approaching middle age and beyond. Maybe it was all those years of Communist oppression. One Russian friend suggested that is was more a cultural issue... that people are taught not to display their emotions in public, and not that they are particularly unhappy. I can't say really, it was very difficult to talk to anyone except my Russian developer friends who acted as my guides. English is not widely spoken here at all... not a bit like Western Europe. Young people may speak a few words but very halting and broken and a bit difficult to understand the mispronunciation more often than not.

I was fortunate in that my developer friends spoke English pretty well, especially Dmitry who has spent some time in England. And though Konstantin's vocabulary was perhaps a bit limited, he always tried very hard to explain things to me and always had his PDA translator at hand to look up a word. You couldn't ask for more. My Russian after 5 days is pretty much limited to two words... spasibo (thank you) and na zdorovie or "cheers"... pretty embarrassing... Spasibo when they pour you another wodka and na zdorovie when they toast you.

Oh and the word nyet which I finally learned to say when they offered me another Wodka. Oh, the mornings come much too early here, Wodka is the national obsession and they drink it like water. And not just in bars and restaurants either. Even when you walk into a higher end gift shop, a pretty young thing greets you with a tray of shots of Wodka. And this isn't watered down US vodka either... this stuff will grow hair on your chest and just about everywhere else! After one rather intense night I learned to "Just say NO to Wodka" :-/

All in all, my trip to Russia was nothing short of remarkable. The conference was very worthwhile from a business standpoint, my Russian developers were extremely gracious hosts and the people in general were friendly and helpful once you get past the stern demeanor. Russia had never been very high on my personal 'must visit' list, but now that I have seen St Petersburg, well, I definitely plan to return and take my family next time. So set aside your preconceptions and stereotyped cliches about what Russia is like. This ain't Khrushchev's Russia, Komrade, and it is well worth the trip for anyone wishing to broaden their horizons and perceptions of world cultures.

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Joseph Burke
Editor-in-Chief
InfiniSource.com

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