There is a show on Russian TV that purports to select the best of all of the songs written throughout the history of the USSR and Russia. The show is called “National Treasure” (in a nice twist, the first two letters of each of the two words comprising its name in Russian – Достояние Республики – are actually the first two notes in an octave), and each of its episodes examines the musical heritage of a given decade. Two sets of judges – “younger” generation and “older” generation; the demarcation seems to be around the age of 32-33, so I would definitely belong to the latter – vote on each of the presented songs. Three songs with the most votes from each decade progress on to the future program finale.

The judges are all celebrities of one kind or another and they are also asked to openly opine on every number prior to voting. A couple of people produce thoughtful – or hilarious – remarks, but most of the conversation is given to ardent butt-kissing, especially when the performer has a high enough pedigree to only be dealt with as if he or she were royalty. There are some harsh, and even rude, put-downs on rare occasions for some lesser lights, but it is mostly “Fantastic! Super! Amazing! Genius! You are my favorite singer!” and all that. Entertaining enough, I suppose.

The songs themselves is what matters to me. I know enough of Soviet musical heritage from before I was born and practically everything that’s ever been on radio or TV in the 70′s and 80′s to find every tune familiar and to be genuinely pleased when a song I count among my favorites gets high marks from the judging panels.

And then we come to the installment dealing with the songs from the 90′s.

To say that I do not know any of those songs is incorrect – most of them were or still are on the playlists in Russian restaurants in Brooklyn. To say that any of the songs can have a pretense of being considered for anything more than a fleeting note is a gross understatement – but then, I realize that you can’t just skip a decade altogether in this format. Several of the songs were legitimate hits in their time and possibly left a bigger imprint in the history of Russian music than I can imagine from my remote perch. But were I on that panel, I might just leave my ballot blank.

And then, there was this gem, which I’ve never heard before. (This is the original 90′s video.)
 

 
My American readers hopefully will not make a mistake to think that this song is sung in Russian. Or, in any language, for that matter. The words – of which there aren’t many – are pure gibberish.

During the performance of this number, I said to Natasha: “I can’t imagine that anyone from the ‘older’ generation would vote for it”. The tune may be catchy enough, and the number itself may have a sort of “pioneering” impact in the ex-Soviet society, but could this be something that people identify with or have fond memories associated with or simply enjoy singing themselves1?

And what do you know!? Both panels, the older one and the younger one, heaped unqualified praise on the group and its frontman, with one jury member, a respected poet in his 70′s, recalling that he once labelled the guy “the new Tchaikovsky” and this song was the proof.

!?!?!?!?

The song got enough votes to become a finalist. Indeed, a Russian musical **national** treasure.

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1 Ok, I suppose I can imagine myself repeatedly croaking “Ramamba Haru Mamburu” in a deranged shower moment, but I wouldn’t be proud of my choice. I’m sure.

I was already well-conditioned to the pervasive expectation of monetary “incentives” exhibited by everybody in the service sector. Truth be told, with the exchange rate of about 25 rubles to a dollar, I could safely dispense bribes left and right and pretend they were simple gratuities, so little it cost me in absolute terms. Plus, of course, I was more than willing to “smooth” my passage out of the country as much as I could.

I had a huge and heavy suitcase to check in, full of gifts and souvenirs. At the airport, the woman behind the check-in desk eyeballed it as I was approaching her and adopted a constipated facial impression of someone stoically prepared to fight against any blatant disregard for airline regulations.

And then she saw my American passport.

It was as if a big neon sign screaming “Easy Money!!!” just lit up above my head. Her face rearranged itself into an ingratiating smile and she proceeded with exceeding politeness to inquire whether I spoke any Russian and then through whatever pleasantries an airline agent normally has in stock for persons of importance.

When I put my suitcase on the scales, she almost apologetically stated that it was grossly overweight (six or seven kilos, if memory serves me right), and she could not allow it to be checked in. But, she quietly confided to me, if the chief baggage handler agreed to load it, she would be able to make an exception. There would be, of course, a fee.

“How much?” I ask.

“Two hundred”.

“Ok”.

“If you give the money to me, I’ll go and ask him”, she suggests.

So, I give her two hundred rubles. She disappears through the back door, comes back out in a minute, and ushers me to follow her through the same door. A middle-aged guy wearing work overalls and a thoughtful expression of someone attempting to string a single coherent sentence together offers me his dirty hand, while the woman retreats back to her check-in counter. The man explains the difficulty of my case to me:

“With that weight… who’s got the strength to lift it… we’d have to take special measures…”

“How much?” I pull out my wallet.

“Two hundred, and we will take the best care of you suitcase”, is the answer.

What the hell, let it be four hundred in total! I give him the money, he escorts me back to the check-in area, gives a permissive nod to the woman behind the counter, and my bag is slowly carried off by the conveyor.

It dawns on me that I paid the first two hundred to the check-in agent for the sole privilege of getting access to the luggage guy, who likely has no idea about it and probably would have to give her a half of his own two hundred as a kickback, but, on balance, 15 dollars is not something I’m going to worry about in this situation. Predictably, the bunch of people who came to see me off are appalled at the amount of money I dispensed in quick three minutes, but I just shrug it off.

(As an aside, the suitcase arrived in Moscow in pristine condition. Whether those few dollars contributed to the positive outcome or not is anybody’s guess.)

As I say my goodbyes and proceed to the security controls, I have two pieces of carry-on luggage with me. One is my regular backpack, with reading material, documents and whatever other stuff I prefer not to check in. The other is a not very large cardboard box containing a china tea set that my brother-in-law sent as a gift for Natasha.

There aren’t any x-ray machines. All hand luggage gets a superficial rummage-through by the security agents. My box presents a problem, as it is expertly closed, wrapped and tied with strings. One of the agents, accompanied by a “border guard”-type private with an AK-47, takes me aside to a screened-off cubicle.

“What do you have in that box?”

“A tea set.”

“What kind of a tea set?”

“A standard tea set: Cups, saucers, sugar bowl, tea pot…”

“Are you sure?”

I pause for a second searching for an answer, but cannot come up with anything better than “If you want to check, let’s open the box and take a look… I’ll figure out how to close it back afterwards”.

“Maybe you don’t want to open the box.”

The guy speaks with just the right inflection between a statement and a question, and a light bulb comes off in my head.

“How much for not opening the box?”

“However much you can spare.”2

The two guys are unaware of the fact that I have already considered whether I overpaid for the previous “service”, so I manage to extract myself from the situation with comparatively little damage.

“A hundred is ok for the two of you?”

“Very generous of you. Have a pleasant flight.”

Forty minutes later, the plane is ready to board. The passengers exit the gate waiting room (known in Russian laconicly as накопитель, “accumulator”) and get on a bus, which drives us all to the plane parked not a hundred meters away. As the people in front of me are climbing up the steps of the ladder, everybody is herded into the rear main cabin, but I notice that a couple of men, with an aura of VIPs about them, are deferentially ushered into the front cabin. As I approach the flight attendant who is greeting everybody, I suddenly have an idea:

“Excuse me, miss, is it possible that I can sit in the front cabin?”

The italics emphasize the fact that I actually spoke those three words in my best English.

There registered a hint of recognition in her eyes.

“Ah, you are the American that is flying with us?”

“Yes, I am”, I beam at her.

“Certainly, pick any seat you like.”

There has never been much of a cabin service or personal attention on internal Russian flights (the flight attendants curtly dispense water and ginger ale in plastic cups once during the flight, and caramel candies on another pass-through, and that is pretty much the extent of their responsibilities), but the same stewardess leaned over me in a short time.

“Are you comfortable here?”

The expectation was very clear in her face.

“Yes, thank you very much”, I smiled and slipped her a hundred.

The other two VIPs turned out to be local deputies to the Duma. And so we traveled, just the three of us, two “legislators” and a foreigner, in a relative comfort in a cabin that could seat at least 30 people. It was not an upper class experience by any stretch of imagination, but it was infinitely better than being stuck in the rear cabin, where I am sure the only empty seat was the original mine. Worth four bucks easily.

When we landed in Moscow, a curiously weird thing happened. Everybody was supposed to present their passports for review at the security desk when entering the airport building. Upon seeing my passport, the guy at the desk pointed me to another desk, several meters away, occupied by a bored girl in an army officer uniform puffing on a cigarette. I presented my passport to her, she looked through every single page, then marked some fields in a diagonal line on the form in front her, not taking the cigarette out of her mouth, gave me back my passport, got up, and left without saying a word. When I expressed my confusion with that procedure to the guy guarding the exit from this control room, he simply waved me through. The bureaucracy was satisfied that the only foreigner on the plane has reached his destination, and that was that.

I spent the night over at the apartment of my brother’s then-future father-in-law, who drove me to the airport for my flight to New York next morning. This time around, I did not have to bribe anyone in regards to my suitcase. Instead, Aeroflot decided that it was easier to rob me in an official way. And that was considerably more painful in terms of the amount. I’d rather I had to bribe someone. Something like a hundred dollars – the truth is, I don’t remember exactly, – were required in payment to the cashier in a different part of the airport for the right to have my overweight luggage transported. In rubles. Which I did not even have anymore, thoughtfully having exchanged all my remaining Russian currency for dollars before leaving for the airport.

I ended up asking my Moscow host to empty his pockets so that I could pay the fee.

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1 Rostov-na-Donu is certainly not a destination major enough to have direct air links with America. It used to be that you inevitably had to travel to Moscow – by plane or train – and board a US-bound flight there. In the last 10-15 years, various flights to European destinations – Vienna, Dusseldorf, Prague – became useful, if expensive, alternatives for the continental leg of the trip. In 2000, they already existed but followed infrequent and inconvenient schedules.

2 My translator’s skills come up short here in properly relaying the careless beauty of Russian “Да сколько не жалко!”, which softens the blow for the victim of such extortion by dressing it up in handout-to-the-poor clothes.

Natasha ascribes much of my disaffection with that trip to the weather. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision to go, and with Natasha more than half-term along with Kimmy, I could not postpone it until warmer months. Mid-March tends to be quite cold in the Russian south, with driving rain or wet snow dominating the skies. And so it was, raining one day, snowing the other, freezing overnight and thawing by the midday just enough to make everything one big puddle of mud.

But the very last day of my visit turned out bright and sunny, with not a cloud in sight and the temperatures finally climbing into early-spring territory. I had a few hours before I needed to go to the airport, and I decided to use them for a bit of video-recording.

With a camcorder in hand, I arrived to the corner of the streets on which our old high-rise apartment building stood. I focused on the balcony of our former apartment on the 12th floor, then panned around the area. There was our street – it did not look any different. There was the fire station next to our building. There used to be a large block of grassland in front of it where we played football as kids, but it was now occupied by a nondescript unattractive government structure.

I turned off my camcorder and started in the direction of the next spot that I wanted to tape.

But I did not manage more than a few steps as a police sergeant with a large automatic weapon slung across his shoulder approached me. He inquired why I was videotaping a government building. Which one, I asked. He pointed to the aforementioned unattractive structure and informed me that that was a local police precinct. I expressed my ignorance of that fact and explained that I used to live in this apartment building right here, used to play football as a boy on the spot of land where the the precinct now stood, came back for a visit for the first time in many years, and just wanted to record the present look the place for the rest of my family back home. He politely asked where I lived now. America, I answered.

He asked for my documents.

My US passport was in the breast pocket of my jacket. The problem was, the day was considerably warmer than any previous ones on my trip. I left one layer of clothing at my brother-in-law’s apartment. Guess which one!

After I conveyed that to the policeman, he firmly requested that I follow him to the precinct, “to establish [my] identity”. (Actually, he used a brilliant and capacious word in Russian language that roughly means “we are going to walk to you-know-where together, and you have no choice in the matter”: Пройдёмте.)

We arrived at the “reception” room of the precinct. There was a single mostly bare desk near the window occupied by a lethargic-looking major. A couple of chairs stood opposite the desk by the wall. Next to them was a little holding cell, its metal gate in the open position. A few raggedy-looking Caucasians1 sat on the bench inside the cell with despair manifest in their facial expressions.

I was shown to a chair while the sergeant explained the issue to the major. The latter got visibly excited at a prospect of some action and proceeded to question me along the same lines as what the sergeant already asked. Then he moved on to filling out the arrest form (known in Russian as “protocol”).

“Last name?”
“Burlak.”
“First name?”
“Ilya.”
“Patronymic?”
“Well, it’s Yakovlevich, but it will not appear on my passport.”
“Why not?”
“Because in America, patronymics are not used.”
“How is that possible?”
I expressed a complete inability to answer.
“A person needs to have a patronymic… Where are you registered for residence2?”
“I am not registered anywhere.”
“What??? Are you a БОМЖ3?”
“No, I am not a БОМЖ. I can give you my current home address, but again, it will not appear in my passport, and I am not прописан there. Such a thing does not exist in America.”
“Well, I have to put something under прописка. What’s the address?”
I did my best to convert my New Jersey address into a Russian-style one.

And so on.

A few other officers entered the room in the meantime and joined in “interrogating” me. Some were visibly amused, but at least one sensed an opportunity to catch an international spy. He demanded that I rewind and show him all of the footage that I previously taped. I’d done very little recording prior to that last day, so there was little to see. Still, he got excited at a couple of sequences. One was the expansive view of the vast rail junction near the main city station, as seen from a high bridge above it. The other was a neglected and decrepit construction site behind my in-laws’ apartment building, as seen from their balcony. Satisfied with the improbability of me taping the former as part of a terrorist reconnaissance, the major got incensed that I would record something in the state of ruin for my “documentary”.

He was justified in his indignation, of course: I specifically taped that view as an example of what I viewed as general разруха4. But I did my best to convince him that I was simply recording the view from my in-laws’ new apartment, without much thought for what it was.

Some other major suddenly asked me in a heavily-accented English whether I spoke any English. It took me a couple of moments to switch languages – I’ve always been pretty slow at that particular skill – but I answered in my best Brooklynite accent that yes, I in fact spoke both languages at almost equal levels of fluency by now. I suppose he understood only “yes”. That must have been enough, though, to corroborate my otherwise unsupported claim of residing abroad.

The question of how my identity could be established was raised again and again, and I kept responding that my passport was at my brother-in-law’s apartment just a few bus stops from where we were. “We’ll check that”, was a repeated response.

It was just a couple of months before Putin was elected the Russian president for the first time. During the election campaign, he had “personal representatives” in all regions of Russia to direct appropriate events, and his representative in the Rostov Region happened to be the president of the State University that I not exactly had graduated from years ago. There was a fair chance that he could recall my name, on the strength of me having been an active komsomol leader in my youth and studying in the same year as one of his sons. So, I had a bright idea of announcing to the crowd of officers that one of the simplest ways of establishing my identity was to dial the offices of the university president – personal representative of Putin, Vladimir Vladimirovich, – and ask him whether he remembered me.

That had the desired effect of putting them into action. I was quickly bundled into a police car with supposed aim of driving to the apartment to retrieve my passport. But after some wait, spent in civil conversation with the driver and one other militioner guarding me – they were quite fascinated with America, – I was moved back to the reception room straight into the holding cell, while somebody from the precinct apparently drove to the apartment to fetch the passport.

Interestingly, I got a sense of sympathy coming my way from the people in the cell. An older woman actually sighed during a pause in the proceedings, “Why are they tormenting the boy?”…

My sister-in-law Katya thankfully was home. She answered the door, got my passport, and came to the precinct. I am almost positive that she does not hold any grudges towards me for that unpleasant experience – she and I had a number of good laughs recalling the whole thing since then.

The appearance of the official document confirming my claim of being a foreign citizen immediately shifted the balance of power. It was still the time when “America” was not a curse word in Russia, but rather something to admire, respect and even fear. I’m not saying that fear is a good thing, but it affected the way foreign citizens were dealt with. My passport practically burned fingers of everyone who touched it – the possibility of an international incident involving an American citizen indirectly connected to Putin played out very clearly in every officer’s eyes.

I was shown to the office of the precinct chief, a stern-looking middle-aged woman major. She and her assistant, a pretty young female captain, repeated the entire interview while being quite good-natured about the whole thing. The captain made eyes at me and joked that admitting to being a former komsomol leader was not to my credit any longer; times changed, you know. The major gave me a lecture about violating the regulations of a foreign citizen’s stay in Russia by videotaping without a permit. I pleaded ignorance, stressed my origins as a local boy and made promises to never ever ever violate any regulations in my life.

The major, in a manner that was almost apologetic, announced that while they were satisfied that I was neither a spy nor a terrorist nor any other type of unsavory character, they could not let me go without levying a fine for the violation. The protocol has been already filled out, after all, and required a recorded closure. The fine was in the amount of 42 rubles. A buck fifty, at the exchange rates at the time. I had to run to the nearest Sberbank branch, where I came across an opportunity to witness a sad procession of pensioners in line to get their meagre pensions and walk away with practically nothing after paying for various utilities. I brought the receipt of the payment to the precinct’s chief office, got my passport back and walked away a free man.

Those several hours at first seemed like a fun highlight during the otherwise disappointing trip. I wasted the only sunny day of my journey on the drab interior of the local police precinct, but the experience felt as an adventure of sorts. It was not long, however, that I stopped laughing at it and recognized it for the final straw that irreversibly soured my entire experience of coming back to the place of my birth.

Years later, I watched through the 50-episode Zona. Among its storylines (but not the main line, as IMDB suggests) is the months-long detention and abuse of an American citizen in a provincial Russian jail, motivated by the possibility of extorting a huge sum of money from a “rich American”. The series is supposedly based on real stories of former jailbirds and the period in time that it depicts does not suggest more than a couple of years of difference with my own experience. Projecting that storyline onto my own brush with the Russian law and order scared the bejeesus out of me. It could have turned out so much worse…

I made my flight, and the return journey home yielded several curious episodes one after another. But that is probably for another blog entry.

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1 In Russian culture and language, Caucasian is not a politically correct euphemism for a “white European”. It is instead a generic name for people who come from Caucasian Mountain “autonomous regions” and trans-Caucasian former Soviet republics (e.g., Georgia, Chechnya, Dagestan).

2 Registration of residence (прописка) has always been more than just a “permanent address” in the Soviet Union. With the internal freedom of movement pretty much non-existent, прописка was like a physical anchor that you were not supposed to stray away from often and for long periods of time. I suppose this strict interpretation already no longer existed in 2000, but the term itself was still widely used. I have little doubt that it continues to be used nowadays.

3 БОМЖ is an abbreviation for “without a defined residence” (Без Определённого Места Жительства). A socialist euphemism for “homeless”, but because of the importance of прописка, rendering the person just a tiny step above a common criminal.

4 А state of perpetual ruin.

Click to enlarge.

For my non-Russian audience, the best translation of what’s printed on the t-shirt is “Guys, can’t we all be friends!?”. A tagline from a well-loved animated shorts series about a good-natured cat by name of Leopold who is frequently harassed by mischievous mice, it has long become what we call a “winged phrase”.

Kremlin strategists received welcome help in these trying times from their old Nicaraguan friends. As Daniel Ortega’s government recognized breakaway states, it became possible to incorporate Nicaragua into the aforementioned entity. Adding “Ni” to the beginning of a Russian word reverses its meaning, so the new geopolitical configuration now threateningly declares “I will not shit my pants” – НиАбОсРусь.

The cupboards under our upper floor stairs leave enough of empty space for a person to step into when the traffic in the entrance hallway becomes too heavy. Some of our visitors may recall painfully banging their heads on the stairs as a result of such a maneuver.

Well, we finally decided to post a warning (Natasha’s Dad provided the sticker).

  

Click to enlarge, if you’d like. The right-hand picture gives you an idea of what the space looks like.

For my non-Russian readers, the sign translates as “The Place To Hit Your Head (don’t hurt yourself, be careful!)”.

There are obvious house-related things such as remembering an outstanding chore and going for it simultaneously.

There are easily explainable shared idiosyncrasies that flare up with a common trigger, such as when riding in a car together and being blocked at a roundabout entrance by a tentative driver in front of us, we synchronically say untoward things about the poor schmoe.

Or when we looked at one another during the fireworks display the other night, and said to one another: “Well, this is our first annual event in England”.

There are fairly transparent, but kinkier, examples such as when once changing for sleep in our bedroom with the drapes not yet closed and seeing a double-decker bus pass on the street in front of the house, we exclaimed in unison: “Now, those people on the upper deck just had them a good show!”

(Quick show of hands: How many of you just having read that, imagined yourself for a moment riding that bus? Come on, at least whoever searched for this should admit that that would be very close to the desired result).

But then, there are truly supernatural ones, such as yesterday, when at a rare moment of quiet contemplation I thought back to some of the things that I miss about America. People who know me well (unfortunately, Russian background is required for this), know that I like КСП.1 But that was probably the first time in over a year that I thought about how great it would be to go to a festival.

And what do you know? I talk to Natasha later that day, she relays to me regards from our American friends, and says in passing, You know, we talked about going to КСП together when we are back in the States.

How in the world did those thoughts coincide on exactly the same day!?

Anyone notices the same thing about their spouses?

 
 
 
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1 For non-Russian members of the audience, КСП (which is loosely translated as Author-performed Song Club) is a term used to describe a wide cultural phenomenon of celebrating artists who write and perform songs with only acoustic guitar accompaniment. In fact, anyone who knows how to play guitar chords probably knows how to play dozens, if not hundreds, of songs that originate within this movement. And most likely, even dabbled in writing some opuses him/herself…

The Russian-American communities on both coasts hold regular КСП campground-style festivals, with well-known authors attending as guests of honor. For most of the attendees, however, sitting through the night by the fire with friends and singing – or listening to – familiar songs is in itself the most prized attraction.

One of my Russian friends, whom I correspond with regularly and who is avowedly apolitical, has sent me a hyperventilating email with repeated verbiage around “our victory”, “a shot of adrenalin”, “the might of the country”… I can only imagine the hysteria in Russian mass media – actually, I’ve read a few articles, nothing to imagine there. Putin is now only an inch away from being anointed a saint. Irina Rodnina, discussing the suggestion of Putin opening the Games in 2014, agreed that it will certainly be appropriate regardless of which position he will occupy at the time; then, matter-of-factly, “In truth, people of Russia are not against him doing that in his presidential capacity”…

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I am very happy for Russian people, especially those apolitical ones who find true excitement in a momentous event such as this. Olympics in my lifetime have always cost their hosts a lot of financial and logistical troubles, while hardly bringing long-lasting benefits for the future after the Games. So, I don’t want to be part of hosting the Olympics (yep, take it as a promise – in 2012 you will not find me residing in London), nor do I believe that it is such a great thing for the local populace (although I’ve heard that house prices in Sochi are doubled overnight – at least some people will find themselves seriously better off). But I still sincerely congratulate anyone who views this as a cause for exhilaration.

What bugs me is an implicit approbation of what Russia currently is that comes with this decision. Or is it acquiescence? For the Games in Moscow – selection happened in early 70′s, at the height of Cold War, – in had to be the latter, and it is certainly not out of the question that a sizable part of international community today feels obliged to allow something of considerable importance to increasingly belligerent – but also, to some, very friendly, – Russia. But IOC vote is supposed to be politics-free, and surely selection of Beijing has already been wrapped into notions of “breaking the barriers”, improving international relations, and such. After corruption scandals linked to Salt Lake City selection, I am reluctant to give IOC the benefit of the doubt, but what the hell, let’s say that they had cleaned up their act, and Sochi won because their portfolio was the best (and neither Austrian Chancellor, nor South Korean Premier could make a dent in it once Putin got involved – not that they tried, in any case). Regardless of the motives or the quality of the bid, that decision allows Putin to grow his “legend” and validates advances of authoritarianism in present day Russia. If not for that, I might have been just as ecstatic about Olympics happening almost literally in the backyard of my birthplace…

On a cursory note, Putin always seemed to me to possess the emotional range of an inanimate object and the conversational charm of a parking violations officer. Now hearing him speak can apparently alter the decisions of royalty and assorted luminaries that comprise the IOC. Would I be similarly awed if turning up in his presence? Maybe I do not like him simply because I do not know him enough…

The last obvious thought is that a pattern emerges. First Blair, now Putin. Whoever is the American president in two years, that person will certainly possess an abundance of charisma compared to Dubya. Chicago is a candidate for 2016 Olympics. If we send our president to pitch, it’s a slam dunk. At the moment, the competitors are Shinzo Abe, Lula, Jose Luis Zapatero (or could it be King Juan Carlos?), Vaclav Klaus and Sheikh Hamad. Even Hillary should be able to beat this bunch handily.

I have re-read what I’ve written and started to regret my choice of topic for today. The alternative ruminations were on craziness around 07/07/07 date. Or, I could have described our wonderful outing to Hever Castle in Kent. Too bad I felt compelled to express my views on the Olympic host selection – but it is also too late to re-write the post. I promise to revert to chronicling our adventures very soon.

Natasha and I are going out with a colleague of mine tonight – hopefully, that will further help to take the edge off, and then it is just a few days until we see another set of close friends, followed by another exciting trip to the continent.

We actually started working on it last night, inviting Kimmy’s school friend Gabriella and her parents over. While the kids were playing, the adult conversation progressed from subject to subject, and then firmly centered on America-versus-Russia debate, which turned into a rather heated exchange.

Valera is very pro-Russian and anti-American, with strong feelings about America’s “unlawful interference” into “internal” affairs of other countries, and with a view of the world that is closely aligned with that perpetuated by the Russian not-very-independent media. He read somewhere a quote attributed to Brzezinski about America’s stated goal to unilaterally rule the world (I have a feeling that it was a distorted translation, but I’ll have to spend some time to see if such quote truly exists) – and it certainly colors his opinions. He also carries the conviction that in America people routinely get fired for their political views (I stooped low enough to retort that in Russia, they actually get murdered, re: Politkovskaya).

In any case, I am not a Bush lover or a war apologist, but I certainly believe in most of what America stands for, including a certain moral obligation of the biggest and the strongest to stand up to tyranny and oppression elsewhere (if only we were consistent in applying this moral right…). I also read enough different press – almost none of it American, these days, – to recognize growing constraints on democracy and the rise of Putin’s personality cult in Russia. Long story short, I jumped headlong into the debate.

Regretful! As much as Valera builds his view of America on specious misconceptions trumpeted up by anti-American media, there is no way to convince him that most of it lacks verity. Conversely, despite some newfound stability in Russia over the last few years, no one can convince me that authoritarianism is preferable to democracy (of course, I admit, I define democracy in very American terms; Valera is quite convinced that what goes on in Russia today is the true democracy, while American way is all about who has more money – there’s got to be a bit of truth in that, right?). As a result, the only thing we can accomplish arguing our points of view is putting a dent in our otherwise friendly relationship, which would be a shame.

At some point, we did recognize the need to agree to disagree. We even both joked about practicing true form of democracy – healthy dialogue about different points of view. But I think we’ll both try to steer away of it in the future. Karaoke works so much better for camaraderie!