A Look Back

On one of my first entries on this blog, just a week after my arrival in St. Petersburg, I wrote that I found myself adjusting to a routine far quicker than I had expected. If that was true of my first few weeks in Russia, it is all the more true upon my return—and it’s especially true on this 4^th of July weekend, which marks 4 weeks since my return to America. People talk a lot about reverse culture shock, but for me the real strangeness of returning home lies in how quickly I have re-integrated into my old life. I am happy for that, of course—happy to be back at BC for the summer, happy to be catching up with friends and family, happy to be in an environment where I don’t have to worry about the language barrier. But alongside that thrill of return, there is also a certain melancholy when I think back on my time in Russia, which already seems strangely far away.

I was never as good as about updating this blog as I hoped to be, but I would be remiss if I did not finish off the story of my time abroad. Thankfully, the last month of my semester ended things on a high note—or rather, a series of high notes, for my final weeks abroad allowed me a dizzying assortment of experiences, both inside St. Petersburg and far afield, as I tried to make the most of my remaining time abroad.

Tallinn and Helsinki

I wrote back in April about my impromptu trip to Riga—a city that was not on my agenda before I came to Russia, but which ended up being a highlight of my semester. My experience in Latvia only solidified my desire to visit Tallinn—the capital of Estonia, whose quaint medieval architecture first drew my eye during a presentation in my Russian class two years ago. And while I was at it, I figured, I might as well check out Finland, just north of the Russian border and a short ferry ride from Tallinn. (As for my interest in Finland, I suppose I should thank Monty Python.)

So on the second weekend of May, I headed off on my grand Estonian-Finnish adventure with my friends Adam and Liv. Thanks to a national holiday on May 9^th (Victory Day, which is second only to New Year’s in importance to Russians), we were able to make a 3-day weekend of it, arriving in Tallinn late Thursday night, busing back to St. Petersburg on Sunday, and in between spending Saturday in Helsinki, thanks to an early-morning ferry ride from Talinn.

In many of its particulars, Tallinn seemed to rhyme with Riga: both cities have clearly delineated medieval Old Towns, outside of which lie the more modern, “authentic” city. In both Tallinn and Riga, I was struck by how the cities’ European and Soviet heritages mingle. Neither Estonia nor Latvia look fondly upon their history with the USSR, but that history is visible on the streets nonetheless. As I wandered outside Old Tallinn, I found much that would have felt at home in Russia: Soviet-style communal housing, a decrepit, rusty old prison by the sea, and an abandoned, graffiti-strewn shipyard. I don’t mean to suggest that Russia is entirely characterized by industrial decay, but for better or worse such images are linked in my mind with the Soviet legacy, and they stand in stark contrast to the gleaming, modern European infrastructure you see elsewhere in Tallinn.

Of course, the main attraction of Tallinn remains its Old Town, which is home to all the picturesque charms you can imagine: ancient castles, colorful churches, cobblestone streets, and plenty of local vendors dressed in medieval garb, trying to sell you their handiwork or local delicacies. Old Tallinn is very touristy, certainly more so than Riga and, perhaps too much for its own good. Still, I was taken by its old-world charms, and I enjoyed seeing how those styles contrasted with more modern influences—from quirky public sculptures and fountains to somber monuments about Estonia’s time under Soviet rule and its subsequent independence.

After a full day exploring Tallinn and a long dinner at a local pub, Adam, Liv, and I went to bed early at our hostel, then woke up at around 6:30 AM for the next step of our journey: the ferry to Helsinki.

I didn’t spend as much time in Helsinki as I would have liked, but I was generally struck by how eccentric and modern it was. Strange public art and modernist styles, which were only fringe elements against the medieval backdrop of Tallinn, seemed to be dominant in Helsinki.

Take, as an example, the Temppeliaukio Church. From the outside, this place looks like a UFO embedded into a rock face. (Something out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind?) But it is actually a functioning Lutheran Church, built entirely from the rock and drenched in natural night. The place was certainly the most interesting architectural find of the day, but all around in Helsinki I saw interesting modernist spins on familiar architectural staples: train stations, public housing buildings, and even graves, not to mention countless strange sculptures and public art installations. Although modernism is not my favorite artistic mode, I came to appreciate how much of Helsinki’s public space was given over to such experimentation. It lent the city a charm that was distinct from Talinn and certainly unique among all the cities I’ve seen. And apart from all the architectural quirkiness, Helsinki had plenty of natural beauty: from its sea port to the countless parks and green areas sprinkled throughout the city, not to mention a tranquil lake beach where Liv and I caught much-needed naps in the middle of the day.

By the time we returned to Tallinn the next morning (via another 7:30 AM ferry), we were all pretty wiped. While Liv and Adam waited for the afternoon bus, I opted to spend a few hours wandering around the city’s outskirts to take in some final sights. And within a few hours (and after a public transport scare where we thought that our bus wasn’t coming), we were all on board an Ecolines bus back to St. Petersburg.

Liberal Arts/Свободные искусства

When I got back from the Tallinn/Helsinki trip, I became all too aware of my limited remaining time in St. Petersburg. Less than one month stood between me and home, but there was still so much to do: lots of museums to visit and revisit, new neighborhoods to explore, a few more side trips to make, and yes, an academic semester to finish.

I haven’t talked much about my academics in St. Petersburg, but the subject is worth exploring, and more interesting than you might expect. That is in large part thanks to the unique beast that is the Bard-Smolny program, which combines an American-style liberal arts curriculum with full integration into the Russian university system.

The idea of the liberal arts college is becoming passé among many Americans, who unfortunately tend to see universities as degree delivery machines, valuing higher education more for its career-maximizing potential than for its inherent value. I’ve never felt that way, but even so, studying in a liberal arts college in Russia made me appreciate the system more than ever. Smolny College was founded in 1997 in the more liberal spirit of the early post-Soviet period, and has managed to stay afloat even in the more repressive Putin era. Although Russia does not exactly have a sterling reputation for free speech protections, within the walls of Smolny, discourse is as free and open as anywhere else.

I discovered this every Thursday in my political history class called “The Past and Future of Russia in Current Ideological Projects.” The course, a seminar conducted entirely in Russian, was taught by the Petersburg journalist and historian Daniel Kotsubinsky. Kotsubinsky is in many ways the model of a Western-looking St. Petersburg intellectual, the kind of pro-democracy liberal whose voices are largely marginalized in Putin’s Russia. But at Smolny, Kotsubinsky can speak freely—about his own experience in the failed liberal reform movements of the 90s, about his historical research (which often pokes serious holes in the ideological tent poles of Russian nationalism), and about his vision for a future defined by regionalism and separatism, including his hope that St. Petersburg will one day secede from Russia and join the EU!

More importantly, though, Kotsubinsky let us talk and share our views. Beyond that, he brought in a guest speaker every class, each representing a different Russian political ideology, from liberalism to Communism, nationalism to Eurasianism. This kind of back-and-forth between students, professor, and guest speakers is extremely uncommon in Russian universities, where classes are typically taught in a passive lecture style. In Kotsubinsky’s class, that was certainly not the case. With his journalistic penchant for tough questioning, Kotsubinsky often antagonized his guests with his combative interrogation, pointing out logical flaws and contradictions that made discussions quite heated. But he also let everyone have their say—including myself and Beryl, the other American student in a class full of Russians. Kotsubinsky was thrilled to have an American perspective on Russian politics, and he also wanted to know more about American political movements. This led to one of the strangest academic experiences in my life, as Beryl and I did a midterm presentation on the Tea Party movement, trying to explain in broken Russian such matters as the right’s opposition to Obamacare, the government shutdown, and the rise of Ted Cruz.

For my final project, the focus shifted back to Russia, as I was asked to present my own personal idea of what Russia’s future should look like. I proposed a liberal “Second Russian Federation” and constitutional amendments to limit the power of the Russian presidency, which is largely unchecked today. To my surprise, I found Kotsubinsky scrutinizing my ideas as much as any of our guests, asking tough questions about my (admittedly naïve) assumptions and the questions I had left unanswered. It was certainly the most intense oral presentation I have ever delivered, but when I finished it was with an immense sense of satisfaction. I had managed, however imperfectly, to articulate and defend my own political ideas in a foreign language, and under the scrutiny of a seasoned Russian journalist, no less.

I have many other great memories from my courses, but it was Kotsubinsky’s class that will always stay with me when I think back on Smolny. I have taken plenty of classes at BC that opened my mind and expanded my knowledge, but it took this seminar, taught in a classroom 4,000 miles away from home, to make me fully appreciate the power of the liberal arts.

Final Days

One of the final excursions we took as a group was a day trip to Tsarskoye Selo, or Tsar’s Village, located 15 miles outside of St. Petersburg. At this point in the semester I thought I had had my fill of royal palaces, but Tsarskoye Selo proved me wrong. The estate is home to two magnificent palaces, the Catherine Palace (given by Peter the Great to his wife) and the neoclassical Alexander Palace, favored by Nicholas II and the last royal family. These two palaces are placed in a sprawling estate full of huge gardens, ponds, and various other buildings, such as the Imperial Lyceum, the elite school where Pushkin was taught. Most impressive of all was the Amber Room of the Catherine Palace—photography wasn’t allowed there, but a quick Google search will show you how decadent, and beautiful, the room was.

About a week after our trip to Tsarskoye Selo, I had a brush with Russia’s current leadership, in the person of Vladimir Putin himself. For the occasion of the St. Petersburg Economic Forum (boycotted by the U.S. in response to the takeover of Crimea), Putin was in town for the weekend, and he made a surprise appearance at a concert on the steps of St. Isaac’s Cathedral. My host dad was among the 5,000 voices singing in the choir, and he had tipped me off days earlier about Putin’s appearance, so it was no surprise to me. But it was a curiously thrilling spectacle, as an American and a student of international relations, to see Putin in person among a crowd of adoring Russians. For all of the sanctions and international disapproval, Putin has enjoyed career-high approval ratings since his actions in Ukraine, and the mood of the crowd certainly reflected this. It probably helped that the concert itself was dominated by patriotic Soviet-era anthems, including an ode to Sevastopol, which is now de facto Russian territory.

For my part, I was just trying to get a decent picture and then get out of there. I managed to do this, but not before receiving an unwelcome delivery on the head by a bird flying above. I like to think that this unconventional missile was sent by the KGB, trying to weed out the American presence from this musical celebration of Russian nationalism.

The opportunity to see Putin was certainly a highlight of my last month in Russia, but the best was yet to come. My two final nights in St. Petersburg afforded me the best memories of the entire trip, each with a group of people who had made the semester so special: the first night with my fellow Smolny students, and the second with my host family.

On our penultimate night in St. Petersburg, we decided to do something that had always been on our collective bucket list: we stayed up and out all night, experiencing the famous White Nights in all their glory and witnessing the bridges go up around St. Petersburg (which happens twice in the middle of the night to allow ships to pass through the city’s waterways). Joined by a few Russian friends from Smolny, we started out with some celebratory end-of-semester vodka at a dorm and then made our way down Nevsky Prospekt and to a nightclub called Radio Baby. I’ve always been skeptical of nightclubs, but it ended up being a wonderful experience. We started off as a group of Americans awkwardly dancing in our own little bubble, but the circle kept expanding as our friend Will pulled in Russians to dance with us, and we kept the energy going into the wee hours of the night. At around 3 AM I left with some friends to see the bridge go up by the Winter Palace, a sight that was quite impressive in the otherworldly light of the White Nights. Then we headed back to Radio Baby to rendezvous with the rest of the group for some late-night food at a Subway off Nevsky. By the time I headed home, it was past 5 AM and a new day was just beginning, as street-cleaning trucks sweeped the streets and morning light bathed the city. But if it had ever gotten pitch black during the night, I hadn’t noticed—such is the strange ephemeral quality of the White Nights, when day blends imperceptibly into night.

My final night in St. Petersburg was less adventurous but just as special. I spent it as I had spent many nights, at the dinner table in my host family’s apartment. This time, though, we had two extra guests: two musicians from Holland, Ben and Alex, who were friends of my host mother Zhanna and visiting St. Petersburg for a week or two. Since they couldn’t speak any Russian, my language skills got a bit of a work out, as Zhanna and I alternated translation duties for the benefit of Sergey and Masha. Our dinnertime conversation stretched far past midnight as we collectively put away several bottles of champagne and wine. This final dinner was the perfect way to end my adventure abroad, a symbol of how far my language skills had come and of how far I had come personally in becoming comfortable with my Russian family and my temporary home.

What else is there to say about my time abroad? Quite a lot, really, since I have inevitably skipped over huge swaths of my experience. In this whole post, for instance, I have neglected to mention that I took a 5-day trip to Paris at the beginning of June, before spending my last few days in St. Petersburg. In many ways that trip was the ultimate case of déjà vu, as I reconnected with the French host family I stayed with for three weeks in summer 2012, and revisited many of my old Parisian haunts, from the Cinematheque Française to the Luxembourg Gardens. I even reunited with a friend from high school who I hadn’t seen since senior year.

My trip to Paris was a rare and wonderful opportunity to reflect on where I had been in the past two years, and what strange path had led me back to the City of Lights via Russia. There were certainly moments in the past two years when I doubted my decision to study abroad in St. Petersburg, moments where I asked if it wouldn’t be easier to return to Paris instead of facing the more unfamiliar challenges of Russia. But I no longer ask myself that. I am thankful that I was able to have it both ways.

We’ll always have Paris, as the quote from Casablanca goes. Thanks to my semester at Smolny, I’ll always have St. Petersburg, too.

A Tale of Three Cities

“The first Rome was Rome, the second was Byzantium, the third is Moscow, and there will not be a fourth!”

This apocryphal statement, or some version of it, is sometimes attributed to Ivan the Terrible. More accurately, it can be traced back to the Russian monk Philotheus of Pskov, who wrote about Russia as a “third Rome” in a 1510 letter to a grand duke, declaring confidently, “no one shall replace your Christian Tsardom!” Regardless of who first originated the concept, though, the idea of the “Third Rome” took on a near-mythic significance for the Russian people. The phrase implies not only Russia’s enduring imperial strength, but its special status as the last true stronghold of Christianity—and specifically, Orthodox Christianity.

My host dad mentioned this quote at the dinner table the other day, right before I headed out on a weekend trip to Moscow. And as soon as he said it, I realized how fortunate I have been the past few weeks to see so much of the history behind that quote. After staying firmly planted in St. Petersburg for my first few months abroad, my trip to Riga launched a month of near-constant travel, which coincidentally took me both to Moscow and Rome. And though I can’t say I made it to the “Second Rome” (on the site of modern-day Istanbul), a trip to the old Russian city of Pskov presented a vivid look into the long history of Russian Orthodoxy, which has its roots in the Byzantine Empire.

City 1: Pskov 

Pskov was the first stop in this unintentional historical journey, as I hopped on a bus on the morning of Saturday, April 12 along with the rest of the students on my program, riding 4 hours toward a city I knew next to nothing about. The journey itself was quite interesting, as we drove along a single-lane road lined by massive trees, tiny villages and plenty of wooden dachas—clearly, we weren’t in St. Petersburg anymore. It was refreshing to get into so-called “real” Russia, because for all of its magnificence, St. Petersburg is not representative of how most Russians live. I can’t pretend to be an expert on that subject after two days in Pskov, but our trip was nonetheless a journey into a much older Russia, with deeper historical roots and closer ties to the land.

It was clear upon arrival that Pskov was not exactly a thriving hub of activity. Our guide explained early on that the city, once an industrial center in the early 20^th century, has struggled to regain its economic standing—especially since the 1990s, as massive waves of citizens have moved to Moscow and St. Petersburg. Still, Pskov has always been a city of resilience. Before Petersburg was created, Pskov was the western outpost of Russia, and was thus subject to constant attacks and sieges. Jutting above the banks of the Velikaya River as a sign of the city’s past military greatness is the Pskov Kremlin, a huge fortress dating back to the 14^th century. Like much of Russia, Pskov suffered greatly during World War II, as the city was bombed and occupied by the Germans and substantially damaged. History has been cruel to the city in other ways—as we walked inside the Kremlin, our guide pointed out the site of a former church which was destroyed following the Bolshevik Revolution.

 

For all the damage of history, though, I was impressed by how much of the city’s historical legacy was preserved. The Pskov Kremlin is remarkably intact, and inside its walls lies the Trinity Cathedral—whose current incarnation dates to 1691, and which was unharmed by the Bolsheviks because of its age and historical value. Walking around the city itself, history was everywhere: ancient Orthodox churches, monuments to the city’s historical founder St. Olga, and statues of famous Soviet leaders, including Lenin. (Based on my experiences, I am beginning to think that every Russian city must be contractually obligated to have a Lenin Square. Seriously, the guy is everywhere.) The city’s inhabitants evidently take great pride in Pskov’s history, and it was amusing to see two Russian newlyweds butting our tour group aside for a photo-op with a St. Olga statue.

After our walking tour, the rest of Saturday was given over to dinner and free time, which for many of us consisted of some more independent exploration followed by a night out on the town. I did sense slightly more hostility toward Americans than I have experienced in St. Petersburg—at least one bar refused to let our group in, and I occasionally noticed a suspicious sidelong glance whenever we were overheard speaking English. Such reactions only enhanced the feeling that we were far from the international, cosmopolitan hub of St. Petersburg.

On Sunday we went even deeper into old Russian territory, taking a bus ride over to the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery, not far from the Estonian border. This is the longest continuously operating monastery in all of Russia, dating back to 1473. The monastery’s leaders had to make a special deal with the government authorities to keep it open during the Soviet era, but today the monastery is thriving.

We visited in the middle of services on Palm Sunday, and the entire monastery, which is surrounded by high medieval walls, was swarming with believers—from old Russian babushkas to young children to long-bearded monks who looked like they just stepped out of The Brothers Karamazov. We walked into the main church to observe part of the Orthodox Mass, and the place was as crowded as any rush-hour subway ride I have experienced. It was a remarkable experience, to observe this huge outpost of the Russian faithful participating in a religious tradition I would nonetheless always be an outsider to. One of the most interesting rituals I observed was the ringing of the bells at noon, when a handful of monks tugged on ropes attached to the church’s bells, clanging out discordant notes for a good 20 minutes. To my untrained ear, it sounded more like avant-garde experiment than typical church music.

After the monastery tour, the last stop on our itinerary was the Izborsk Fortress, whose main tower dates back to 1330. Truth be told, I was too tired at this point to pick up on much of the fortress’s history, but I enjoyed simply walking around and taking in the countryside view from the fortress. With its primitive stone walls, ancient stone tombs, and rolling green hills, Izborsk reminded me of something out of ancient Britain, or at least what I imagine ancient Britain to look like. Our time at Izborsk was limited, but we did have the chance to visit the Apostles’ Springs, a supposedly sacred water source at the bottom of the hill which drains out into a big lake. We all filled up water bottles with the springs’ water, and headed back home with a little souvenir of our time in this isolated natural haven.

City 2: Rome

A week after witnessing the Palm Sunday services in Pskov, I found myself at a mass of an entirely different magnitude, attending the Easter Sunday service at the Vatican alongside thousands of Catholics from across the world. That gave a whole new understanding of what a crowded church service can look like!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. My journey to Rome began a few days beforehand, when I flew out on Thursday morning, April 18. Although I’ve always had an interest in visiting Italy (who hasn’t?), my journey had a more personal motivation: I was meeting up with my mom, who is teaching in Rome this semester at a study abroad program run by Assumption College. I managed to take off a few days of classes and make a long weekend of it, flying back to St. Petersburg on Monday afternoon.

My best memories of Rome are simply the personal ones, as I got to spend time with my mom again after several months apart, wandering the streets and parks of Rome with wonderful company. (The Italian food and gelato didn’t hurt, either). My Roman holiday was a refreshing change of pace from my time in Russia, but it also helped to clarify how far I have come in my Russian studies. Not knowing a lick of Italian, my first instinct was always to speak to shopkeepers and waiters in Russian—it was strange to wander around a new foreign city and really be clueless about the language. Nonetheless, I did hear a surprising amount of Russian in the streets, alongside plenty of English, French, and German. Rome definitely re-calibrated my understanding of St. Petersburg’s tourism levels—you hear the occasional foreign tourist here, but nothing like the huge crowds of visitors that flock to Rome.

Most of my sightseeing was confined to a couple key touristy staples: the Coliseum, Palatine Hill, the Forum, the Spanish Steps, St. Peter’s Square, and about a dozen churches, which can be found in Rome with the same frequency as one finds Dunkin Donuts in Boston. My brief foray into Rome whetted my appetite to come back and explore further some day. I was intrigued by how its ancient, imperial, and Christian historical layers co-existed within the same streets and spaces, and I knew that I had only just began to explore those layers.

As I mentioned at the beginning, the trip culminated with the Easter service at the Vatican. Despite the fatigue (we woke up at 5:30 AM to wait in line for good seats), inevitable crowd control problems and the language barrier, I have to say that the mass was worth it. It was touching to see so many believers from the world over show up at the service, doing the readings in various languages and proudly waving their flags at the mass’s end. And it was evident how energized the whole crowd was by the presence of Pope Francis. As someone who has often been alienated by the conservative Church hierarchy and its obvious failures of leadership, I myself am a huge Francis fan, so I was a bit star-struck myself—and happy to get this distant Instagram of the leader who is finally establishing a new tone for the Catholic Church.

City 3: Moscow

This past Thursday, two weeks after flying out to Rome, I found myself in Moscow at last. If I went into the Pskov trip with almost no expectations, I went into the Moscow trip with mostly negative ones. There is an ongoing conflict between Muscovites and Petersburgers about which city is better and “more Russian,” and during my time here I have largely heard the Petersburg side. Besides, I never had the impression that Moscow was an especially beautiful city. I imagined it to be covered from end to end with sprawling Soviet skyscrapers and dully grey, functional buildings, only redeemed by the spectacle of Red Square. I certainly didn’t expect to find any natural beauty within the city limits.

Imagine my surprise, then, when our first stop in Moscow took us to Kolomenskoye Park, a lush park and former royal estate situated a couple metro stops away from the city center. Stretching before my eyes was a massive, sprawling park full of rolling green hills, endless rows of trees and flowing streams. Before our tour guide arrived, I took advantage of the weather by playing an impromptu game of ultimate Frisbee with a few friends. Then, it was off for a lengthy tour, where I came to understand the park’s historical significance. Here was a wooden palace made for Tsar Alexander I, there a cathedral erected to celebrate the birth of Ivan the Terrible; here the fields where Peter the Great liked to study, there a sacred stream.

The excursion to Kolomenskoye was an impressive introduction to Moscow, and soon after the group split apart for free time. I ended up in Gorky Park with my friends Will, Jenna, and Beryl. Gorky reminded me of New York’s Central Park or the Boston Common, and when we strolled through it was in full swing, as Muscovites came out to celebrate the park’s opening for the spring as well as the May Day holiday. Bikers, musicians, ping-pong players, ice-cream eaters and general pedestrians crowded every inch of the park, reminding me of how massive Moscow’s population is. We napped for a while on the grass and then rejoined the group for dinner and a show at the Moscow Circus—an enjoyable spectacle, except for the tense moment when a tiger almost jumped over the protective net and into the audience.

On Friday morning after breakfast we headed downtown to the Kremlin, walking past the Duma, Bolshoi Theatre, and other famous Moscow sites on the way. Our tickets granted us access to all the Kremlin’s cathedrals, so we spent a few hours wandering around from one beautiful church to another. The visit would probably have been more enlightening if I knew more about the Kremlin’s history, but there was nonetheless plenty to gawk at—from the broken Tsar Bell (still the largest bell in the world) to the beautiful iconostases on display in the cathedrals.

The day took a literary turn as a small group of us stopped in at the Mikhail Bulgakov house museum on the way to Patriarch’s Ponds. Bulgakov was the author of The Master and Margarita, the great satirical novel about the Devil’s visit to the Soviet Union, which was only published in the USSR in the late 1960s. Patriarch’s Ponds is the setting of the novel’s first encounter, as well as a very nice park in itself, so we spent some time lounging there before moving on.

Before dinner, as others rested at the hostel, I decided to explore Moscow on foot, ambling off with no particular direction. I soon bumped into my friend Clarissa, and we decided to head downtown toward Red Square. I didn’t spend much time in Moscow’s most iconic location, but I did get the necessary photo-op, so here you go.

On Sunday, we first headed to the Tretyakov Gallery, an impressive museum said to host the finest collection of Russian art in the world. On our guided tour, I was especially taken by two paintings: Ivan Ivanov’s massive The Apparition of Christ to the People (which he worked on for 20 years) and Ivan Kramskoi’s Christ in the Wilderness. Aside from these two new-to-me paintings, I enjoyed seeing several famous Russian works that I recognized by glance, if not by name: like Kramskoi’s Portrait of an Unknown Woman and Victor Vasnetsov’s Bogatyrs.

With the limited time I had left, I headed with a friend for the Leo Tolstoy museum, only to be rather underwhelmed by the museum’s minor collection of artifacts and historical factoids. As it turned out, I had gone to the wrong Tolstoy museum—I was looking for his Estate Museum, and ended up at some other unofficial museum. This phenomenon of competing writer museum seems to be a recurring theme in Moscow—there are two competing Bulgakov Museums as well, and I later learned that I may have missed the official one there too. Oh well.

The last major site I checked out on Sunday was Victory Park, a massive public space dedicated to Russia’s military triumphs, with a special emphasis on World War II. Not far from the metro stop is the Moscow Triumphal Arch, which is a pretty clear copy of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The monument was flanked on either side by blue, white and red flags, and behind the arc stood a temporary star-shaped monument commemorating the USSR’s victory in WWII, in anticipation of the Victory Day Holiday on May 9. The park proper sprawls across a huge hill and is dominated by a massive obelisk, behind which stands a World War II museum. And behind that building are even more monuments, including a rather moving modernist sculpture representing the “People’s Tragedy” of World War II. The park’s myriad commemorations of the war made me appreciate even further what a massive toll it took on the Russian people, and what an important role its memory still holds in the national psyche—far greater than its memory in the US, certainly. 

After Victory Park, my time in Moscow had more or less drawn to a close. A few hours later, we boarded the overnight train back to St. Petersburg, arriving Sunday morning at 6:30 AM. Although it was comforting to see the familiar sights of St. Petersburg appear outside my train window, I walked away with a newfound appreciation for Moscow, a city that I had earlier been quick to judge before even visiting it. I’m not sure Moscow really earns the title of the “Third Rome,” but I do know that it is not the ugly industrial wasteland I imagined—and I hope to return some day soon to discover it more.

What to say after all this travel? I suppose I came to appreciate how these three cities, on the surface so different from each other, manifested their few shared qualities in unique ways. There was something powerful in the juxtaposition of the Orthodox service in Pskov with the Catholic one in Rome—the rituals and ceremonies were different, but the believers’ devotion to their faith was much the same. And it was instructive to see how the old medieval city of Pskov and the ever-modern capital of Moscow processed their war experience in different ways, reflecting a wartime history shared by all of Russia. For all that separates these three cities, it seems, there is much that unites them. 

BC Heights Column

BC Heights Column

I was recently asked to write a column about my general experiences in Russia for The Heights, BC’s independent newspaper and my old stomping grounds (I was the arts section editor there last year). If you’re interested, click through to the link above and send them some page views! 

In any case, I’m hoping to post a new original entry here soon. I have lots of ground to cover, mainly my trips to Pskov and Rome earlier this month. I’m hoping I’ll be able to sit down and crank out my thoughts tomorrow, before we head to the next trip: I’m Moscow-bound on Wednesday night! 

Out of St. Pete Tonight

Is it possible to have wanderlust while living 4,000 miles away from home? As with many rhetorical questions, the answer to this one is a resounding yes. For the past few weeks, I confess to growing somewhat restless in St. Petersburg. Of course, I have hardly exhausted the possibilities of this city—and my quickly dwindling time here has already become a source of mild anxiety, as I scramble to make time to see every major museum, monument and historic site before I head home in June. But even though Petersburg could occupy me for a lifetime, for several weeks I’ve nurtured a desire to go further afield.

Until recently this was impossible, thanks to Russia’s not-so-convenient visa policies and travel restrictions. But thankfully, about two weeks ago we all received our new multi-entry visas, allowing us to travel outside of Russia for the first time. So last Friday night, following a stressful week full of midterms and papers, I hopped on an overnight bus to Riga for the weekend.

Frankly, I knew next to nothing about Latvia and its capital before I went there. I didn’t have much of an idea of what to expect from Riga, or even if it would be worth the eight-and-a-half-hour bus ride it would take to get there. (Spoiler alert: it definitely was.)

After a night of travel, sporadic sleep, and about two hours of delays at the Russian border, my friend Hunter and I arrived at about 6:30 AM on Saturday. The plan was to meet with three other friends—April and Alice, who had come a day earlier, and Meg, who would arrive later on Saturday—at a hostel in the middle of Old Riga.

After we sleepily made our way to the hostel to check in, we caught our first sights of the old city. With its narrow cobblestone streets, open squares, and its mix of medieval architecture with Art Nouveau styles, Riga immediately presented itself as quite different from St. Petersburg—older, smaller, more quaint and intimate. And over the course of the morning, as Hunter and I made our way through Old Town and crossed over into downtown Riga via a lovely park, we came to realize that this environment would provide exactly the relaxing change of pace we had both been craving. During the early hours of the morning, Riga was practically deserted, so we took in the sleepy city’s sights all by ourselves.

Our reverie was unfortunately disrupted by some distressing news. At around 10:30 we stopped back at our hostel to check in on April and Alice, only to discover that they had been robbed! Apparently an Estonian man who was staying at the hostel had stolen a key and made off with most of their valuables in the middle of the night—including their wallets, a MacBook, and most crucially, their passports with Russian visas. As April and Alice made phone calls to their parents and the U.S. consulate, while working with the hostel’s staff to contact the not-so-helpful Latvian police, it was unclear if they would be able to return to Russia to finish the semester. Meg had arrived at this point, and we all felt pretty terrible—and helpless—about what had happened, although April and Alice were remarkably calm throughout the whole ordeal, and encouraged us to go check out the city while they tried to sort things out.

So we went off for a free walking tour at noon, conducted by a local Rigan named Engelis, who was easily the most idiosyncratic tour guide I have ever encountered. He spoke excellent English, but didn’t confine himself to the usual tour-guide style, instead regaling us with strange anecdotes about vampires and martyrs and other stories that he almost seemed to be making up as he went along. It was an enjoyably wacky tour, which took us off the beaten path of Old Town and into some less touristy neighborhoods. We passed through Riga’s huge central market, where local vendors sell fresh products in four massive pavilions built from old zeppelin hangars. Another highlight was the Moscow suburb, a primarily Russian neighborhood dominated by the Soviet skyscraper known as “Stalin’s birthday cake,” which hosts the Latvian Academy of Sciences. After the tour we grabbed some lunch at the Central Market and then checked out the flea market in the Moscow neighborhood, where a bunch of Russians sell anything and everything from samovars to bike wheels to rusty power tools to old postcards.

The Soviet-era Academy of Sciences skyscraper towers over the Moscow neighborhood

 Back in Old Town, Hunter and I headed for St. Peter’s Church, a towering Lutheran church that dates back to the 13^th century. We took an elevator to the top for a beautiful panoramic view of Riga, which was definitely worth the 5 euro charge. (See below.)

And then, after a brief rest, it was off for a long Saturday night on the town. Joined by another American we met at the hostel, we all enjoyed a lovely, lengthy dinner at a bustling restaurant and folk music club in Old Town. We took in the unusual spectacle of a Latvian folk band playing Scottish music, while sampling the truly delicious local cuisine. (If you ever get a chance to try Latvian grey peas or potato pancakes, do it.)

Next stop was a bar called Skyline, located on the top floor of a huge Radisson in the city center, with another really nice view over the city. We met up with a friend of April’s, a Swedish guy named Lars who has been working in Latvia for the past few months as a Netflix customer service rep. The place was louder and more touristy than I prefer, but the view and the company made it worth it. Lars proved a friendly and knowledgeable guide, leading us from Skyline to a couple smaller, more intimate bars back in Old Town, before we finally crashed back at our hostel in the wee hours of the morning.

On Sunday morning, Hunter and I decided to rent bikes for the day to cover as much ground as possible in our remaining time in Riga. We took the advice of a guy at the bike shop and followed a long trail that led from Old Town to the city center and far beyond, eventually leading to the city’s northern limits and Mezaparks, a sprawling park that lies on a lake and hosts the Riga Zoo. The ride was more invigorating than I can tell, and it was fascinating to see how sprawling Riga was once you made your way out of the city center. The city revealed itself as a fascinating mix of Soviet and European styles—at times glistening and modern, at others decaying and neglected, but always surrounded by lush green beauty.

       

About halfway through the ride, we pulled over to walk through Riga’s Great Cemetery. In the middle of the cemetery two churches stood not far from each other—one Lutheran (above left), one Russian Orthodox (above right), together representing the two main religious traditions in Latvia. As I took a picture of the tiny Lutheran church, a man emerged from inside and began to chat with us. He was at first rather taken aback that Americans were visiting his country and taking an interest in his church. As our conversation continued, he invited me into the chapel, eager to share something of his life with us. The church interior was spare, small, and functional, but the man himself was overflowing with joy and graciousness. I spent a few brief moments with him inside the church, as he proudly told me about his role in the choir, and how the small church community was like a family to him. As we said our goodbyes, he told us that he had been in America back in 2004—on a cross-country road trip from Atlantic City to California!—and expressed his fervent desire to return there some day.

It was one of those moments that renews your faith in the simple kindness of strangers. I never got a picture with him, and I don’t even know his name—but I won’t forget him any time soon.

After our cemetery detour, Hunter and I resumed our ride, eventually riding through Mezaparks and up to Lake Kisezers. These sights of natural beauty filled a subconscious longing I didn’t know I had. Although St. Petersburg is home to some very nice parks, they tend to be isolated and removed from the life of the city, and it is rare to come across untouched nature day by day.

Of course, the kind of natural beauty we saw in Riga can also mask ugly histories. I later found out that Mezaparks was the site of the Kaiserwald concentration camp in WWII, where thousands of Latvian Jews, Gypsies, and Communists were killed by the Nazis. That tragic history relates to another site we saw on Sunday afternoon: the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia, which we checked out on our return from the ride. The museum’s exhibit offered a crash course in modern Latvian history from 1940 to 1991, a period defined by three occupations—by the USSR in 1940, by Nazi Germany in 1941, and again by the USSR in 1944 until Latvian regained its independence in 1991.

After spending the last several months in Russia, it was fascinating to me to see the Soviet Union’s history reflected through one of its smaller republics. The museum had an unapologetically anti-Soviet stance, essentially equating Nazi Germany and the USSR and construing the entire 50-year Soviet period as an illegal occupation. The last stages of the exhibit described Latvia’s resurgent nationalist movement in the age of perestroika, with a special focus on the “Baltic Chain,” a peaceful demonstration in August 1989 wherein 2 million citizens joined arms to connect the three Baltic capitals—Riga, Talinn, and Vilnius—in a show of solidarity against the Soviet Union. The museum’s narrative helped me better understand Latvia’s painful history, and gave new meaning to the Freedom Monument—a towering monument at the intersection of Old and New Riga, which was erected in 1935 and has ever since been a symbol of Latvian nationalism.

The museum provided a fascinating historical lesson, but by this point in the weekend I was so tired that I could barely stand. So the rest of our Sunday was rather relaxed—we returned our bikes, rested a bit at the hostel and enjoyed our final meal in Latvia, at a truly delicious organic burger place called Street Burger.

As Hunter and I waited at the bus stop to catch our ride home, April, Meg, and Alice arrived with some near-miraculous news: the passports had been found! Meg had gone with April and Alice to pick up a money order at Western Union, and by sheer chance the woman working there recognized their faces and emerged with both passports, which had apparently been abandoned there by the thief. April and Alice stayed on in Riga another day, in the happy knowledge that they wouldn’t be sent home to America any time soon.

So with that happy ending, our whirlwind weekend in Riga came to an end. It felt somewhat strange returning on Monday morning to the colder climate of St. Petersburg, but it also felt in some way like coming home, as I made my way back to my homestay along a familiar route, and reported to class a few hours later, exhausted but fulfilled. As always, travel makes you appreciate where you’re coming from as much as where you’re going.

Thankfully I’ll have plenty more travel to report on soon: tomorrow morning the whole group is heading to the city of Pskov, and the week after I’ll be making an Italian detour for a few days, spending Easter with my mom in Rome. So stay tuned.

Bidding Riga goodbye at our hostel: the one and only Naughty Squirrel

 

March Madness: A Month in Review

Well, what do you know—over three weeks have passed since my last blog entry, and my original goal to have a new post every week has been thoroughly discredited.  Yet I’m not about to give up on this space just yet! So here follows a condensed version of what I’ve been up to this month: my March in review.

Maslenitsa

The month of March kicked off with Maslenitsa, a weeklong Russian tradition celebrating the coming of spring and the beginning of Lent. Basically, it’s the Russian version of Mardi Gras, in which Russians gorge themselves on blini—delicious thin pancakes that can be eaten in all kinds of forms both sweet and savory. Maslenitsa festivities also include a ritual where a straw effigy is burned and its ashes buried in the snow, to fertilize the earth in preparation for spring.

On the last day of Maslenitsa, March 2, I went with some friends to check out the celebrations at Peter and Paul Fortress. I didn’t stay long enough to see the big bonfire, but I did treat myself to blini and wandered around a fortress crawling with stilts walkers, Russian folk dancers, and puppeteers. The festival was a lot of fun, if a bit kitschy, and it was attended by huge crowds of Russians from all generations. If you’re interested to read some more of my thoughts about Maslenitsa (including commentary about both fashion and politics!) check out this piece I wrote for The Heights.

Elagin

Last month I wrote about my orienteering adventure on Elagin Island. On March 9, I made my triumphant return to Elagin—although this time with an athletic challenge of a different sort, and sporting slightly different attire.

As part of our group excursion to Elagin Palace—a royal summer palace famous for its decadent balls—we were dressed up in aristocratic Russian costumes and given an hour-long ballroom dancing lesson. I like to think that I didn’t make a complete fool of myself, all while trying to follow dance instructions in Russian. Although no videos exist of me busting my moves (probably definitely a good thing), the occasion allowed for plenty of picture-taking. Here’s a shot of the whole group in all our finery.

Museums

No European study abroad experience would be complete without lots of time spent wandering around museums, and thankfully St. Petersburg has plenty to offer in that department.

Of course, the crown jewel of Russian art museums is the Hermitage, whose main collection is hosted in the former Winter Palace. The main comparison to be made here is the Louvre. Both museums have collections that are truly overwhelming, in both quantity and quality—you’ll never be able to spend enough time to appreciate everything on display, let alone the building, which is almost as beautiful as the artwork it hosts. On my first visit, I wandered somewhat aimlessly, beginning with exhibits on ancient Egypt and Greece before leaping into 20^th century French modernism. (I particularly enjoyed seeing the Picasso and Matisse rooms). My second visit was more dedicated to the extravagant palace interiors, familiar to me from Alexander Sokurov’s 2002 film Russian Ark. For those who can’t make it to the Hermitage in person, Russian Ark isn’t a bad way to experience the museum’s grandeur. It’s a 100-minute movie shot entirely in the museum’s halls, recreating hundreds of years of Russian history with thousands of extras—and all in one unbroken tracking shot.  

The Winter Palace/Hermitage Museum

For another tour of Russian history, I went to the Museum of Political History of Russia, an impressively modern museum lined wall-to-wall with creative re-enactments, interactive electronic exhibits and video testimonials, tracing the history of Russia from the imperial era to Putin’s election. The most interesting exhibit to me was the section on Stalin’s reign; the museum seemed to pull no punches pointing out the evils and excesses of Russia’s wartime leader. The museum shrewdly pointed out the gap between the Soviet Union’s ideals and its reality. One graph on display compared Stalin’s agricultural targets for his infamous Five Year Plan, the reported figures, and the actual figures. (Guess which number was lowest). Another section of the exhibit reproduced dozens of personal letters written to Stalin; one I glanced at came from a 7 year-old in a farming family, telling Stalin that he wasn’t able to go to school because his family was starving. The anti-Stalinism of the museum was more strongly pronounced than I expected from a state-run museum—although the later parts of the exhibit, on Yelstin and Putin, had a much more neutral tone. I can’t help but wonder how the museum will represent the Putin era in a few decades, once he has left office for good.

Along a similar line, I was very taken by a World War II exhibit at the Rumyantsev Mansion, now the home of a museum on St. Petersburg’s history. The exhibit on what Russians call the “Great Patriotic War” focused in large part on the 900-day siege of Leningrad, a historical memory that looms large in St. Petersburg to this day. As an American who has always thought about World War II from the US perspective, it was enlightening to learn about the huge toll taken by the Russian people during the war. The siege caused an unthinkable amount of suffering—as many as 1.5 million are said to have died over the course of its 3 years, many of them civilians who starved to death. The museum gave a human weight to such statistics by showcasing the diary of Tanya Savicheva, an 11 year-old girl who recorded the dates that various members of her family died, until finally “Only Tanya is left.” The tour ended with a haunting video that juxtaposed pictures of war-torn Leningrad with modern photos of Petersburg taken in the same locations; it was strange to see streets that have become familiar to me suddenly become strange again by the presence of soldiers, rubble, and other signs of war.

On a lighter note, this Sunday I finally made my way over to the Dostoevsky Museum, located in the building where the writer lived out the last few years of his life and wrote The Brothers Karamazov. About half of the museum is a recreation of Dostoevsky’s apartment; the other half is an exhibit tracing the story of his life. The biographical exhibit reminded me that Dostoevsky’s life was as turbulent as any of his characters, but what made the biggest impression were the tiny domestic details of Dostoevsky’s apartment. Prominent place was given to the nursery, emphasizing the importance of children for Dostoevsky, who believed that life without them was basically meaningless. (That conviction is certainly on display in The Brothers Karamazov.) I also enjoyed seeing the great writer’s study, and learning about his peculiar work habits. He did all his writing from about 11 pm to 5 am, slept until the early afternoon, and upon waking would hand over his scribbled manuscripts to his wife Anna Grigoryevna, who transcribed them into a more readable form. Among the personal items that the museum displays are two original pages from Dostoevsky’s draft of The Brothers Karamazov. After seeing the writer’s scribbly handwriting on those two pages, I cannot envy Dostoevsky’s wife her job.

Dostoevsky’s Study

Of all the museums I’ve seen here, though, one of them easily takes the cake for the weirdest. That would be the Kunstkamera, which opened in 1727 and was founded by none other than Peter the Great himself. Today the museum largely focuses on anthropology and ethnography, with exhibits that catalog the cultures of various tribes and ethnic groups across the world. So far, so normal—but then you get to the oldest collection.

Peter’s original museum was a “cabinet of curiosities,” designed to educate the Russian people about the natural world by showcasing strange scientific specimens. To that end, Peter collected a huge assortment of human and animal fetuses with strange, disturbing deficiencies—malformed limbs, swollen heads, and much worse. To this day, these fetuses are preserved at the Kunstkamera in glass jars, drawing the attention of crowds clearly less interested in the exhibit’s scientific value than its freak show quality. I’m not a squeamish person, but something about the exhibit was unsettling to me on an intellectual level—it seemed somewhat dehumanizing to present these fetuses as almost alien specimens, to be scrutinized by a gawking public. But for those curious to see such curiosities, Google Images can help you out.

Vasya Oblomov

Moving from the halls of Russia’s history to its present, last Friday I went with my friend Hunter to a concert by Vasya Oblomov, a Russian rapper whose music takes an unflinching look at Russia’s present political situation—and emerges with almost nothing good to say.

Vasya Oblomov on stage at the Aurora Concert Hall

Oblomov (the stage name comes from a famous Russian novel) is an unapologetic critic of Putin and all that he represents, and his songs bring a biting, satirical edge to the problems of modern Russia. His song “Кто хочет стать милиционером?” (“Who Wants to be a Policeman”) for instance, takes on the subject of police corruption and bribery; the title itself is a pun on the Russian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Other subjects tackled by Oblomov include Russia’s lack of independent media, falsified elections, environmental degradation, and the absurd excesses of Sochi. Although the rapper has a few songs with lighter themes— “Начальник” (“Boss”) is a crowd-pleasing hit where a fed-up employee tells off his boss with colorful language—most of his work is undeniably cynical.

Obviously, such an uncompromising outlook does not endear Oblomov to a wide national audience. Even in the crowd on Friday, which I assumed would be a trusty cross-section of Russian liberals, a few spectators were peeved by Oblomov’s political stance. Late in the concert one guy in the VIP section began to heckle him, but Oblomov brushed him off: “You can cry if you want to, but it’s my show, and I’m going to say what I want.”

Towards the end of the show, Oblomov asked for four women to come up on stage for one of his most popular songs, “Magadan.” As he asked each of them who they were and where they were from, one of them said she was from Crimea. This produced quite the reaction from the crowd, a mixture of applause and “ooh-ing” and lots of shouts and murmurs that I couldn’t make out. Oblomov then asked what opinion she had about the annexation, telling her “there’s no censorship here,” but she seemed reluctant to answer. A few audience members—especially the more inebriated ones—happily voiced their opinion, however, which seemed overwhelmingly positive. It was a striking anecdotal moment for me, suggesting just how popular Putin’s recent actions have been in Russia, even for a crowd predisposed not to trust him.

Oblomov, though, seemed to be rolling his eyes at much of the rhetoric coming from the crowd. It was evident that he looked on Putin’s actions with much more skepticism than his audience. No doubt he’s got a song in the works about the very subject.

Wrapping Up

There was plenty more going on for me in March beside these few highlights, of course. I went to Peterhof, the so-called “Russian Versailles,” although I may need to return in the spring—it wasn’t as magnificent in the freezing winter as I know it should be. I got in touch with my inner cinephile at a local movie theater, checking out Lars Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac: Volume 1 and Aleksei German’s Hard to be a God, neither of which I’ve been able to fully make up my mind about. I spent plenty of weekends checking out St. Petersburg’s bars, cafes, and even “anti-cafes,” cool hangout spots where you pay for the time you stay and then receive unlimited tea, coffee and snacks.

And, of course, I have continued to be busy with classes—never more so than now, in the middle of our midterm period. I’ll have more to say about academics soon, I hope, but as I approach 2,000 words I suspect that this blog post has outstayed its welcome. So for those of you who made it to the end, I leave you with a vague pledge to write again…sooner than I did last time. 

Watching Ukraine from St. Petersburg

When I headed off for St. Petersburg at the end of January, I assumed that the height of international attention on Russia would peak early in the semester, with all the hoopla surrounding the Olympics. And certainly more than enough ink been spilled in the West about Sochi. Whether it was journalists tweeting photos of their malfunctioning toilets and other #Sochiproblems or columnists lecturing Russia about LGBT rights (as if America had a shining reputation on that issue), much of the commentary coming from the US struck me as an unfortunate mix of pettiness and self-righteousness. Those are not qualities that are helpful for starting a constructive dialogue on Russia’s problems. And yet many commentators seemed to take a peculiar glee in every infrastructural error or manifestation of repression—not because they were interested in investigating or fixing such deep-rooted issues, but simply to assert American superiority over those crazy Russians.

In light of the situation in Ukraine, I sincerely hope that more constructive talk will prevail—because suddenly Russia’s problem has become the world’s. Make no mistake: Russia’s move into Crimea is an illegal, dangerous, and sovereignty-violating invasion, with potentially disastrous consequences. And though Putin should be held accountable for his reckless actions, I don’t think saber-rattling will do anything to calm down the situation—nor will handing the new Ukrainian government $1 billion guarantee long-term stability.

The truth is that I simply don’t know what should be done in Ukraine, and Putin is betting on the fact that no one else does either. Like most Americans, I never paid much attention to the country until the protests broke out in November. At the time, I was taking a political science course called Postcommunist Transitions, and the Euromaidan protests suddenly became a real-time case study for the class, unfolding some 4,500 miles away. As we analyzed the situation from the comfort of our classroom in Boston, I never could have predicted the kinds of horrific images I would see in the months to come. I thought that the protests would blow over within a few weeks, never foreseeing the deadly clashes with police, the ouster of Yanukovych, and especially not Putin’s invasion of Crimea.

As far as I’m concerned, no one really knows what will happen next. So rather than hazard a guess, I’ll try to explain what it looks like watching this unfold from Russia.

St. Petersburg is about 1,300 miles away from Crimea, but right now Ukraine is all that anyone is talking about. Needless to say, however, they’re not talking about it the same way we are. I haven’t had much opportunity to watch the Russian news, but from what I have seen, the Russian media is engaging in a full-blown attempt to discredit the interim government as illegitimate. Opposition members are routinely described as “fascists,” “anti-Semites” and “neo-Nazis,” provocative terms clearly designed to evoke painful national memories of World War II. (It should be noted that such radical ultranationalist sects do exist within the Ukrainian opposition—look up Svoboda or Pravy Sektor—but Russian media would have you believe that they make up the entire interim government.) The news is also replaying stock footage of the most intense riots in Kiev, trying to depict the country’s new leaders as thugs who are plunging the country into violence. Another theme is that Western powers incited the Euromaidan protesters to violence; indeed, it is a common narrative in Russian media that the US and Europe are in the habit of masterminding revolutions in former Soviet states. (See also: Georgia’s 2003 Rose Revolution and Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution.)

Inevitably, some of these attitudes take hold in the average Russian, and in general my host family’s sympathies lean towards the official Russian version of events.  My host parents’ son-in-law, for instance, said he believes that Western provocation exacerbated the conflict in Kiev. My host parents don’t seem to regard the new government as legitimate, and my host mother Zhanna disapprovingly mentioned a report she heard of Ukrainian pensioners losing their benefits because of the government transition. At one point my host dad Sergei brought up the fact that Hitler was very popular in his time; I think he was suggesting that the revolution in Kiev likewise has fascist elements. Meanwhile, back in the U.S. Hillary Clinton has been one of many voices comparing Putin to Hitler—it’s striking to me that on both sides of the conflict, the memory of World War II looms large.

I think such metaphors, on both sides, are exaggerated and not especially helpful—but there is a lesson to be learned there. The US and Russia may have dramatically different views on what is happening in Ukraine, but both have the national memory to fear that the situation could escalate to something much worse.

In other words, the average Russian doesn’t want war any more than we do. This is important to remember, I think, because at times our disapproval of a particular leader threatens to cast a shadow on the entire country. But Vladimir Putin is not the Russian people. And every time my family speaks of Ukraine, they do so with sadness and grave concern, not the kind of aggressive nationalism we associate with Putin. Yes, many Russians are sympathetic to his side of the story—thanks in part to his control and manipulation of the media—but they want peace as much as anyone else. Why wouldn’t they? If war breaks out, it will be Russian lives on the line.

This last fact hit me hard a few nights ago, when Sergei was on the phone with his son, who is currently serving in the Russian army. Again and again, I heard Sergei use the word ostorozhno, advising his son to be careful. Luckily Sergei’s son is stationed outside of Moscow, far from Crimea, but nonetheless I could hear the fatherly concern in Sergei’s voice. A few nights beforehand, his son had told him that there was nothing going on and that the army was boring; suddenly, a national crisis made the prospect of combat a real possibility. In that moment, a geopolitical chess game became all too human. I was reminded that behind all such politics lie real human lives, whose fates too often get decided by forces beyond their control.

And at the end of the day, as Sergei said to me in a statement both simple and profound, “everyone just wants to live, and be happy and content.” For a long time, the Ukrainians have had the odds stacked against them in that regard, and even if Russia withdraws today, the new government has no easy path forward in a country racked by inequality, corruption, and deep ideological and ethnic division. But I hope that Putin will come to his senses, and let them figure it out on their own. Enough blood has been spilled already.

The Sporting Life

A lot of ink has been spilled in the past few years about the increasingly strained relationship between the US and Russia, with Obama and Putin butting heads on Syria, LGBT rights, and the Edward Snowden issue. For the last few days, though, that conversation has been replaced by talk of a more benign US-Russia clash: Saturday’s Olympic hockey match-up, which ended with a US victory in a shootout.

As an American in Russia, of course, I was not about to pass up an opportunity to enjoy some friendly cross-cultural rivalry. So, even though I am blissfully ignorant about hockey, I happily tagged along with a group of American friends to a local café to watch the game. We had reserved the bottom floor for ourselves, and for the next few hours we enjoyed our little American enclave in St. Petersburg. To fully support my country, I indulged in the first cheeseburger I’ve had since coming to Russia. It was a welcome reminder of home, but based on Saturday’s evidence the US clearly has Russia beat in the burger department.

You’re not going to hear any game analysis from me. Count yourselves lucky—I have practically no sports knowledge, and during this particular game I had a particular talent for missing every major goal. I would order my food, or go to the bathroom, and suddenly discover that I had missed a major play. During overtime, my friends joked that I should just leave for a minute and the US would get the goal that clinched it.

Of course, that didn’t happen, and the game eventually proceeded to a shootout. As the two teams traded shots, I began to notice a sort of call-and-response effect happening in the café itself. Whenever the US hit a shot, we clapped and cheered, only to hear a similar response from upstairs whenever the Russians got one in. It was a funny unacknowledged exchange that lasted until T.J. Oshie finally secured the win for the U.S. When I returned to my host family’s apartment, I discovered that the door was locked; when I rang the bell they jokingly told me they wouldn’t let me in because of the game. But then they promptly congratulated me, before Sergey hinted that the two teams might be seeing each other again, and that the game was perhaps just a scrimmage for a future match-up. Let’s hope so.

As it happens, the next day I occupied my time with another sport—although this time I was competing! Well, “competing” is perhaps too strong a word to describe my first venture into orienteering.

Yes, I, Sean Keeley—an asthmatic 20 year-old who has more than once gotten lost while using a GPS, and who gets winded after running less than a mile—decided it would be a good idea to try orienteering. You know, a sport involving navigating unknown territory via cryptic topographical maps and a compass, all while trying to outrun your competition.

Not my brightest idea, admittedly. But last Thursday during dinner, when I was invited to an orienteering competition by my host mother and her daughters, I said yes without hesitation. I thought it would be a good way to bond with my host family, and I had all of Sunday free anyway. Almost as soon as I said yes, though, my mind started to play out exaggerated worst-case scenarios, as I imagined myself lost somewhere in an abandoned Russian forest.

Well, I shouldn’t have worried. I may not have a great orienteering career in my future, but all things considered the day was a successful outing. My scheduled start time was 11:42 AM, but I headed out with my host mother Zhanna shortly after 10 AM to make it on time. The competition was held on Elagin Island, a beautiful wooded park that is a frequent destination for Petersburg strollers and picnickers. Before we got to the island, though, we had to register at a local school. The place was swarming with orienteers young and old—I would never have expected how popular this sport was, but Zhanna told me there were at least a thousand people scheduled to participate that day. And out of all of them, I was the only American. It was funny to see my name on the list of participants, the Latin-alphabet outlier on a list full of Russian names.

After checking in and changing, I realized that I lacked a crucial orienteering tool: a compass! I assumed that we would be given them at the start point, but nope—all the experienced orienteers there had one already. Nonetheless, I was able to buy one for 400 rubles (about $11). The man and woman who were selling the compasses joked around with me as I handed them a 1,000 ruble bill and asked if they could make change. “Oh, in Russia we actually keep the change…is that not so in America?” the woman said, before I called her bluff and we had a little laugh. As trivial as it may sound, the ability to carry on simple lighthearted banter like this in a foreign language is a real confidence-booster. And it also showed me, if I needed another example, how false is the stereotype of the cold, unfriendly Russian. These two were jovial, friendly, and genuinely excited to have an American participating in their competition.

Finally it was off to the races. Before I began, Zhanna patiently explained to me (for the umpteenth time) how the whole thing worked, and then I was off. Basically, I had to find 10 specific numbered “targets” located on my map, and return to the finish point in an hour and fifteen minutes. Every racer was equipped with an electronic chip, which registered with the system whenever you pushed the button on your target. But you have to find the specific target numbered on your map—there were dozens scattered across the islands, since different runners had different maps—and go in the right order to avoid being disqualified.

I’m happy to say that I finished 15 minutes under the time limit, and managed to find all the targets. That said, it wasn’t always pretty. The course was supposed to be 2.6 kilometers, but with all my aimless wandering, I probably made it longer than I needed to be. After I found the first target, I hit my stride and got to the next three without much difficulty, but then I spent 20 minutes searching for the ever-elusive fifth target. I probably scoured the entire island up and down looking for that thing, but once I got to it the rest of the course wasn’t so bad—even if I was being outrun at all points by ten year-olds.

By the end, I was exhausted but satisfied, and perhaps a little prouder than the results merited. At some point I stopped worrying about when I would find the next target and simply enjoyed the moment. I was taking in fresh air on a crisp Sunday morning, I was doing the first sustained exercise I’ve done since coming to Russia, and I was discovering a beautiful new spot of the city. Most importantly, though, I was participating in the life of the city in a meaningful way. Whenever I open my mouth to speak Russian, my foreignness is immediately evident, but for that hour as I ran through the park, I was just one anonymous runner among hundreds of others—just another Petersburger enjoying a day in the park.

Other updates:

– Last week was the first week of academic classes at Smolny. It’s still a bit of a chaotic time here, as we have the rest of this week to finish shopping courses and finally decide on our schedule. More on academics later, when I have my schedule figured out!

– This Friday, we had an introductory dinner with fellow Smolny students at a Georgian restaurant. It was a nice way to meet some native Russian speakers in a casual context, and I’m hoping to become better friends with some Russian students here. Also, Georgian food is absolutely delicious.

– Last Sunday, we made a trip to St. Isaac’s Cathedral, the imposing Neoclassical church located not far from Smolny. I pass by it almost every day, so it was interesting to finally go inside and see the interior. The real highlight, though, was climbing the colonnade to the top of the church (200 steps!) to see a beautiful view of the entire city. Here I am at the top: if you look into the distance you can see the distinct green-and-white hues of the Winter Palace.

Table Talk

It’s been over a week since my last blog entry, and ever since I have wondered what to devote my next post to. Truth be told, I haven’t had a cultural experience as valuable as the Beethoven concert I wrote about last time, and much of my time last week has been dedicated to a routine of language classes and homework. But then I thought about another part of my routine: my daily dinners, usually with my host father Sergey. On reflection, it seems to me that culture can manifests itself just as fully at the dinner table as at the concert hall.

For instance, last week I had a long conversation with Sergey about my life and family at home. Although we spent much of the time talking about American ways of life, the conversation itself spoke volumes about Russian norms. Sergey seemed especially interested in how family life in America differs from Russia. He was curious if any of my siblings currently lived at home, if we lived in our own house or an apartment, and what our car situation was.

All of my answers were quite different from Sergey’s. Russian living arrangements tend to be multigenerational, with adult children living with their parents, as is the case for Sergey’s family.  My parents, though, have something of an empty nest, unless you count the two Yorkshire terriers living at home (and you shouldn’t). Living arrangements differ in other ways—as a Russian city-dweller, Sergey explained that he has always lived in apartments rather than a private house, and he was genuinely curious to know what my house was like. Finally, the discussion turned to cars. If I understood correctly, Sergey does not have a car, but is contemplating buying one. He flipped through various models on his iPad and asked me what my family had, allowing me to sing the praises of Toyota in general and my dad’s legendary “Road Warrior” (which racked up something like 312,000 miles before it was through) in particular.

Initially I felt a little apprehensive talking about these kinds of things, as they inevitably touch on the unspoken subject of money. It seems to me that Sergey’s family does very well for itself, but in any case the gap between American and Russian standards of wealth is enormous. Russia has made a lot of economic progress since the 90s, but average incomes are still much, much lower than in America—not to mention Russia’s unparalleled wealth inequality. For obvious reasons, then, money can be a sensitive topic, and I am always a little self-conscious about being an Ugly American abroad and talking about all that I am lucky to have.

But I shouldn’t have been nervous. Sergey was not asking about money, nor was he prying or exhibiting any cross-cultural resentment. He was simply genuinely interested what my life in America was like. He asked about everything from my brother’s cross-country bike ride to my mom and sister’s love for beaches to my dad’s appreciation for jazz (which my mom, alas, does not share). It was probably the longest sustained Russian conversation I’ve had here so far. More importantly, it was one of those ordinary, day-to-day moments that are so valuable when studying abroad, allowing you to share something of yourself and your culture—and learn something about another culture in return—over a shared meal.

Anyway, I’ve done more than just have dinner and talk while I’m here. A couple of highlights from the past week or so:

– Last Thursday after class we went to the aptly named Russian Museum. Located on the former Mikhailovsky Palace, the museum hosts a large collection of exclusively Russian fine art. I was rather interested in some of the avant-garde Soviet stuff from the 1920s (by artists like Larionov, Goncharov, and Malevich), which I had learned about in a Russian program I did last summer in California. But my favorite piece I saw was a lot more traditional, by an artist I hadn’t heard of: Mikhail Nesterov. The massive 1905 painting Holy Rus, seen below, really caught my attention. It doesn’t get much more Russian than this:

– Last Friday was the first time I took advantage of a Russian freedom currently unavailable to me in the US: I went to a bar! Venturing out to Vasilyevsky Island with about 10 other students on the program, I enjoyed some quality brews at a cozy Irish-style bar. We also got acquainted with some young Russian university students and a Ukrainian. What do you know, I become a lot less self-conscious about my Russian speaking abilities when I have a beer or two in me!

– On Sunday we went to a really unique little museum: the “Levsha Museum” of Microminiature Art. I didn’t quite know what to expect, but I was fascinated by the place. Most of the museum’s pieces are made by Vladimir Aniskin, an artist who manipulates human hairs, specks of dust, and other minuscule materials to create art that is only visible under a microscope. Below you can see one of my favorites—magnified enormously, of course. The piece is a sly take on Matthew 19:24, with Aniskin placing a camel through the eye of a needle. Make that eight camels, actually.

– Last night was the Sochi Olympics opening ceremony, but our initial plans to go out to a bar to watch the ceremony was foiled. (Someone else had reserved the place). Instead, the two students who are living in a dorm, Adam and Alicia, graciously offered up their suite to us. So about a dozen of us piled into their dorm room to watch the ceremony, while we struggled to order pizza delivery and dealt with the angry Russian dorm attendant who swore to call the police if we weren’t out by 11 pm. Happily, everything worked out: after several confused phone calls, the pizza arrived, and we were out of there in time to avoid the dorm attendant’s wrath.

As for my thoughts on Sochi? More on that subject very soon, I hope. 

Waiting for the Sochi ceremony to begin. I’m fourth from left, trying to figure out online pizza ordering in Russian.

A Night at the Marinsky

Yesterday marked a week since my arrival in St. Petersburg, and I am already adjusting to something of a routine. Jet lag is a thing of the past, I am growing comfortable with the city’s bus and metro systems, and at Smolny we have just finished the first half of our two-week Russian language intensive. This routine will change somewhat in a few weeks, of course, as the academic semester begins and we enroll in other courses, many of them taught in Russian, alongside Russian students. That, I imagine, will be much more “intensive” than what we are doing now!

Still, it feels good to settle into a routine, even a temporary one. Part of the satisfaction of studying abroad, I think, lies in the realization that it is possible to create a new routine, and adjust to a new way of life in a foreign country. At the same time, though, an authentic abroad experience should never become too comfortable. No one travels halfway across the world to experience the familiar, and from my experience, the most meaningful moments when traveling are the unexpected ones—the unique experiences we stumble into just when we are getting comfortable.

I was fortunate enough to have just such a moment on Tuesday. On our first day of language classes, when I came back to my home stay expecting to spend the rest of the day doing homework and resting, I instead found myself attending a 3-hour Beethoven concert at the Marinsky Theatre Concert Hall—and for free, no less.

As it happens, I was placed with a very musical host family. Both of my host parents, Sergey and Zhanna, regularly sing in local choirs during their free time, and on Tuesday morning Sergey invited me to his concert that night. When I came home later in the afternoon, though, his daughter Masha suggested that there might not be tickets, so I didn’t get my hopes up. But sure enough, he managed to get hold of two tickets to the sold-out show.

So just before 8, I walked down with Masha to see the concert. The concert hall, an impressive and imposing modern building opened in 2006, turned out to be practically next door to our apartment. Masha was a helpful guide as we navigated the masses of Russian concertgoers checking their coats and shuffling to their seats. Since the show was sold out, our tickets let us sit on standalone wooden chairs on the right balcony. Good enough for me.

I do not pretend to know much about classical music, but the first half of the concert was dominated by Yefim Bronfman, a world-renowned pianist who played Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4. Aside from his incredible musical abilities, it was a spectacle to simply watch Bronfman—a big, hulking presence of a man—go at the piano. As Wikipedia helpfully informs me, Philip Roth devoted a passage in his novel The Human Stain to describing Bronfman’s technique. I’ll let Roth take over for a minute:

 “Then Bronfman appears. Bronfman the brontosaur! Mr. Fortissimo. Enter Bronfman to play Prokofiev at such a pace and with such bravado as to knock my morbidity clear out of the ring. He is conspicuously massive through the upper torso, a force of nature camouflaged in a sweatshirt, somebody who has strolled into the Music Shed out of a circus where is the strongman and who takes on the piano as a ridiculous challenge to the gargantuan strength he revels in. Yefim Bronfman looks less like the person who is going to play the piano than like the guy who should be moving it. I had never before seen anybody go at a piano like this sturdy little barrel of an unshaven Russian Jew. When he’s finished, I thought, they’ll have to throw the thing out. He crushes it. He doesn’t let that piano conceal a thing. Whatever’s in there is going to come out, and come out with its hands in the air. And when it does, everything there out in the open, the last of the last pulsation, he himself gets up and goes, leaving behind him our redemption.” 

Courtesy of yefimbronfman.com

After Bronfman finished the concerto, the applause was so unceasing that he kept coming out to do encores, looking increasingly weary each time he did so. Finally the man was allowed some rest as the first half of the concert closed and a 20-minute intermission began.

The second half was really what I was there for. Conducted, as was the first half by Valery Gergiev—another pre-eminent classical musician and the current artistic director for the Marinsky—the orchestra led a performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. A large choir, including Sergey in the far back, stood behind the orchestra, patiently waiting the moment when they would chime in.

I was waiting, too. Being a classical music ignoramus, the extent of my knowledge of the 9th Symphony was that it was famous. I kept glancing to the choir and wondering when they would start singing, since there were no vocal parts for most of the symphony.

And then the “Ode to Joy” began. This I knew, of course. The familiar tune (known to me as the hymn “Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee”) began softly, played only on a double bass. But step by step, the entire orchestra joined in, and then, finally, the choir. It was an exhilarating thing to witness, a spectacular payoff to all of my impatience. I lack the technical ability to describe such music, but no matter. It was one of those moments when you feel lucky to be in the presence of an artistic genius above your understanding.

After the concert, there was a mad rush to grab our coats and hats and make our way out of the building. I have rarely seen such a mad, crowded place as the theater lobby after the show—everything you might have heard about Russians lacking a sense of personal space seemed true in that moment. Then it was back to the apartment to eat dinner—at 11 pm!–and yes, do the homework that I had not yet started.

Needless to say, I had no regrets—and I probably would have procrastinated anyway. Attending a free concert at the Marinsky Theatre Concert Hall isn’t a bad way to do it.

Snapshots and small victories

It’s 11:30 here and I am eager to head to bed before our two-week Russian language intensive begins tomorrow morning, so I’ll try to make this a quick post. Here’s a rundown of the past two (very busy) days:

Sunday

– After eating breakfast and getting ready at home, I headed out at noon for our first group cultural excursion, to the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood. The trip, by foot and metro, took about an hour, with a few (OK, several) wrong turns along the way.
– After meeting up with my group at the Nevsky Prospekt station, we headed to the Church. Seeing its onion domes jut into the sky as we approached it, I was immediately struck by how beautifully ornate the Church was, in a uniquely Russian style distinct from classic European architecture. The interior was no less beautiful, and possibly more so. Our tour guide spoke in Russian, rather quickly, so I didn’t catch every nuance of what she was saying, but I can tell you that the church was built largely as a monument to Tsar Alexander II, who was assassinated there (hence the Spilled Blood of its name). My words are insufficient to describe the place, so check out a few pictures below.
– I was so enraptured with photographing the inside of the church that I lost track of the others in my group, who had already left. So I exited and began strolling by myself through the adjacent Mikhailovsky Gardens, then back towards Nevsky Prospekt (the city’s bustling main street) and by the Kazan Cathedral, before stopping in for a quick, cheap lunch of borsht and a pirozhok. 
– While checking out the massive bookstore Dom Knigi, I ran into a bunch of others from my group, and together we strolled down Nevsky to Palace Square: the site of the Winter Palace and the Hermitage. On the edge of the square, we were greeted by an unusual sight: a line of old Soviet tanks and artillery, which tourists and Russians alike were eagerly snapping pictures of. One little Russian boy even climbed on top of a tank to take a selfie with an iPad. I later realized that this stuff was brought out in remembrance of the siege of Leningrad. Today was the 70th anniversary of the siege’s lifting, and the city commemorated the anniversary with a parade, fireworks and several outdoor exhibitions like the one we saw at Palace Square.
– After seeing Palace Square, we headed back towards our respective homestays, but not before making a stop to check out the Bronze Horseman statue of Peter the Great, commissioned by another “Great,” Catherine, and made famous by the Pushkin poem.
– I then headed home to another delicious Russian meal and good conversation with my host family. I am steadily gaining in confidence in my speaking ability, but a lot of it still goes over my head.

Monday

– I woke up a little before 9 to eat breakfast and walk over to Smolny for our language testing. We were given an oral examination as well as a written grammar test, to determine our preliminary language skills ahead of our intensive 2-week program. The testing was easier than I expected, though I did trip up here and there—and I doubt I’ll ever fully understand Russian verbs of motion.
– We then had some more orientation-like sessions about course offerings and our academic schedules, before heading to a cafe for lunch with our soon-to-be Russian language professors.
– After lunch, it was free time—which for most of us, meant doing a few practical errands: first, the bank; then, a phone store, and finally, a huge shopping mall at Sennaya Ploshchad. Wandering through the mall with a couple others on my program, I was again struck by how Westernized the whole place was. There was even the Russian equivalent of Forever 21, which you can see below. Anyway, I stopped at a supermarket to buy a 5-liter case of drinking water, since the tap water here is not to be trusted.
– And then I was back to my home stay, eating some pig and kasha for dinner and carrying on my most sustained Russian conversation yet, with my host parents’ daughter.

Over the course of the past few days we’ve been told by our program’s leaders to always celebrate the “small victories” when first adjusting to life in a foreign city—the little benchmarks that define our growing comfort in our new temporary home. For me, these past few days have been full of them: finding my way around the city on foot, navigating the metro (with its never-ending escalators and confusing naming system), using the bus, overcoming my fear of negotiating basic transactions at a store or ticket booth, opening up to my host family, and in general starting to get acquainted with the city and culture I’ll be surrounded by till June. Small stuff, really, but hopefully these are the first steps to something much bigger.

The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, exterior (above) and interior (below).

Palace Square, with the Winter Palace and the Alexander Column.

And there’s one of those tanks I was talking about.

The Bronze Horseman statue of Peter.

I got a laugh out of this. Apparently the age of desirability in marketing is determined by the drinking age of whatever country you happen to be in.

And to close this post out, a nighttime shot of St. Isaac’s Cathedral that I took on my walk home tonight.