Новоселье

Новоселье (novosel’e) is the Russian word for a housewarming. You move into a new place, get settled in a bit, and then invite friends and family to come celebrate (and maybe even bring some gifts for the house). Dima (Belgian roommate) and I organized a новоселье last Friday, to mark our settling down into our new place. There really is much to celebrate about the move, (I’ve already detailed the perks), and so a whole legion of foreign friends, along with a few Russians, came to congratulate us on the move. Nonetheless, we have a few problems here that have not yet been resolved. The all-capable Dmitrii Denisovich has been under the weather and so has not (unfortunately) come a’ calling. The heat has been turned on, but it turns out that two of our 5 radiators (including the one in my room), do not work. On one, the pipe is even severed. We still don’t have a doorbell (not a big deal), but the biggest problem is that two weeks after moving in, we still do not have gas for the stove. That is, we are living off bread, sticks of meat, cheese, tea, and the Russian equivalent of ramen noodles. For this last of our five main food groups we are endlessly scolded by every Russian we know.
I assure you, however, that Dima and I would be more than willing to eat real food had we the means. It’s not the landlady’s fault. She’s even sent her mother, Rufina Pavlovna (a rare name) to wait for the gas men a handful of times, but to no avail. They won’t come. Rufina Pavlvona does, however, putter about the house cleaning up after me and Dima while we’re at school (much to my embarrassment). This is the same lady who fixed our electricity. Anyway, Dima and I feel like we’re wasting away. I’m sure I’m losing weight. Soon I may resort to eating raw hunks of beef.
Anyway, this moving in of ours is similar, in many ways, to my overall experience here. It has been overwhelming positive with a few helpings of negative. I already growing weary of the Russian style of arranging meetings. In general, plans here are subject to change at any moment. “Yes, your schedule does say Tuesdays at 10:30 in classroom 302 of the main building, and no it might not be there, but we can assure you that it will probably be somewhere in one of the 2 following buildings, almost every time”. In fact, I would say that about 15 percent of the English classes I teach (and I’m only counting the ones with designated locations) actually take place in the indicated classroom. Usually, the best option is to show up to the right building and wander through the hallways until a professor yanks you into the proper classroom. The worst case of this sort of unreliability or just plain laziness is the visa-registration office. Because I moved, I have to change my address on my registration (and pay 400 rubles again). I also have to renew my visa (for some reason they insist on giving you a 3-month visa to start and then require that you renew it for a year almost immediately). Anyway, I found the right office and asked her what I need to do. She found a time for me to return, about 10 days later, and provided that I brought my money, passport, registration, landlady, and some special paperwork regarding the apartment, I could change my registration. So I arranged all of this brought my roommate to boot. We all woke up early, including my landlady who took off work, and we made it to the office for our meeting. Within 5 minutes it was decided that either I didn’t have a contract and would need to leave Russia immediately or I could return with my contract, my money, my passport, my registration, my landlady and the paperwork on Friday. Maybe then she will talk to me. I have my contract now, and may even get to stay later than November. We’ll see. This sort of unpredictability is a normal part of life in Russia. Plans are rarely definite. I’ve found it’s helpful to ask ahead of time “наши планы в силе?” (“are our plans in strength?”). Sometimes or even often it turns out that they are not. Such is life here.
Something else that has been bugging me is what has turned out to be the most burning questions in the minds of most of my students and acquaintances. I’ll say that my experiences with Russians so far have been great. They treat me wonderfully with incredible hospitality and generosity. But I’m really getting the impression that somewhere in Russia there are scores of people who think very poorly of Americans. My Russian friends are always amazed to find out that other Russians have been treating me well. They all want to assure me that they don’t necessarily believe what everyone (especially on television, apparently) says about Americans. “That’s funny,” I think, “I don’t know what they say about us on Russian television”. It turns out that on Russian television, they talk about how stupid Americans are, how little we know about geography, history, and how ridiculous American laws are. Lucky, so say my Russian friends, not everybody believes this. Some have friends who have travelled to America and ascertained that, in fact, not all Americans are stupid. One Russian I met said there’s even a show called “Тупые Американцы,” or “Stupid Americans”. This is something I really don’t understand. I really cannot imagine this sort of program, even on our sleazy television networks. In part, I think we’re too PC for this sort of programming. More importantly, I think we’re less aware about cultural stereotypes than Russians (and oh do they love them). If an American were asked to give a cultural stereotype about Russia, maybe he would say “wearing fur hats” or “playing chess” (“drinking vodka” in the worst case). Anyway, we are far less aware of Russian culture than they think they are of ours. Perhaps this is a fault of ours, not caring to know what people do in other cultures, but at least we don’t sit around watching television shows like “Drunk Russians”. Most of the impressions they have of America are from Hollywood movies, which may account for some of what they consider is stupid American behavior. Still, if I judged Russia based on the Russian movie “Gitler Kaput” that I saw last weekend, I would have a pretty bad impression of Russia.
Anyway, I’m pretty tired of being grateful that not all Russians consider me stupid for being an American. There is one question, however, that I’m asked at least three times a week. I always know when it’s coming, because it’s usually after we’ve already discussed “stupid Americans” and because it’s always at the same part of the conversation. The person will get a clever grin on his face, and at this point I know it’s going to happen: “Now we hear about what you learn in history class. Tell me if it is true what they say, that you are taught that America won World War II. The whole world knows that We, Russia won World War II. Do you think you won World War II?” I’ve already been answering this question for a year, and so I’ve gotten used to answering automatically, “Well, you know, we were allies. There were many fronts in the war, and together, with the help of the rest of the allies, we defeated the Germans. You won on your front and we won on ours”. This rarely satisfies them, and I’ve already grown tired of taking the time to explain the whole thing. Now I’ve resorted to a much cleverer answer that someone (I forget who) suggested when we were at the orientation in Kiev. It is simple and I think true. “It is my opinion that in war, nobody wins. Everyone loses”. Really, if you think about it, Russia, more than anyone else, felt the impact of this war. I don’t remember the exact statistics, but unimaginable numbers of Russians died, both at the front and at home (Petersburg Blockade for instance). The war was a tragedy for everyone involved, no matter how you look at it. How they have decided that WWII was a victory for them alone is beyond me. What I remember hearing in school is that the Russians fought the Germans on their front and we on ours. I have heard it speculated that had we not entered the war on our front, Germany would have had an easy time handling the Russians. This, of course, is speculation. If my memory serves me correctly, the Soviets even had a pact with Hitler that Hitler broke when he invaded Russia. I don’t know if Russia would have remained neutral or fought on the side of the Nazis if Hitler hadn’t attacked, but regardless, I don’t think it’s right to consider Russia the solitary victor of WWII. As you can imagine, this question was an unusual one to answer the first time it was asked, and now that I’ve heard it about 20 times, I’m quite tired of being tested to see if I’m stupid enough to doubt that Russia alone won World War II.
Anyway, so now I know that it must become my mission to prove the competence of the American intellect to as many Russians as possible. I’m starting to think I should start watching a little television to find out what else every citizen in Russia is being told about me. Like I said, however, I have yet to meet a Russian who has treated me badly just because I’m an American. I have had an overwhelmingly positive experience here, but I thought it might be appropriate to show everyone what is apparently common knowledge about Americans. Most interesting, however, is the extent to which this interest in the behavior of people in another country is one-sided. Every Russian is filled with ideas about what life in America is like (some of them, as I am explaining, are wildly unfounded), but I think it is fair to say that very few Americans have ever stopped to ask themselves what Russian people are really like, how they live. When Russians ask me what Americans say about them and whether these stereotypes have turned out to be true, it’s always a little uncomfortable. How can you tell them that your people, far from having a lot of negative things to say, don’t really have anything at all to say about them. Which is worse, I don’t really know.
Well that little thought has exhausted itself. Apart from the whole food situation, things are slowly moving into place. I’ve started the rest of my classes this week, the ones at my main department. At first I had a bad feeling about them. I was told that I would merely be reading texts for people to translate. I felt like this was certainly not me and my education being using to the fullest potential. It turns out that so far, these courses have been very interesting. The students are at the 4th level of a department that specializes in languages alone, and so their English is at an incredible level. I have been amazed by how eloquently these students have been discussing politics (the theme for these two weeks). More incredible was the simultaneous translation itself. These students listen to a paragraph of complicated political material at a somewhat normal speed, reflect for a split second, and then proceed to repeat what I say in well-formed, Russian sentences. Their memory and attention to detail amazes me. As in every classroom in Russia, there’s one student who’s at a level twice as advanced as all the rest. This student might not even be paying attention, and yet when another student fumbles with the translation, she chimes in with a verbatim, idiomatic translation, as if she was reading it off the back of her eyelids (I knew she wasn’t, because I brought the article). I was humbled.
Anyway, I think that’s enough for now. Hopefully the excess of this entry makes up for my not having written in quite a while. Be in touch all of you. I really do love hearing from you.

Jason