# Posted 9:22 PM by Dan  

BACK FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE AND ANECDOTES. I just returned from a trip to St. Petersburg and Moscow. Russia is so full of contradictions and hope, I don't even know where to begin. Of course my opinion is biased--I am a spoiled 24 year old with no Russian language skills, which impeded my ability to truly interact with the "Russian street" as one famous NY Times columnist would put it. My sample size is about 20 or 30. Recognizing these limitations, here are a few of my thoughts:

I didn't feel any outright hostility toward me based on my American citizenship (I think most of the hostility was based on my obnoxious personality), but two anecdotes stick out: at a bar, a girl came and sat down at our table, and we smiled and asked her where she was from. She replied, "Baghdad." The next day, we went to an outdoor shopping district and a salesman came up to us and said, "You are American? I am Iraqi!" That was about it. Most of the Russians I spoke to about the war felt that America was violating international law and its power, if unchecked, was "dangerous". The idea of America as the world's lone superpower came up often--one Russian friend of a friend told me that Russians feel threatened because they were a "fake superpower" and seeing a real superpower exercise its strength was unsettling.

Many of the Russians with whom i interacted are at best "hostile to darker skinned minorities" and at worst downright racist. The adjectives they used to describe Chechens are eerily similar to those early white Americans used to describe (American) Indians: "uncivilized", "untrustworthy", "violent", "barbaric", "unreformable" and so on. The friend with whom I stayed told me to expect this, but it was still shocking to hear it. I even got a "some of my best friends are Chechen--but these ones are not like the others" comment from one Russian woman. When i asked her if Russians were anti-Chechen, she said, "How could we be--they own all the hotels and have power in this city." We took a day trip from Moscow, and we told our tour guide that we were studying near London. She said, "London is nice, but of course you have that problem with the blacks. But they are not as bad as the negroes in America--they are Indian....the blacks, they go to restaurants and leave a mess everywhere, it's horrible." During lunch she told us that she liked America--she thought it was a very well run country, but that "there is the problem with the negroes. What a disaster." All of this was quite disconcerting.

Traveling with a Marine and Army officer while our country is at war has provided me with an entirely new perspective on it. They help me with the technical aspects of the war: "Dan, generals are ranked brigadier (one star), major (two stars), lieutenant (three stars), and general (four stars)." Little things like this help immeasurably when watching a press briefing. I could also see their own ambivalence and feelings of helplessness while watching everything on CNN. They are on scholarships in England until July. Until they return to America for training, they have to watch and read about their classmates and friends' experiences in a war in which both of them would likely have served.

It was a wonderful trip, save for the sub-freezing temperature throughout most of it....I never thought I would be looking forward to the weather back in England.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion