December 12, 2011

Saturday in Moscow, or How I Lost My Ironic Stance Toward Russia

I started this tumblr page back in September as a repository for travel photos. I knew I would be out of the US for awhile, and I figured that this would be the best way to keep friends abreast of what I was encountering abroad. Plus, since I was aiming to create a visual record of my thought stream, rather than a linear diary of what I did and saw everyday, I thought the exercise would keep my brain filters working, encouraging me to not only keep my eyes open, but also to keep reflecting on what I was seeing.

As it has turned out, keeping this page going has generally been good for all of these purposes. But here’s the thing: it has also encouraged me to retain an ironic stance toward Russia. I mean, yes, I have posted a few somewhat serious thoughts here (see the potato post below), but I’ve mostly been using this as an outlet for little glimpses into things I consider delightfully absurd or in some broad sense hip. And this means that I’ve spent a fair amount of time packaging my observations as digestible nuggets that reflect back on some element of Russia’s wonderful strangeness or my own ability to look askance at it.

There are reasons for the approach that I’ve taken to Russia on this blog, of course. 1) The Internet is made for passing along nuggets of absurdity and hipness. 2) My default stance is ironic and detached, as most of you know. 3) Russia has a way of breeding attachment and detachment simultaneously, at least in me.

Or, I should say, it has had a way of breeding attachment and detachment simultaneously in me. Because in a very real way, Saturday’s big opposition meeting made me feel like I might not always have to hold myself at such a long arm’s length from Russia, always half-expecting to get burned.

Given all this, it seems fitting that I should describe my experience here, on this tumblr page, amidst all my little hip, silly observations, with as much emotional honesty as I can muster, as a little bit of a challenge to myself and my usual outlook on the world. So here goes.

Let me first say that Saturday’s meeting did not, by any means, solve everything in Moscow. Nor is it remotely clear what will become of Russia now. To the contrary, things are completely unsettled at the moment, and there are all sorts of questions now about what is to come politically. Will the momentum so palpable on Saturday continue to build? Or, now that people have expressed their frustration with the electoral process, will they feel that they have done their civic duty and disappear from the streets? Will there be crackdowns and arrests again like last Monday and Tuesday? Or has some line been crossed where opposition groups can no longer be completely dismissed and silenced by policemen and Nashi drummers?  What is Navalny’s role going to be after he gets out of jail? And what the hell will Prokhorov’s candidacy for president—announced today—bring to the mix?

But the thing is, for all the questions raised by what has gone on this last week, Saturday’s meeting did something real: it broke down something hard and skeptical, I think, not just in me but also in a whole range of different people. Why? Partly because this massive gathering (estimates of the crowd range from 25,000 to 100,000 over the course of the day) proceeded peacefully, despite everyone’s fears, and the big police presence did more to protect than to disturb the participants. But mainly, it seems to me, because, despite being an “opposition” protest, the dominant mood at Bolotnaya was one of open-hearted engagement, not bitterness or anger or even, really, simple frustration. It was as much “for,” something, despite the lack of coherent platform, as “against” the status quo. 

Indeed, for all the varied political opinions I heard being expressed there—every possible anti-United Russia position was represented, including some quite hateful nationalistic ones—the main thing I took away from the day was the feeling I had witnessed a big collective sigh of relief. It was as though everyone had arrived steeled against the possibility of disappointment, harassment, arrest, trained not to expect too much, and had then, at some point, let down their guards enough to enjoy the fact they had gathered together with so many other seemingly normal people who, like them, felt like it just might be worth allowing themselves to take a chance and show up.

I would even go so far as to say that, leaving, I had the feeling that I’d been present at an act of love, rather than an opposition rally. And this impression of euphoria has only been heightened for me in the last couple of days as I’ve encountered pictures like this one (put together by Ilya Varlamov from aerial footage) on the Russian Internet:

 

Saturday’s meeting as love affair. (See more here.)

Now, of course, big public acts of love are not something I have traditionally associated with Russia. Nor are they something I will expect from Russian political demonstrations in the future. But for the moment, I feel really grateful to have had the chance to watch some idealism spring up around me. And to have felt myself let go a bit of the irony that I’ve always used to protect myself from Russia and, well, the world.

So that’s that. I was going to write a more factual description of what I did, how I met up with some friends at the Dostoevsky statue in front of the Lenin library before the meeting; how together we walked with members of the Russian Socialist Movement and anticapitalist.ru to Ploshchad’ Revolutiutsii (“Revolution Square”); how I was afraid I would see some sort of violence there, since there had been some vague threats people would be punished if they went there instead of the new meeting place; how we joined up there with people from Levyi Front (“Left Front”); how I saw all sorts of communists and nationalists and socialists all ardently expressing themselves beneath the statue of Marx; how we progressed past a huge police presence to Bolotnaya Ploshchad’ (“Swampy Square”), them chanting, me documenting (still a little nervous about what all I was going to see, my passport and registration in order, the number of the US embassy in my pocket just in case); how we arrived and went through metal detectors and started to see people everywhere, including overloading the bridge (and how, surprisingly, this tightly-packed space did not prompt claustrophobia); how I went wandering by myself; how I took a picture of a teacher who had skipped work that day, despite the fact she was supposed to administer a mandatory exam for students that had been announced at the last minute (presumably to keep students, teachers, and some parents away from the meeting).

But somehow that narrative seems a lot less important than the emotional one. Anyway, there are much better journalists covering the facts of all of this. (See, for instance, Julia Ioffe’s recent pieces in Foreign Policy and on the New Yorker blog, as well as David Remnick’s excellent continuing coverage.)So I hope you will forgive me for being so earnest and emotive, so seemingly naive. I promise I will retain my ironic distance and cynicism about most things and will re-guard myself against Russia should all this come to naught. But for right now, I am rather enjoying how my scale has tipped. 

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  1. reiflarsen reblogged this from katharineholt
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  3. sarahwrotethat reblogged this from elliottholt and added:
    This is wonderful.
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    Moscow, doing dissertation research (she’s getting...Columbia University). She is...
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