“Russians are clever” – Part 1
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This is the lock on the door of the home we stayed at in St. Petersburg, Russia. It’s a sizeable deadbolt with three pins that sink into a heavy duty steel frame around the door. The key, which is two-sided and looks like a modern version of a medieval skeleton key, has to be turned two full rotations to fully engage the lock.
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And this is the second door. Once you open the interior door you’re greeted with a second, nearly identical door. It also has a large deadbolt with 3 pins sunk into a metal frame (different key of course) but this one also has a sliding deadbolt underneath it that can be unlocked by hand from the inside, and re-locked from the outside by use of a key.
We asked Vera, our host, if it was common in her apartment building to have two doors and such big locks. “Yes” she replied in her fantastically thick Russian accent, “all apartments have this.” She thought for a moment and then added “Russians are… clever.” One could have chalked up “clever” to a bad translation if not for the noticeable twinkle in her eye and slightest grin when she said it.
Vera isn’t the first Russian person I’ve been lucky enough to spend time with. One of the first people I met when I moved back to New York in the late ’90s was Ilya – a native Muscovite a few years older than myself who moved to the States shortly before we met. When I met him he was working for a midtown moving company but as we got to know each other (mostly by spending time Mountain Biking in Central Park or driving to New Jersey on the weekends to go Downhilling) I found that he was a never-ending source of amazing stories and experiences.
(ilya and I at plattekill)
For starters he had served in the Russian Tank Corps, which to me was awesome. Following a motorcycle crash where he broke a few bones and couldn’t do much for a few weeks he unstitched his shreaded leather jacket and used the pieces as a pattern to make himself a new one. Knowing how to sew had been a necessity when growing up – clothes were often hard to come by and it was necessary to be able to repair things yourself – but he was good enough at it that a buddy of his saw the jacket and asked Ilya to make him one. His friend bought the leather and Ilya made him a jacket. The next week he came back and asked Ilya to make him another one. “What happened to the one I just made you?” “I sold it!” his buddy replied. Aside from outfitting a good number of friends from local motorcycle gang, he also parlayed his abilities into a job in an ultra-high end tailor shop for a while.
He also tells a great story about the time he was bored during a long layover in a German airport (back in the 80s) and decided to “play” with the heavily armed airport security. The story ultimately ends well but not before he’s standing with his hands over his head in front of two guards pointing cocked machine guns at him. Like many of his friends he also spent some time smuggling goods from Germany into Russia to sell. Not (necessarily) stolen goods – just things that couldn’t be purchased in Russia – which at the time was a long list.
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Getting to know Ilya was my first direct glimpse into Russia culture – a country that had always fascinated me. From the harsh climate of even major cities like St. Petersburg and Moscow to the vast expanse of Siberian wilerness stretching for thousands of miles; from their dramatic military propaganda to the severe Soviet industrial and architectural design aesthetic – I just thought it was amazing.
When Anjel and I were riding our motorcycles though Utah on the way to Denver at the start of this trip, we stayed with Ilya for an evening (he moved out to Salt Lake City a few years ago). We had a great time hanging out with him and his son Lexi who is 7 and looks like a mini-version of his father. Lexi also has more energy than any child I’ve ever met. After we left Salt Lake City Anjel said she was genuinely impressed when I was able to come up with a game that allowed me to talk with Ilya while still entertaining Lexi – who was thrilled to have two new people in the house and wanted to involve us in everything he did. The game basically consisted of me sitting in a chair, talking to Ilya while shooting Nerf darts at Lexi as he ran around the yard dodging, collecting them, and bringing them back to me.
I hadn’t seen Ilya since I’d moved back to California 7 years earlier and was thrilled that Anjel was getting a chance to finally meet him. At the time, Anjel had some reservations about Russia – not enough to deter her in anyway, but we’d heard a lot of stories of corruption and bribery everywhere from Police to hotel desk clerks and she, justifiably, wanted to get an accurate picture of what to expect. “I’m sure it will be fine,” Anjel said as she tried to tactfully phrase her concerns “It just seems like there are a lot of… shady characters in Russia.” “No,” Ilya responded immediately before pausing for a moment and adding “well… yes, that’s true.”
It didn’t do much to assuage Anjel’s fears, but Ilya went on to explain that it’s not so much that Russian people are especially devious, but that living under the Soviet regime forced people to adopt certain traits in order to survive. For example, he explained, it was very common to take things from work. “If you needed something you took it from work. If you needed screws, you took them from work. It was not possible to go into a store to buy them – there weren’t any there. So people would take them home.” Most of his stories painted the picture of a daily life that that was difficult, with people struggling to survive *despite* their government and social environment – rather than with any assistance from it.
I was hoping to get a further insight into the culture when I picked up a copy of ”Hammer and Tickle: A History of Communism told through Communist Jokes” in a bookstore in London. The premise seemed fantastic: understanding what a culture joked about, especially in the face of totalitarian oppression, seemed like an amazing window into the collective psyche. The book is packed with jokes, though probably only a handful would be the type that you would ever re-tell now in the hope of getting a laugh. Most either dealt with specific events and wouldn’t make much sense without understanding the surrounding context or they were black humor and more poignant than funny.
It’s a great concept, but halfway through the book it became an excersise in determination, rather than enjoyment. As long as the author was recounting jokes or painting a strictly factual historial picture the book was interesting and showed an amazing depth of research. However as soon as the author injected any personal opinions or anecdotes (which probably accounted for half the book) he revealed himself to be such an unbelievable ass that it became physically difficult to continue reading. Though I could only recommend it with great reservation, the book did paint an interesting historica portrait – which became all the most interesting as we drew nearer to the border.
It’s not exactly the same sort of insight, but one of my favorite bits of information actually came from the Lonely Planet Russian phrase book which pointed out some differences in the word order of Russian sentences. “Russians [typically] start a sentence with background information, and build up to crutial new information – like a punchline in a joke.” “There’s no toilet on the bus!” translates to “B abtobyce het tyneta!” or literally “In bus, no toilet!”
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<b>Parting the Curtain</b>
Our actual arrival in Russia fulfilled almost every Cold War fantasy one could have. The day was cold, overcast and grey. We boarded a modern but well worn Chinese tour bus in Tallinn, Estonia for our 7 hour ride to St. Petersburg. Out of the 20-odd people on the bus we were certainly the only Americans and probably the only ones that weren’t either Russian or Estonian (though one teenager looked possibly German). 5 hours later, as it seemed to be getting progressively colder and the occasional stations we were stopping at getting smaller and smaller, we finally arrived at the Russian border.
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The bus stopped in front of a barricade next to a guard house, shut off the engine and a stone faced border guard got on and walked down the aisles, collecting passports. It wasn’t clear if he took everyone’s passport or perhaps just non-Russian citizens but he certainly took ours. He left the bus, passports in hand and everyone sat there silently for about 10 minutes. When he returned, just as stoic, he handed back the passports, said something to the driver and got off the bus. The bus started up, the gate lifted, and we started driving on. Anjel and I exchanged a few glances. Was that it?
It was not. The bus only drove for about 50 meters before reaching another checkpoint. This time the driver shut off the engines, opened the doors and everyone gathered up their things and got out. We filed into a small customs building where a large and stern-faced woman sat behind a small glass window checking visas and stamping passports. Thanks to an endless stream of WWII movies, we all know what a stereotypical Russian soldier is supposed to look like. When we arrived and found all that everything *really was like that* we couldn’t help giving each other fleeting glances of “isn’t this awesome!” followed quickly by “isn’t this terrifying!” as we realized that if those things are true, the rest of it might be true too and not wanting to be interrogated or shot, we assumed the stony countenance of the rest of the passengers.
To our great relief, the trip through customs was entirely uneventful. Our visas were in order, our passports were stamped and we were sent on our way. Only the German teenager with his duffel bag and skis seemed to have been asked to step to the side for a minute but it didn’t look like there was any problem.
10 minutes later we reboarded the bus and pulled away from the office, approaching what appeared to be the final gate out. Suddenly Anjel turned to me and said “Wait… where’s that German kid? Did he not get back on?” We didn’t remember seeing him load his things back on to the bus and looked around (cautiously) to see if he was on board. Had we just left someone behind at the Russian border? Was his bus driving away? Could that have just as easily been us?
As we rolled past the final gate and a huge line of cars and trucks inside the country, waiting to get out we were both excited to finally be entering Russia a little sobered about what our actual experience would be.
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This is the lock on the door of the home we stayed at in St. Petersburg, Russia. It’s a sizeable deadbolt with three pins that sink into a heavy duty steel frame around the door. The key, which is two-sided and looks like a modern version of a medieval skeleton key, has to be turned two full rotations to fully engage the lock.
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