The first thing that strikes you in Russia is that nothing is small. There are forests on the way in from the airport to Moscow, and traffic jams that pile up regardless of the hour. What looks like a short walk on the map . . . isn't.
The second thing is that, even more than the American South, it's the proof of the adage that the past isn't over . . . it isn't even past. Airport ads show pictures of victorious Soviet soldiers in 1945. Electronic billboards advertise movies about Stalingrad, Sevastopol, and other 70-year old battles. Even the war against Napoleon feels like it ended last Thursday.
But tradition has a softer side, too. Tea still comes in a pot that's placed over a slow burner at the table. Even the Starbucks-type chains have nicely dressed waitpersons and are scrupulously polite. The one I'm sitting in now has a poem about writers and coffee on the wall (my Russian is always good enough to know what people are talking about but never to know what they're saying).
The oddest thing to me is the similarity to that other pseudo-western country that I spend time in, the one in the Middle East. I guess it's no surprise since the original Israelis basically came from here. But the atmosphere, the mix of warmth toward those inside the circle and at best ambivalence toward those outside it, is oddly reminiscent of north Tel Aviv. Wait, next you'll tell me the collective farm isn't really a Jewish concept, that Tolstoy talked about it decades earlier, and . . .
More tomorrow.
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