Back In The USSR

In the waning days of the Soviet Union I arrived in what was then called Leningrad. I was haggard after a million hours in an airplane direct from Hawaii. My brain was as foggy as the noxious coal fumes which enveloped the city in those days.  It was the old Soviet Union I had come to love because it was, well, so foreign.

The airport stank of what I used to call the “Parfum de Russe” . . . . black tobacco smoke, human body odor and a faint trace of urine.

From my window in a mud-covered Lada, the city looked like it was literally falling apart. Once beautiful and inspiring it was a sad sight at every turn as we drove through swirling clouds of giant snowflakes. What we now know as St Petersburg was an aging dowager near death. On the sidewalks people lined up to buy bread from the backs of big, ugly gray-green trucks. At a stoplight I looked into a food store with mostly bare shelves - a few canned goods scattered about.

These were the people that would “bury us?” This was the country we lived in fear of? What the hell were we afraid of? It was a country in ruins.

The Berlin Wall had fallen a few months before but here, it seemed communism was not going away.

We passed a massive concrete building with a giant bronze hammer and cycle above Lenin’s sculpted head.

“Wow,” I said in my naïve American way, “that is amazing.”

“We don’t believe in that shit anymore,” my driver shot back. He reached under the seat and pulled out a homemade cassette tape with the label peeling off. He popped it into a machine he had jerry-rigged under the dash.

“Don’t you know, we’re talkin’ about a revolution . . . .”

Tracy Chapman’s voice was haunting that gray afternoon. The driver sang along with his Russian accent at the top of his lungs.

I’ve been back to Russia several times since that day . . . after the fall of the USSR, when the bread lines got even longer. Back again in the mid-nineties when it resembled Chicago under Al Capone.  Moscow was run by organized crime. There were gunfights in the street. People were shot eating dinner in restaurants. I remember changing money on the black market. I gave the guy 200 bucks from my hidden money belt and he handed me a large plastic garbage bag of Rubles.

But when I came back in 2005 after a 7 year absence, it was like a miracle occurred. The country had been turned upside down. A revolution like nothing I had ever seen.

So here we are, 9 years after that and I’m still dumbfounded. I’m tempted to say the change reminds of when the Wicked Witch of the West was doused with the bucket of water by Dorothy.

Twenty five years since that day in Leningrad. Who could have imagined?

These days, where Russian pride is soaring, the bad old days seem like a distant memory.

Elena, one of runners here at the venue tells me that when she was a small child the family breakfast might consist of a banana cut in 3 pieces. Food was a luxury item. These were tough times. She marvels at the change herself. But like many Russians in those days who were suddenly free to travel, her parents left for good . She now lives in Los Angeles.

Problems these days are much more pedestrian for much of Russia.

Yesterday was a sad day in the New Motherland. Russia’s pride was knocked for a loop.

The Russian hockey team was knocked out of the hockey tournament by Finland and Russia’s new sweetheart on the ice Yulia Lipnitskaya fell hard in the Ladies short.

But yesterday was also sad in a much different way. It was like a ghost reappeared. A reminder that 600 years of history cannot be erased in a quarter century.

Yesterday some pretty disturbing video surfaced which reminded me that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. Pussy Riot, the punk activists, came to Sochi to protest Putin’s Olympics. They arrived early this week and were keeping a low profile while they shot their latest music video around town, 20 miles from the Olympic venues.

On Tuesday I met a friend for lunch in Adler, a Sochi suburb not far from Olympic Park. When I arrived the little town center was engulfed in a monumental traffic jam. The local Police had arrested some Pussy Riot members on trumped-up charges of purse snatching. Though they were quickly released, it was a message sent. The traffic in Adler was a mess because of the large scrum of journalists.

Their “songs” are crude. Their message is difficult to decipher. They do impromptu performances wearing colored balaclavas. I wrote about them a few days ago.

Pussy Riot attempted to sing their latest hit, ‘Putin will Teach You How to Love the Motherland’ in front of a Sochi 2014 banner near downtown Sochi.

This video speaks powerfully. The clip is from Russia Today, a de-facto government TV outlet.
Remember to come back after the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u3isEgszV0

When the real Police arrived after the video stopped there were no arrests. The attackers were Cossack Militia using horse whips. Although they have fancy uniforms, they are more like Mall Cops in fierce looking costumes. They have been contracted to be unofficial security officers in Sochi proper. It reminds me of letting the Hells Angels handle security at Altamont. Something bad was bound to happen.

The Cossacks were after all the perpetrators of the pogroms and the murder of thousands of Jews over the past 350 years. In the bad old days the central government just put their palms in the air . . . . Cossacks will be Cossacks.

But today the Governor of this region said he would find and prosecute the attackers. Hmmmm. Now THAT would be a real revolution.

Later yesterday afternoon, in the best Russian tradition of ‘nothing is as it appears,’ Pussy Riot resurfaced to sing the song in front of Sochi City Hall. They were heckled by the few passersby. No one seemed to care about Pussy Riot. The Sochi Police just let the show go on.

Russian protest music has a deep heritage. Starting in the 1960s there were singer/songwriters called "Bards." They wrote anti-Soviet songs which they distributed underground under fear of arrest. These records and tapes were passed around in secret and were treated like gold. Sometimes the music was etched onto an old x-ray in someone's garage. People could play them on a phonograph. Young people whispered when they had them. Who could have conceived of Pussy Riot?

Now that the local authorities seem to be more tolerant, perhaps they can find a place for something like Pussy Riot. Only then can they truly be free.

Tonight the Russian Nation finally had a big victory. Just when it seemed like the air had gone out the Games, and the crowds seemed funereal, hope rose from the ashes of defeat. A spunky, shy relatively unknown Russian girl beat the best in the world  She became the unlikely Queen of the Ice.

Adelina Sotnikova became the first Russian women in history to win an individual Gold Medal. Four years ago in Vancouver the entire Russian team was shut out of the medals, a deep embarrassment for this sporting crazed nation. Adelina won the main event, The Marquee event and she acted like the sweet teenager she is.  

When the Russians left the Vancouver Olympics, they were devastated. They made a plan for Sochi. Russian skating seemed dead. The world powerhouse had run its course, The best coaches and leaders had left for more lucrative jobs in the west.

In four short years, The Russian Skating Association needed to change everything. They aimed for the sky. They brought coaches back home from around the globe and rebuilt their program top to bottom. There is a steel rod of strength running though the Russian backbone. My Chechen friends from earlier in the week taught me well. Give Russians the tools to build and a magical Phoenix will rise.

"When we are united, no one can beat us" he wrote on his red, white and blue flag, Dreamers can win, Even here, They proved it tonight, You can argue the merits of the Korean or the Italian  but it was a Russian athlete who vanquished the field. And the Russian nation can rejoice for that cute little girl that every grandmother would love to pinch. Adelina is a child of the new system, A prototype for the future.

She brought new glory to the Motherland. After she won she hugged at least 2 dozen people who helped her achieve this goal. This was not just a victory by an individual, this was victory by a team of patriots upset at the direction life was taking.

Hey, wait a minute you might think it looked like The Fix was in. . . . Yu-Na Kim should have won! The judges, some say, were drunk with crowd noise and the panel was corrupt. All the media noise aside, women's figure skating has become an athletic event. It's not about who's the prettiest, it's about who is the better athlete. Yu-na was wooden and had fewer jumps. Adelina won.

Just four years after a complete shutout . . . .  no skating medals in Vancouver . . . they made a revolution. In 2014 they became the first Olympic skating team in history where every team member went home with a Gold Medal. The government didn't do this, a group of committed individuals followed a dream, giveng of themselves and built a program from scratch.

That is the new Russia. If Sochi taught us anything, it taught us that this is a powerful nation of individuals. Putin is a transitional figure. Russia is on the rise.

Cue the DJ sound of a record needle skidding across some vinyl.

Well, maybe it is . . . .