Current Affairs of Russia Book Review! (I Love Russia)

A couple weeks ago I finished Elena Kostyuchenko's "I Love Russia".  It drew my eye at the book store.  It had a compelling cover (a half naked child, hunched over in front of a Lenin statue).  The inside flap gave more.  This book is about the hard stories in Russia.  Elena worked for one of the last few independent Russian newspapers, but neither she nor the newspaper are in the country any longer.  Reading the book made it clear why.

Within These Pages, Many Things...
The book itself reads like an assemblage of Elena's stories, her journalism.  It's title "I Love Russia" becomes significant over time.  She's talking about the Russian people, the geography, the history, but mostly about those on the fringes who, to quote Jimmy Stewart, are the rabble that "do most of the working and paying and living and dying" in Russia (Moscow and Saint Petersburg, by far the two largest cities, account for only about 15% of the Russian population).  

Just from memory, I can recall the book providing first hard accounts of:

• Homeless children living in abandoned buildings
• Highway sex workers
• Gay Russians
• Muslim Russians
• Russians bypassed along the train between Moscow and Saint Petersburg
• Victims of Russian wars and anti-terrorist violence
• Siberia's indigenous peoples amid pollution/suicide epidemics
• Predatory cab drivers
• Assassinated journalists
• Her mother, grandmother, brother
• and the disabled

Certainly I'm forgetting a story or two (like wrongfully deported Georgians), but that's the beautiful tapestry she weaves over this collection of her work.

...But Also A Beating Heart
The most touching aspect is her genuine empathy with these unknowns who live across their sprawling country.  She manages to be like an alien who visits to check on the vulnerable, absent of prejudice, cynicism, or apathy.  As a result the book swells with a love that aims to remember these people, instead of simply indulging in the horrors of Russian life.

Along the way, Elena also exposes herself.  She talks about how difficult the 1990s were for her family (her grandmother's life savings reduced to the value of a few socks upon the dissolution of the USSR).  She reports with candor how her mother's television news habit created an alternative reality that divided them.  Other stories are about losing her first love after suffering so much abuse for being gay (where Orthodox priests openly encourage children to assault gay protesters).  Sometimes the cost of love is more than people can bear.  She goes into her time living in a facility for the disabled and her mortifying mistakes trying to help them.  Sometimes the cost of change is more than people can bear.

There were one or two sections that required me to put the book down.  Recounting the forced sterilization and abortions of the mentally disabled is a real life nightmare.  Quoting the dreams of parents whose children were damaged by anti-terrorism, military actions is bleak at its core.  But she is clear why these are included.  Someone needs to know about these people: they requested these stories be told, to give broken dreams meaning.

Two Countries, In One Country, In Every Country
A few of the most compelling moments shine a light on our own social fractures as well.  Reading about a mother and daughter try and fail to talk politics because of where they get their news feels eerily familiar.  It's like two countries inside one.  Prejudices against immigrants, like Muslims from the Caucasus, is also highly relevant.  Hearing about those living on the edge, scraping by, talking hatefully about Muslims is a story that could be told worldwide.  Like a human pyramid where those at the bottom blame each other for the weight they bear.

In Russia too, it feels like a tale of cities.  Supposedly there is a long history in Russia of the powerful creating fake "potemkin villages", so visitors can see a fantasy version of reality, devoid of scarcity or oppression.  This cultural metaphor is similar to how Elena describes Moscow: a glorious cosmopolitan global destination with public art, nice streets, and a class of intellectuals soaking up their privileges without question.  Elena expresses disgust with these non-humanitarian creative types and their parties and clever opinions.  She gives enough time to explain their scene only to go back to the "people" scraping by on the periphery, away from the news, behind the polished, urban facade. 

Meanwhile, Right Now
Elena has now moved out of her country.  The book ends as Russia sinks into war, which would make journalism within its borders a death wish.  She provided a long list of peers who were openly assassinated before the war began.  These were her friends and heroes.  

There have been other attempts to see Russia from the eyes of Russians.  Tucker Carlson visited Russia to interview Putin, to show off its grocery stores and attempt to dispel western views of a deprived and depraved land.  Shortly afterward, Putin's most well known political rival died in a remote prison.  Protests erupted, but Putin's re-election, now underway, is expected to carry on without much opposition.  Natalie Baldwin's book "The View from Moscow" also explains that the Russian people expected to be embraced after the fall of the USSR, but instead saw almost every aspect of their lives become extraordinarily worse in the "lost" 1990s.  Other reports indicated that the Russian people felt the war in Ukraine was inevitable.  NATO (a military alliance created for western countries to defend themselves against Russia during the cold war) has grown to include Russia's neighbors.  And when Ukraine had a popular revolution, their attempt to join NATO could put missiles along Russia's border.  So Putin did the unthinkable.  He started a war amid peaceful times and spread death and misery.  But many just shrugged at how predictable it seemed.

A Moral Challenge Amid Bitterness
Personally, I think it is necessary that we do what Elena has done.  We distinguish governments from people.  We distinguish the powerful from the bulk of humanity that mostly want to make a living, raise families, travel, and work toward a better life in relative safety.  The fact that this is lost in our debates, that we don't see what we have in common, what horrors we all hope to avoid, is itself fuel for more tragedy.  Whatever happens in the Ukraine war, we need to pay attention to those asking for a ceasefire, those asking for a demilitarized buffer, those asking for peace.  I know little about the history of war, but I do believe if we're looking for victory, exclusively on our terms, we should be aware of the cost.  From an economist's viewpoint, that has already meant global inflation.  From a human perspective, it meant at least 10,000 documented civilian deaths and at least twice as many injuries so far.  The end of Elena's book talks about these deaths in real terms.  She talks about orphanage employees who are killed as they try to move away from the warfare:

"Valentina Vidyuschenko, she hadn't been with us long.  It was her second year as a teacher's assistant.  She was working with the new intakes, one of the most difficult groups... when the children first come to us, they're in tears... they've been dropped off somewhere strange, it's so stressful for them.  She was one of the first people they met.  She helped them wash, dressed them, changed them, talked to them, made them feel better.  That's the sort of people they killed.  The children were inconsolable. They had been waiting for the teachers to come, we'd told them that they were on their way.  The children screamed and screamed and wouldn't stop."

It's these glimpses into humanity and tragedy that elevate Elena's work to something much greater.  May we all prioritize peace.  May we all reduce suffering.  May we all work to know each other.  May we try to love the people hidden by flags and headlines and talking points like Elena has done here.

For those interested, Elena's journalism and the newspaper that employs her still publish great works at Novaya Gazeta's website.