Dostoevsky’s Russia may well have been a bland, drab, humorless place, but having seen four different cities over the course of twelve days, I can assure you that this is no longer the case.  I came to Russia hesitantly, more for the World Cup than the host country if I’m being honest.  True, I had long wanted to visit Russia for its rich and colorful history, its iconic architecture, and its importance in the international political psyche.  But I had some serious reservations.  I had heard it was violent.  I had heard that the people were cold.  That they didn’t speak English and that the tourism infrastructure wasn’t conducive to visitors.  Again, all of these notions were pleasantly dispelled during my two-week sojourn, and I couldn’t have been more pleasantly surprised by the place, but more emphatically by the people.

So what about Russia was so refreshingly surprising and positive?  While I admit that it’s entirely possible and even likely that the tourism infrastructure underwent a considerable overhaul in the months leading up to the World Cup, there is no way the government could have engineered the receptiveness, hospitality, and openness of the people.  The architectural and cultural wonders that you’ve read about are all there and just as impressive in person.  St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow and the Church of the Savior of the Spilled Blood in St. Petersburg are both architectural marvels.  And the Hermitage is every bit the equal of other elite international art museums like the Louvre, the Uffizi, the Met, or El Prado.  But the indelible impression of Russia in the days since I left is unquestionably of the fun-loving, welcoming Muscovites and Petersburgtsy that we met during our stints in those remarkable cities.

I owe a deep debt of gratitude to the various locals who made our trip such a rousing success.  Make no mistake about it, Russians are well aware of their international reputation; numerous people we encountered mentioned it.  What was so impressive to me was that they were so determined to dispel these stereotypes and misperceptions.  Those of us who grew up during the dying days of the Cold War remember watching movies like Rocky IV or Red Dawn, where the portrayal of Russians as stoic, unfeeling machines helped to boost our sense that we were on the right side of the bipolar divide.  While I didn’t expect to meet Ivan Drago on my travels, the animated nature of the Russians was thoroughly endearing and charming.  I was similarly impressed by the near-universal desire to engage foreigners at almost every turn certainly.  A couple anecdotes will illustrate this perception.

When I first arrived in Moscow at the metro station near my AirBnB, a metro worker actually walked me the ten minutes to my front door.  Later that same afternoon at the sports bar we settled into (Defaqto) to watch the opening Russia match, the bartender engaged us, wanting to know where we were from; the girls sitting next to us promptly painted our faced white, blue, and red.  We certainly got off on the right foot, but it didn’t end there.  We went on a Russian craft beer tour on another night, and our guide engaged with us in a lively, open discussion of domestic and international politics, directly addressing some of the misperceptions that Americans might have.  We went out on a Sunday night in Moscow for “a pint or two”[1] and ended up dancing the night away until 5AM with our newest Russian friends, with whom we could barely communicate.  After buying shots of vodka for my new friends, I learned that most young people now in fact prefer whiskey or cognac, and that vodka tends to be the spirit of choice of the older generation.  They politely refused the vodka shots but bought us all Jägermeister instead.  Globalization, for better or worse, abounds.

It was in St. Petersburg, however, where we met the kindest people and had the most joyous time.  We checked all the usual boxes, like the Hermitage and the Fabrégé egg collection; we hit up the Fan Fest and got to take in the thrilling Brazil vs. Costa Rica game.  But that’s not what I’ll remember.  I’ll remember the local bar down the street, serendipitously name Bukovsky,[2] where we met an unforgettable cast of characters.  Natalia, the bright, engaging university student who wanted to make sure that we sampled the best of Russian culture and food.  Nikolay and Rouslan, who immediately welcomed us into their circle of friends and whose enthusiastic bear hugs might have been one of the few stereotypes to ring true.  And the charming and kind Anastasia, whose English may be a work in progress (although light years ahead of my feeble attempts at Russian) but who nonetheless patiently engaged in thoughtful, meaningful conversations over Google translate with me.

The night that we met them at Bukovsky, I was squeezing past their group after coming back from the bathroom as they played a drinking game they called “Truth or Action”.  They stopped me, asking me where I was from and what I was doing in St. Petersburg, and immediately insisted that I join their game.  If I was initially hesitant, it was due more to memories from Duke at the ridiculous, exhibitionist antics involved in our collegiate version than any aversion to hanging out with them.  These notions were thankfully dispelled, as their version was vastly more highbrow than ours.  After selecting “action”, Natalia was dared to recite a poem.  She proceeded to rattle off all four stanzas of W.H. Auden’s “Funeral Blues” in perfect English entirely from memory.  My friend Big Al and I were stunned speechless.  Now this was a drinking culture I could get behind.

Over the next three days that we were in St. Petersburg, Natalia and Anastasia sent me text messages every morning to check on me, often inviting me to Russian dumpling breakfasts that we were never able to make happen (a tragic but necessary byproduct of our quotidian late-night Bukovsky sessions).  And we had a raucous celebratory night on our final evening, with all promising to stay in touch (and in case you’re wondering, they continued to check up on me as I made my way to Riga, Kaliningrad, Minsk, and Kiev).

To the Football

And now, as Rog and Davo[3] might say, “To the football!”  So what of the games and the footie, you might ask?  We saw two highly-entertaining (if not the greatest quality) matches in Brazil vs. Costa Rica in St. Petersburg and Spain vs. Morocco in Kaliningrad and another in Sweden vs. South Korea in Nizhny Novgorod that was entirely fine.  What struck me as different about this World Cup, however, was the geographic distribution of the fans.  At the previous three World Cups I’ve attended (Germany in 2006, South Africa in 2010, and Brazil in 2014), the majority of the fans hailed largely from the soccer giants: Brazil, Germany, Argentina, France, England, or even Mexico.  While there were still numerous Brazilians and Argentines, the most raucous, joyous, and present fans in Russia were from the relative soccer periphery: Peru, Sweden, Poland, and Morocco.  It was Peru’s first World Cup since 1982, and their fans made the most of it.  Perhaps because I went to a Sweden game, I saw the Swedes out in force and having themselves a fine time.  The Poles, given their geographic proximity, showed up strong and loud, singing their way through Moscow on their way to the stadium, despite the disappointing performance of their national side.  But the Moroccans, of all people, may have been the most impressive.  They outnumbered the Spanish at the match I attended by a factor 5 to 1 and were loud, proud, and engaged.  It was fantastic to see their passion and intensity for their team and the beautiful game, even though from a footballing standpoint, they had nothing to play for in that final group-round game.  Football has always been a global sport, but the World Cup has long been the privilege of the rich and geographically mobile.  While I’m not saying that these were not people of some means, by virtue of their presence, the globalization of football fandom was a beautiful thing to behold.

The Russian Near-Abroad

When I knew I was traveling to Russia, I thought to myself: why not check out some of the out-of-the-way places that you hear about but rarely visit?  Such is the way my brain works.  Riga is a common enough destination on the backpacker’s tour of Europe these days and deservedly so.  We had the good fortune of arriving on midsummer’s day, and there was a local festival in the center of town with food, music, beer, and dancing.  Pagan symbols abounded.  Garlands adorned every girl’s head and, seemingly inevitably, my brother Drew’s as well. The weather was a bit drab, but that didn’t dampen our spirits.  I had been to the three Baltic states before and would still absolutely recommend them as easy, safe, comfortable destinations for solo travelers.  Just watch out for those British stag parties.

I had heard Belarus alternately described as “decidedly still Soviet” and “the last dictatorship in Europe”.  While I was only there for a mere two days, I found the capital Minsk to be bright, cheery, and easily navigable.  There are wide city streets with impressive, colorful architecture that mingles the classic Russian and more continental styles.  The people were seemingly modern in dress and custom, and I’m happy to report that they have an excellent craft beer scene.  I particularly recommend the unfiltered Alivaria if you like a smooth, light, summery brew.  Because it was so inexpensive, I was able to book an apartment with a balcony that overlooked Victory Square and abutted their Gorky Park, where I went for a scenic run.  The moral of the story, don’t sleep on Belarus—it’s cheap and fun with an undeserved, unfounded reputation as a dreary place.

Ukraine was another place that had long lingered in my imagination, as one set of my paternal great-grandparents came over from the country at the turn of the last century.  I also had my Pardee RAND buddy Andriy living in Kiev and had promised to visit.  This seemed like the ideal time.  Before coming, Andriy suggested that we do a day tour of Chernobyl, and, ever the history teacher, I readily agreed.  He picked me up from the airport and could not have been a more gracious host.  We did a lively walking tour of the city center on the first day and explored the bar scene by night.  But it was the visit to Chernobyl the next day that really resonated.  Seeing the abandoned buildings, restaurants, and dormitories spoke to the magnitude of the disaster and its impact upon the residents and local community.  Coming upon a rusted-out amusement park, with a giant, rusty ferris wheel and silent, still bumper cars, really brought the depth of the disaster to bear.  The park was supposed to open four days after the accident, and the residents never did get to enjoy its spoils.   They evacuated 47,000 people from the town of Chernobyl in a matter of hours the following day, but many if not most still ended up with radiation sickness or enduring effects.  Andriy perhaps put it best when he observed that there is nothing man can create that nature cannot reabsorb.  And so it has with vegetation having overgrown streets and buildings and soccer stadiums.  The achievements of Soviet technology lay dormant and silent in that haunting mausoleum, perhaps a testament to man’s Icarian overreach.

Final Thoughts on Russia

I came to Russia unconvinced that I really wanted to be there.  I left certain I would return, in all likelihood sooner rather than later.  I would imagine that it won’t be long until I’m back in St. Petersburg.  I had such a fantastic time, and the city and its people linger in my thoughts and my imagination.  My trip by no means whitewashes my residual concerns about Russia’s politics or some its more loathsome policies, be they domestic or international. But it does show, yet again, the power of people to transcend those differences.  They certainly didn’t hold the idiocy or buffoonery of our current administration against me.  Maybe Rocky said it best when addressing the Russian crowd at the end of Rocky IV: “If I can change…and you can change…we ALL can change!”

For those of you who don’t have the inherent flexibility of a PhD student to take off for an entire month, a week between Moscow and St. Petersburg would probably suffice, though I’m certain there’s much more to see and do.  For one, I’d love to do the Trans-Siberian railroad.  Or go to Vladivostok.  Or maybe even take over Kamchatka.[4]  And if you decide to venture there, who knows, maybe I’ll even come with you and introduce you to some of the friendliest people you’re likely to meet.  So Natalia, Nicolay, Rouslan, and Anastasia, keep the bar open.  The next round’s on me.

 

[1] Here’s looking at you Stephen Smyth

[2] My favorite club when I lived in Rio and one we frequented when we returned for the last World Cup

[3] The Men in Blazers (check out their excellent weekly soccer podcast if you haven’t already)

[4] For all you Risk aficionados