Stalin built the Moscow underground in the 1930s as the deepest stations in the world. Designed to house citizens during an American nuclear attack, the stations remain today as relics of a foreign age, yet the admiration for Stalin continues. Welcome to Russia, circa 2001.
Travelling through Russia today is a bewildering experience. Since the fall of Communism in the early 90s, the country has undergone a massive transformation. Walking the streets of central Moscow, I was struck by the amazing amount of Western advertising, neon and superficial glitz. A city convinced of its current and future successes, the rich are getting obscenely rich, while the poor, disadvantaged and growing HIV positive community, are being generally ignored. The government of Vladimir Putin (once the head of the KGB) has no time for dissent and is currently waging a largely silent and covert war against media diversity. Corruption, on the other hand, is rife and the mafia essentially runs the country. I was once asked in a bar if I wanted guns, tanks (!), passports or girls. I declined on all counts.
Russia is not, however, a country simply laced with depression and angst, but rather a contradictory land filled with warmth, industrial ruin, stunning kindness, beautiful women in love with lycra and beer strong enough to flatten the Trans-Siberian Express (36% proof!) I spent a week in Moscow (dirty, over-crowded and many remnants of ubiquitous concrete high-rises), and likewise in St Petersburg (a classically stunning city, filled with gently flowing canals, Baroque and modernist architecture and dark, underground clubs which suddenly transform into strip-clubs at 11pm!)
My assumptions about Russia before I arrived were of a country in disarray, struggling to define itself in a post Cold War world. The people, however, have little time for such indulgent thoughts. I remember being in Irkutsk, one of the capital cities in Siberia, and meeting a couple of young students. His name was Gregory, 18, and looked like Leo DiCaprio and she was Nika, 16, wearing a short black skirt, high heel sandals, crème coloured stockings, red and black flannel shirt and large breasts bouncing everything. 'When you are a teenager you grow up fast around here,' Gregory told me. Nika said little all day, embarrassed to speak English, smiling a lot and smoking far too many cigarettes. Gregory's English was quite good, but 'it's better for me to think it's poor' - he had little self-confidence.
Nika loved heavy metal, Metallica, role-playing games, studded leather wristbands - I thought she was aspiring for goth utopia. Spending the day with them gave a great insight into life in Siberia. Many English teachers supposedly don't speak English, as Nika had been learning English for eight years, yet could barely speak. As I was told, '[the teachers] don't see speaking English as very important.' Late in the afternoon we sat down and the questions began. Gregory wanted to know the exact meaning of certain well-known song lyrics, such as Britney's 'Baby Hit Me One More Time'. I was slightly stumped, to be honest. They asked what Russian literature I knew and I had to admit my knowledge was limited. Nika started reciting, in English, the first section of Pushkin's 'Onegin', then both of them, in perfect unison, recited the poetic rhythms of 'Onegin'. They were shocked when I told them I knew no poems by heart, as they were forced to learn certain poems at school. The y were very proud of Russian literature, and as Gregory told me, 'it's known that Russian is the richest language in the world.'
The time I arrived at the Russian/Mongolian, I felt I understood little about this country. How are many still able to praise the authoritarian policies of Stalin and Lenin, yet warmly embrace the 'wonders' of Hollywood and Levis? Russia is perhaps a land designed to keep many elements of its wonder, horror and bemusement firmly intact.