Chuck McFadden

McFADDEN GOES TO RUSSIA THIRD IN A SERIES

"I don't know, Nadinska. I thought Solzhenitsyns's books were much more fun when you couldn't get them."

Russia trudges long road
to economic stability

By CHUCK McFADDEN
of TheColumnists.com

Shortly after the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991, there was established in Moscow the "Speak Up!" cafe, an example of the wonderful delirium of freedom that swept through the national psyche. No other country in the world went through such a sudden explosion of freedom as did Russia.  The cold dead hand of stifling dictatorship was gone for the first time in a thousand years.  Speak up!  Be free!  Do what you want!  No one is going to say "no" ever again! Today, the "Speak Up!" cafe has become "La Cantina," serving Mexican food.  The heady days are over, and Russia is still grappling with the strange rite of passage involved in becoming a capitalist republic. "It's a miracle the Soviet Union disappeared peacefully," says Anatolyi Smelianskyi, rector of the Moscow Art Theater School.  "It was Gorbachev's main achievement. And then, Russians thought democracy would come for the best people, but it came for the worst people as well--all kinds of idiots." For many Russians, "Democracy means anarchy, anti-Semitism, lack of management, corruption, pornography, instability and crime," Smelianskyi says.  "In Russia, everything is abnormal.  Trivial and banal are good." Smelianskyi draws an insightful comparison between two changing giants.  China, he says, began reforming its economy first, and is only grudgingly moving toward political freedom.  Russia is doing just the opposite--there is political freedom, but economic reform is coming along more slowly. Russia's fragile new political system is highly dependent on whether Vladimir Putin and his administration will be able to impose some economic and political order while fostering prosperity and continued freedom.  In Russia's current situation, the central government is the only institution up to the job and no one matters more than Putin. "In the United States, it really doesn't matter all that much who is president--daily life continues pretty much the same whether there is a Republican or Democrat in the White House," says Smelianskyi.  "But in Russia, it is everything." For artists, writers, composers and playwrights, the 70-plus years of the Soviet era were, well, the best of times and the worst of times.  Some creative people committed suicide, so harsh was the hand of the Soviet government.  Say something out of line, and you were in jail.  There was little opportunity to do anything fresh, modern, or different.  Imagine Thomas Kinkaid was the only permissible form of painting, and you have some idea of the Soviet art scene. Nonetheless, some writers today are secretly unhappy with the disappearance of censorship.  That's because back in the bad old Soviet days, if a writer was censored or his book was banned, he was instantly a heavy hitter.  Smelianskyi recalls writers in despair because the government pretty well ignored their output, signaling to all that they were too minor to bother with--not in the same league as those who attracted governmental scrutiny. Now, no one censors writers.  The scribbler who was considered significant by the Soviet authorities may now be insignificant--merely one voice among hundreds clamoring for attention and book sales. But while cultural life in the Soviet era was circumscribed, middlebrow and some might even say senile, the Bolshoi flourished with huge state subsidies. So did the Kirov, now the Mariinsky.  There was marvelous opera and superb orchestras.  If they stayed on the straight and narrow, talented people did very, very well.  "Of corze, vee ballerinas luff our artisteek freedom, but vee vant our &#$@& government subsidies back NOW!"   (Early on, the Mariinsky was almost eliminated by the Soviets, though.  They thought ballet was strange, not "for the people."  But a Mariinsky director staged "Giselle" and brought in a huge audience of ordinary Russians to see it, along with the commissars.  The ordinary Russians loved it, so the commissars relented.  Sergei Kirov, by the way, was a Leningrad political leader and ally of Stalin.  The ballet company's name was changed from Mariinsky to Kirov in his honor.  Stalin later had him executed.  The ballet company is now back to its original name of Mariinsky.) There were 750 state-subsidized theaters across the Soviet Union.  They were intended to replace churches as centers for spiritual nourishment.  Lenin was Christ.  Cathedrals and local churches were turned into everything from community swimming pools to at least one "Museum of Atheism." Today, lavish government subsidies are gone.  There is still government support for the arts, but nothing like the old days.  The Bolshoi and the Mariinsky are learning about sponsorship--going to private business, or foundations, for funding.  These two great institutions never had to do fundraising before.  Now they are getting into it, big time.  They are becoming entrepreneurial, taking students from around the world, looking at ticket pricing structures, and how much experimental new work they can do as against the familiar classics that pack 'em in every time and boost the bottom line. In the case of the Bolshoi, it takes an enormous amount of money to keep the enterprise afloat.  Bolshoi means "big" in Russian, and this venerable ballet/theater enterprise employs 2,500 people, has its own newspaper, resort at the Black Sea and shops. Russians are well aware that they are no longer a superpower and they don't like it.  They are looking to a rejuvenated corps of artists to carry Russian prestige to the rest of the world--while back home Putin and his aides struggle to tame the wild capitalism that has taken over the economic life of the country. Flying from St. Petersburg to Frankfurt gave me sort of a capsule analogy of the contrast between today's Russia and the West.  Looking down at the landscape as the plane climbed, Russia looked shaggy, unkempt.  There was a huge, abandoned factory with shattered windows, then more fields and then endless, silent forests.  The next time I looked down, we were over Germany.  There were neatly outlined fields, disciplined forests, brisk traffic on well-kept autobahns.  The Lufthansa crew members were sleek, smiling, efficient, polished.  Everything was gleaming clean. Russia wants to get there.  It may, someday.  The Russians are a resourceful, smart and courageous people.  But it will be a long, long time before ingrained ways of doing things disappear.  There is real danger that the whole post-Soviet enterprise could still career into a new despotism. "Russia is in a Chekovian situation--a void.  We're uncertain about the future," says Smelianskyi. But he adds that he is cautiously optimistic. ©2003 by Charles M. McFadden. The McFadden caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The illustrations are from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA.

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