Once Pasha finished making a stack of blini, he said, “Come on, I’ll show you the renovation.” We went into the living room, where he proudly pointed out the cheery new wallpaper and curtains. The bedroom, too, had been transformed, with the bunk bed, old sofa, and refrigerator replaced by a double bed and a tidy sewing desk. But one odd decoration remained: a massive gray stuffed animal of an indeterminate species, which hung incongruously in the door leading to the bedroom. I remembered having been perplexed by this creature ten years earlier—was it a mouse? A cat? A bear?—and it was no less confusing for having apparently continued to hang there for a full decade.
Back in the kitchen, Pasha opened the vodka and poured shots for himself and Vika. For me, he offered a special nut-based liqueur that tasted vaguely of Amaretto. “Here’s to friendship!” he said, and we drank. “Have some salo,” Vika said, pushing the plate of pork fat toward me. This was a Russian delicacy, but I demurred. It would take a few more toasts before I’d be ready to devour a slab of pure gleaming fat.
Pasha told me he’d lost his job at the Drama Theater when the leadership there changed a few years back. He then took a job at a TV station, working as a camera operator, but after two years he decided it wasn’t for him. After that he drove a taxi for a while, and these days he cobbled together an income from a variety of jobs, working as a photographer, a driver, a DJ, an emcee, and occasionally pitching in at his son Misha’s company.
“Misha has his own company?” I asked. I’d met Misha only briefly in 2005, because for most of the time I was in Chita, he’d been in the hospital recovering from foot surgery. He was just 15 then, and so eager to meet David and me that he’d asked the doctors to let him leave the hospital early so he could come to the apartment for dinner on our last night in town.
Pasha told me that now-25-year-old Misha had started an events planning company called Avantazh. He was also married, and he and his wife were hoping to start a family soon. “You wouldn’t believe how serious young people are these days,” Pasha said. “They don’t drink, they don’t smoke—it’s not fashionable anymore. Although, Dasha does smoke,” he said with a shrug. “But mostly, they try to be healthy. They exercise, and watch what they eat.”
I had already noticed that everywhere I went, it seemed as if Russians were talking about how healthy, or not healthy, their food was. Terms like natural, organic, GMOs, and hormone-free were sprinkled into conversations, as people—especially young people—seemed fixated on their diets in a way I hadn’t seen here before. In my three days with Sasha, she’d cooked me six delicious meals made with organic produce from her parents’ garden, explaining each time how wholesome and nourishing everything was. And Vika was in on the movement too, making her living selling a product called Energy Diet, which billed itself as a “fast, helpful, safe food” for a “balanced diet.”
Was this shift toward a healthier lifestyle part of a natural cycle, or were young people particularly influenced by the choices of Vladimir Putin, who famously didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, and exercised vigorously (and frequently shirtlessly)? I wasn’t sure, but when I asked Pasha and Vika what they thought of Putin, they responded the same way the lighthouse keepers, Vasily and Valya, had: they loved him.
“I know Americans don’t really like Putin,” Pasha told me, “and that your government blames Russia for what’s happening in Ukraine. But really, America is behind it. Why is America funneling arms to Ukraine? Why is your government always stirring things up in faraway parts of the world?” I didn’t agree with his black-and-white assessment of Ukraine, but I didn’t have a good answer for his final question, either. It’s difficult to defend the notion of “American exceptionalism”—assuming I’d even want to—in a way that doesn’t sound ridiculously self-important. I’m neither an expert on Ukraine, nor am I as well versed in twenty-first-century international relations as I’d like to be. So, for purposes of this trip, I decided that it was smarter simply to listen to what Russians had to say, rather than leaping into arguments.
“The problem,” Vika interjected, “is that America doesn’t respect Russia. They think we’re backward—like we have bears wandering around in the streets here.”
I laughed. Really? This again? “You’re not the first person I’ve heard that from,” I told her.
Russians were obviously tired of not being taken seriously. The Soviet Union had been a superpower, respected and feared, but post-Soviet Russia was a weakened country that, particularly under the unpredictable Boris Yeltsin, struggled to be taken seriously on the world stage. Russian pride had taken a beating, and it was only in recent years that it had started to recover.
Part of Putin’s appeal to Russians was, clearly, that he was making their country matter again. His actions, words, and very bearing conveyed the message that Russia was strong, and his provocative political moves guaranteed that the rest of the world had to pay attention. The effect Putin had on Russians’ sense of pride reminded me of the effect Ronald Reagan had on America in the early 1980s: Reagan followed the pervasive national malaise of the Carter era with a relentless message that the USA could be great again. Similarly, Putin followed the economic turmoil and drunken escapades of Boris Yeltsin with an unyielding message of Russian unity and strength. He rekindled the Russians’ pride in themselves; it wasn’t surprising people loved him for it.
In fact, they loved him enough that his approval ratings were still sky-high, even in the midst of the current economic turmoil. Western observers often questioned whether polls in Russia reflected public opinion or were fixed; in my admittedly small sample size, I was finding that yes, people truly did love Putin, even as they were very worried about the state of the nation.
“The ruble krizis is creating hardship for everyone,” Pasha told me. “Everyone has to take out loans at some point, and 22 percent interest is about the best rate you can get.” This tracked with what I’d heard in conversations with people in Vladivostok and Birobidzhan: credit cards and loans were available, but the interest rates ranged from 22 percent to 40-plus. I’d heard one horror story about a man who’d bought a new Mercedes for his wife, taking out a dollar-based loan. When the ruble plummeted over the next 15 months to half its value, he suddenly owed twice as much money. Imagine buying a $40,000 car, then having to cough up $80,000 to pay it off. This was the type of scenario many Russians faced upon the collapse of the ruble.
Pasha and Vika were fortunate in that they owned their apartment and didn’t require much money to live. Pasha’s van, which he still used commercially as a driver, was a beat-up relic with a cracked windshield, but it ran. And the money he and Vika earned, through their combination of odd jobs and sales, was enough to live on. “We do fine,” Pasha said. “And I enjoy my work.”
“Do you want to see what one of my other jobs is?” he asked. He brought me into the living room, to his computer. “Wait… wait,” he said, clicking through a series of desktop folders. I took the opportunity to glance again at the indeterminate gray animal hanging in the bedroom door; what was that thing? “OK!” he finally exclaimed. “Have a look.”
On the screen was a black-and-white photo of a goateed Vladimir Lenin, wearing a newsboy cap, with one eyebrow quizzically cocked. The quality of the photo was unusually sharp, and as I peered closer, I heard Pasha snickering quietly. Wait… was this… Pasha?