Alcoholism In Russia
June 24, 2008
Great video on the culture and history of alcoholism in Russia on CBSNews.com.
I wish it talked more about the impact on children though.
Click the link above or the embedded video below to watch.
I didn’t write much about the alcoholism I observed in Yaroslavl, but I saw plenty. I suppose this is as good a place as any to jot down a few quick memories:
* Public drunkenness, from what I could tell, was officially overlooked. However, the drunks as a whole seemed to hold their liquor pretty well. While public drunkenness was common, I didn’t see violent or sick or really menacing drunks. To tell you the truth, almost all of the ones I saw seemed pretty happy.
* Our group was warned at orientation not to drink with Russian strangers, especially without a designated teetotaler. The vodka in Russia is incredibly potent, and our organization’s staff had been alarmed after a few previous volunteers passed out in a Yaroslavl bar and were kindly carried (literally!) back to the hotel by amused locals who’d drunk them under the table. So the staff wisely made the rule — don’t drink with Russian strangers! This rule was absolutely no problem for the group I was with, because as it turned out, we all were total lightweights without much interest in drinking. I think we were in Yaroslav for a good three weeks before we finally gathered in the hotel bar to experience our first shots of Russian vodka. After one or two shots, we unanimously agreed that we’d had enough and left!
* Near the center of town is the main trolley stop, a big circular track (not coincidentally, the trolleys stop LITERALLY at the front steps of a historic church — an enduring reminder of the Soviets’ contempt for any religious institution or its symbols). Commuters congregate around this circle as they wait for their trolleys. One night, I was puzzled to find an SUV (SUVs themselves are rarities) parked dead in the center of the waiting area, just a few yards from the church steps — it was like finding an SUV parked on a subway platform. When the trolley pulled into the circle, it didn’t immediately stop at the church steps where commuters were waiting … it stopped at the SUV! Four jolly drunken men descended from the trolley carrying a passed-out, dead drunk buddy. The passed-out guy was limp as a rag — each buddy was carrying a different limb (one had his left arm, one had his right arm, etc.). The trolley patiently waited as the men packed their buddy into the SUV and zoomed away. Then the trolley rolled up a few feet to the church steps for its next load of passengers. Another day at the office, I guess. Whether the SUV was parked on the trolley platform by special permission, or whether that’s the unofficial drop-off spot for passed-out passengers, I have no idea. I just remember that the other commuters waiting on the platform seemed as bewildered as I was, and the whole episode was uncomfortably bizarre.
– You hear a lot about cheap Russian vodka, but beer’s really popular too. You do NOT hear about laws regarding open containers, drunken driving laws, public drunkenness, etc. I’m pretty sure they have some version of them — they just don’t enforce them.
– The only acceptable way to drink Russian vodka, I’m told: a quick, icy cold shot, straight.
– Alchohol use escalated dramatically during Glasnost when the Russian economy tanked. The translators said that, at one time, the government made alcohol much more difficult to obtain, but people just brewed their own, and as a result, many were poisoned and died, so the restrictions were abandoned. The general consensus of the people and the government seems to be that, despite the incredible problems resulting from rampant alcoholism, there’s really no alternative to its widespread and affordable availability. They feel very strongly that it’s a lesser evil than the inevitable home brewing that will result from restricted from availability. Apparently, the intricacies of home distillaries are extremely common knowledge among Russians. (Interesting but unrelated aside: apparently, the art of mushroom picking is even more common among Russians than home brewing skills. The Russians are crazy about mushrooms, and from a young age, they all seem to learn how to pick good ones and identify the poisonous ones. “We were out picking mushrooms,” they’ll say, the way Americans might say, “I spent the day at the lake.” Whenever we told a Russian person that we didn’t know how to pick mushrooms, they’d look at us like we were idiots.)
American Media In Russia
June 11, 2008
Jay Perkins, one of my dearest mentors and one of my journalism professors during my college days, asked me to write about my observations of American media in Russia for the journalism school’s alumni newsletter. I’m re-publishing here just because (see below).
You can check out Jay’s awesome journalism Web site here.
American Media In Russia
I never thought of American media as one of our nation’s major exports until earlier this year, when I spent three months working in orphanages in the Russian city of Yaroslavl. As I tried to immerse myself in this fascinating, foreign culture, I was stunned to find that no matter where I went in this relatively obscure city, I couldn’t escape the profound influence of American media. The latest releases by Justin Timberlake and The Pussycat Dolls boom from the city’s restaurants and Internet cafes. Brad Pitt and Sandra Bullock star in movies at the local cinema. Supermarket shelves are lined with videocassettes featuring Hollywood’s best and worst (DVDs haven’t become Russian staples yet.).
Here are two moments I’ll never forget:
▪ At a center where my group volunteered to work with neglected teens, two 13-year-old boys wrote and performed a play in our honor. Although the play was in Russian, we understood exactly what was happening, because it was so laced with American culture and media influence (Steven Spielberg was actually a character in it!). We were utterly enchanted, until one of the boys – playing an elderly grandmother – delivered a line that included a four-letter English expletive that curled the hair of every English-speaking audience member. Except for our translator (who turned white), the Russians had no idea that the dialogue included a major English curse word. Because they hear it in our movies so frequently, they figured the word is part of our common vernacular.
▪ At one orphanage, I joined a group of girls ages 6-16 who were working on a jigsaw puzzle while watching television in their common room. My back was to the television, and I ignored it (after all, I couldn’t understand the Russian dialogue), but the girls were enjoying the program. Then, behind me, I hear: “Missus Solis! Missus Solis!” I whipped my head around, and sure enough, these kids are watching Desperate Housewives – hardly after-school fare in American homes. It was a surreal moment: “Am I really watching Desperate Housewives at 5 in the afternoon with a group of Russian orphans?”
My Russian friend Nadia lamented to me that the hottest program among kids at her 8-year-old daughter’s school is a Russian copycat of Married With Children. Another friend, Nina, who works with at-risk kids in Yaroslavl, believes American-style television is responsible for a corresponding increase in violence that she’s observed among kids since glasnost, when American media became more mainstream in Russian culture. Both were surprised when I observed that their concerns about American media are shared by many Americans.
My encounters with the media-generated image that Russians have of Americans were sometimes startling. The orphans were irreversibly convinced that our sophisticated, English-speaking, translators were Americans (all were Yaroslavl locals). A handful of cab drivers and restaurants wouldn’t serve us because we were Americans; a few other cab drivers tried to charge us $50 a mile because “all Americans are rich.”
When we export our pop culture, we also export a pop image of ourselves. Language is easy to translate, but nuance, innuendo, satire and sarcasm aren’t. Look at American media, and you’ll start to understand how the world sees Americans.
On a completely unrelated note, I came across this interesting article about the first day on the job for a Yaroslavl policeman. I thought it was really enlightening.
