Russia is so much in the news and is such a complicated country, I thought this book would be an interesting read: a Norwegian writer with a interest in the former Soviet Union wrote this book with anecdotes, history and commentary as she traveled through the numerous countries that share a border with modern Russia. It was written two years before the current conflict in the Ukraine.
I have always had an interest in Russian history and having digested a fair amount of it, mostly from the perspectives to be found in the twentieth century, I have developed a doctor’s point of view applied to this history: Russian culture suffers from a kind of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with all the attendant symptoms: paranoia, irritability, aggressiveness, intense distress at real or symbolic reminders of the trauma, and so on. I have great respect for the sacrifices people from the USSR gave in the service of defeating Naziism. Despite cold war rhetoric, I think as bad as Stalin’s Russia was, it was a lesser evil than Nazism. As most of us, I have concern about the current state of Russian society and how that ripples out to the rest of the world. I have a concern about the state of our own culture as well — and Mr. Putin would approve; having watched him interviewed years ago, he was quite impressive making points for himself and against our national policies. The author does not use the word, but the term, “sclerotic” can be applied to much that she observes in the social infrastructure, attitudes, and governmental processes in the countries that once constituting the USSR and which carry forward into Russia itself. So what is the future for Russia, above and beyond our current focus on the war in Ukraine?
Her voyage starts with a voyage at sea in the Arctic bordering the north shore of Siberia from the Pacific to Murmansk, tucked up against Scandinavia. She spends four weeks on a Russian Ice-breaker seeing treeless shorelines and dilapidated infrastructures no longer in use since the collapse of the USSR. Shorelines full of rusting oil barrels leaking into the sea, day after day make an impression—it is a nice metaphor for how I think of Russia in general. With the future in mind, she notes the unmistakeable evidence that the ice fields in the Arctic are retreating and soon, a Europe to Asia transit by this route will be not only viable, but profitable for all who use it. It will be controlled by Russia. Once more, the continental shelf holds huge oil fields, hard to exploit up to this point. They will be exploited in a future minus sea ice. The notion that Russians will ride roughshod over any concerns of global warming prevention is apparent as there are many opportunities coming forward in a warmer world for this country whose resources have been bound up in the cold for so long. Were I a Russian living in Russia, I suspect I would be comfortable with global warming.
On that happy note, she becomes a tourist in North Korea. Watching trials of Westerners in N. Korea, I have asked for years, “Who in their right mind would want to be a tourist in N. Korea?” Underground journalists like her are one possibility but in addition, she points out that there is a tourist ethos for a rare group that enjoys checking that specific box. What could go wrong? Her stories make clear that it is an ordeal and requires accommodating a dogmatic militant society. No new news there……What was new information for me was the initiation in 1965 of the results of methodical research done on the population of North Korea. Based on that research, there was an establishment of songbun, three categories of castes based on the political performance of ones family. The highest cast is the loyal class—the wavering class is in the middle and lastly, the hostile class. There are fifty subcategories. As an individual, your songbun assignment is based on your father’s line ie your caste is inherited by the political behaviors of your male antecedents. This is the basis for your access to housing, food, schooling, and employment. Your family and its future can be demoted……I now feel even worse about North Korea than I did before reading this book, something I would not have thought possible.
Northern China is pretty desolate by Chinese definitions; there are only 40 million Chinese along the Siberian border. The author claims Russian Siberia, a vast land, has only 3 million Russians. There is a lot of fallow land in Siberia because life there is hard. It has long been a natural resource just begging for a conflict and to be more fully developed. The history lessons are long with fluctuating fortunes but the writer’s bottom line assessment in this modern world is that for the foreseeable future, the Russians need the Chinese way more than the Chinese need the Russians. Time will tell what comes of this border.
Mongolia (formerly Outer Mongolia). My daughter once told me that she would love to move to Mongolia after watching a PBS show on that country. When asked why, her response was that she could have a horse if we lived there. That is pretty much the story of Mongolia’s history though its modern path given its isolation and being sandwiched between China and Russia is complicated. The capital city, Ulan Bator is crowded and disorganized and polluted without enough jobs to go around.
Xinjiang, China. This is the homeland of the Uighur’s, a Turkish Islamic population. In 1949, this desolate area found only 6% of the population to be of Han Chinese background. The current percentage is 40% and the cultural tensions of such change have been dramatic. The need for the Central government to have absolute control has produced great hardship on this rural culture. Some the the tension finds roots in history when the surrounding parts of the Soviet Union gave nominal independence to similar ethnic groups (Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan) and the Uyghurs thought the Chinese, being Communists in the Russian model, would follow suit. In fact, this territory in the mid twentieth century was under Russian control. But the Chinese way is clearly not the Russian way. One reason is the silk road project which has seen billions of dollars invested in this part of China and beyond to build a stable highway system from West China to the Middle East. The author reports that as of her writing this book (published in 2020) there were said to be a million Uighars in re-education camps. She could only compare the presence of armed guards and police on the streets here with that of North Korea.
Kazakhstan: last of the nominally independent nations under the USSR to declare independence in 1991, the new government was run by a Soviet appointee—an engineer by training—who steered the government as an enlightened autocrat using the petroleum industry as his bank. The social legacy in this country is complicated. The largest of all of Stalin’s concentration camps was here: KarLag. Russia assumed control of much of what is now Kazakhstan in the 1800’s and under Khrushchev encouraged migration of Russians to the “Virgin Lands” in the northern part of Kazakhstan where Russians became a majority. Like Montana during our nation’s railroad expansion, the land was not suitable for what was advertised (I have seen advertising from the late 1800’s suggesting to farmers that Montana was a Garden of Eden). Since then, demographics find the Russian population dwindling—-fewer kids, no new Russian immigrants. Stalin however forced small nations to immigrate before and during the world war for reasons of state security. Thousands of Germans, Tartars, Poles, Koreans, Greeks and Bulgarians were among many who were forced to live there. Many went home after Stalin died but many stayed and made their lives there; diversity is real in Kazakstan.
Azerbaijan and Armenia: Decayed infrastructure and sclerotic social norms are as advertised while she (the author) tries to obtain visas and travel on a schedule. She wants to see Nagorno Karabakh, the source of armed conflict between these two countries. Of note, 150,000 people live in this contested land and only 50,000 live in the capital. Her description of the travel and people’s stories are as you would expect, depressing. Ethnic conflict and ethnic cleansing remain with us for the foreseeable future.
She moves on to Georgia. At passport control, the following conversation ensues: “The way Putin treats us is shameful particularly when he grew up in Georgia….” (Putin grew up in Leningrad) “….It is true that his mother went back to Leningrad, but little Vlad stayed with his aunt. I have even seen his Georgian teacher interviewed on television….” And then, “And Putin is dead, by the way,” a businessman adds. “Yes everyone knows that. The man Putin died of cancer many years ago. The person who says he is Putin now is his lookalike. The real Putin could speak fluent German…he lived in the DDR (East Germany) for many years. The lookalike always has to use an interpreter when he speaks with Angela Merkel….”
The author has visited Georgia before and notes that it is where the happiest people on earth should be but for the unfortunate position of their country being between Russia, Turkey, and Iran. The history of this mountainous country on the Black Sea is a pumped up Hatfield-McCoys story. There are subunits of ethnic people not feeling themselves to be part of the whole: South Ossetia and Abkhazia, for example. Georgia struggled after the fall of the USSR and in the nineties was thought to be one of the most corrupt countries in the world. The president attempted reform and started by firing the police—throughout the nation— and then hiring police on a living wage. Internationally, he saw the future as being one with Western Europe and so, attempted to consolidate the borders and ethnic enclaves—some of whom were not interested. This led to war with Russia who saw the possibility of EU and NATO membership as threatening. Some Western leaders agreed that Georgia was eligible to be in NATO over time but offered no guarantees until that happened. In 2008, Russia invaded and the Georgians did not do well. South Ossetia and Abkhazia became “sovereign” and Putin used this status as analogous to the West acknowledging Kosovo as independent from Serbia after an armed intervention supported by the West. He pays attention, that Putin!
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Like Yugoslavia, the wars in this part of the world have a heavy emphasis on ethnic cleansing. The author asks a cabbie why so many women wear black on the streets of the capital of Abkhazia; his answer was, “They wear their sorrow.”
Of note, as I learned about the age of exploration, the conquest of the Americas by Western powers, and subsequently, expansion of European influence into Asia and Africa, little was ever taught about the Russians who very much modeled their behavior and status after these successes. They were however, without much access to the sea and by virtue of that, all the colonies formed by the British, Spanish, French, and Portuguese involved ocean travel while the Russians colonized central Asia and the Caucasus. The also colonized Ukraine in the same timeframe as when the United States formed up as a nation. The people colonized by western powers have voiced their anger and frustration with this history just as they are tied to the very European cultures they resent. So it is with Russia’s former colonies.
Ukraine: Pre war (2020). She visits Donetsk in Eastern Ukraine and which had declared its independence while forming an alliance with Russia—and which is described as a war zone —heavily militarized with Russian nationals one of whom she relates, married a local woman. The conversation quickly settled on the author’s native Norway being full of homosexuals and of the non-existence of the Ukraine as a proper country.
Ukraine was a bread basket for the Soviet Union and Stalin imposed "scientifically” based agricultural principles: collective farming —laying down quotas that went up each year in the 1930’s. The quotas could not be attained and armed officials took all that was produced. A famine in the Ukraine ensued with millions dead.
When Russian control over the Ukraine became permanent, it was referred to by Russians as “little Russia,” which reflects a paternalistic and colonial attitude. The Ukrainian language was forbidden, especially in its written form. As of 2020, 17 percent of the population was ethnic Russian and most live in the East, the site of current fighting. One third of Ukranians speak Russian as their first language. The author predicted war with Russia in 2020 as Putin had already demonstrated his willingness to put Little Russia in its place.
The author was as noted, a tourist in N. Korea—an unusual destination, so while in Ukraine, it was logical for her to visit Chernobyl. She met enthusiastic tourists anxious to check that box on the destination column. Given the abrupt evacuation, the town of Pripyat is a time capsule of the Soviet era circa 1986. A small number of former residents returned to, “the zone,” and she interviewed an elderly woman in her seventies who asserted she can feel the radiation around her and that it is not dangerous to her; in fact, her friends who evacuated have had more deaths and health problems than those who stayed…..radiation poisoning, like Covid is over rated!
Belarus: again, stark images that reflect what to us (in the West) seem so dysfunctional are painted in the narrative time and time again. A personal interest by the writer was the home town of Marc Chagall, the last of the first generation of artistic modernists. He was Jewish, illegally found work in St. Petersberg (forbidden to Jews in Czarist Russia), and made his way to France where he established his reputation. He returned to his home town to marry the girl next door, and was trapped by first, World War One and then, the Bolshevik revolution.
A revolution in Belarus is unlikely as after the last presidential election, the opposition candidates were all jailed. In fact, one the them, (Sannikov) thinks that Putin has learned much from the current dictator, Lukashenko having been in power longer than Putin. Nonetheless, Sanikov thinks it obvious that Putin believes Belarus is in fact part of Russia and acts accordingly.
Lithuania: I usually think of Poland as a country whose borders and control changed many times. So too, Lithuania which at one point stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Once WWII was over, what had once been a heterogenous city (the capital, Vilnius) became truly Lithuanian: all the Jews were murdered during the war and Stalin ordered all the Poles back to Poland which for much of modern history had been linked to Lithuania and its capital. Lithuania was hostile to Russians after the war and resisted their occupation; to this day, not many Russians live in Lithuania.
Latvia was heavily industrialized by the Russians and this focus faded as a going concern after the fall of the USSR. The population fell from 2.6 million people in 1991 to 2 million people in 2016. She hears Russian spoken throughout Daugavpils, a border city. She suggests it is a miniature Russian society stranded in the EU. Russians immigrated post war for jobs in Latvia and Estonia; once truly independent 25% of the population remains ethnic Russian and over half don’t have passports for failing to pass citizenship tests in the Lithuanian language.
She interviews a veteran of WWII; he notes that having been conquered by Russians, Poles, Swedes, and now Germans, they considered the Germans the lesser of the evils. The Veteran it turned out had fought for the Germans against the Russians. After 1991, he has been elected to Parliament twice; he remains a fascist trying to get the Swastika legalized and to get controls over the Russians who live in Latvia; he is angry that entry to the EU required that the government agree to allow ethnic Russians to continue living in Latvia. He laments both this action and the fact that EU membership finds young and intelligent Latvians aspiring for a better life leaving and working elsewhere.
Estonia: The effort to declare independence under Gorbachev was a non violent protest that involved two million people holding hands along the length of all three Baltic countries who repeated, “We want freedom” in their native languages. This was recorded by the Western press. Like Latvia, a quarter of the population is ethnic Russian, many without formal citizenship. She writes of “monument” wars after the entry into the EU: an anti soviet statue was made of a man wearing an SS uniform and a person died trying to prevent its being taken down. Likewise, a statue celebrating those who fought with the Soviets has been vandalized and moving it was in the face of a resisting mob. She points out the power of the colonizers has been lost and now the formerly colonized are re writing their history—a common story around the border of Russia.
Finland has a long border between Sweden and Russia. Finland as a state is a relatively new concept that crystalized at the end of World War I when the Bolsheviks helped foster a revolution that was suppressed by a former Russian general, a man born within the borders of modern Finland, General Mannerheim. German troops were also used to support the conservatives in this war. Once Finland was recognized as a country, Manerheim was pressured to retire only to be brought back in the thirties as World War II was approaching. He had always assumed a future war with Russia and was tasked with modernizing and developing a Finnish army. He did not expect much from his own army but when the Russians invaded with a large force, they failed much as they have in the Ukraine and for the same reasons. The war ended with a treaty that was in the Soviet’s favor but the war’s casualties were overwhelmingly on the Russian side. World War II found the Finns accepting aid from Germany fearing the Russians more; they would invade Russia a few days after the German invasion. After Stalingrad, it became clear the Russians were going to be back and this was evidenced in 1944 when Helsinki was bombed. Again, there was loss of territory and reparations to the Russians made. All German soldiers were sent away. Despite this, the Finnish infrastructure was largely intact; the ability, willingness, and track record to fighting Russia found the Soviets unwilling to pursue the same plan that worked in Eastern Europe and the Baltic Republics.
The author visited the city Vyborg a former highlight of Finnish culture, now in Russia and reflected on how poor and run down it seemed; had Stalin been more aggressive, she reflects, all of Finland could look like this…..As things stand, Finland is now considered one of the more successful countries in the world.
Conclusion: Russia has affected millions of people and the 14 current countries on its periphery for centuries; its economy following the fall of the USSR was failing and population shrinking. Despite this, the modern Russian state is associated with every greater assertion of its power. She comments on the diversity of people and societies in the now-independent countries as well as the remaining diversity within its own borders. She notes that Russia has 50% the population of the former Soviet Union.
She ends the narrative on a happy note,
describing a Kayaking trip with her father along the Russian/Nowegian border up to the Barents Sea.
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