RUSSIA: Breakfast at the Cemetery
An opera critic up the Volga
Astrakhan has its own character. For a start, it is downriver from Volgograd, aka Stalingrad, and is therefore amongst the few towns in European Russia that wasn’t shredded during the Great Patriotic War. The consequence is that all the horrible modern khruschëva flats are on the outskirts, and the centre consists of the 17th century white-walled Kremlin with its towers and cathedrals, and the extensive, red-brick, two- or three-story nineteenth century merchant’s town which indicates its pre-Revolutionary prosperity. Amongst the most notable buildings indeed is the splendid electricity plant of 1905 on the Volga embankment, and still in use (though possibly its equipment may have been modernised during the last century).
The prosperity came from trade – guarding the Volga delta and on the East-West trade routes – and this has meant that the city has always been an ethnic melting-pot since its official foundation in 1558. Presently the city records 140 different nationalities amongst its 400,000 inhabitants – including Kazakhs, Mordovans, Germans, Chechens, Turkmenis, Jews and Tatars – and twenty-three different religious confessions. Indeed we might learn a trick or two from the Astrakhantsi on the art of living together, as they seem to be largely free from the ethnic mistrust which we in ‘multi-cultural’ Britain are encouraged to accept as a component of everyday life. On my first visit, a few years ago, my counterpart, a Muslim, strolled with me out of curiosity to visit the synagogue, and on meeting there by chance, and chatting with, the head of the Jewish community, we all went together to visit the mosque.
Such laudable attitudes are however as likely to stem from eighty years of communism as from ten years of democracy. As elsewhere in Russia, those most actively propagating democracy today were as actively supporting communism fifteen years ago, so it is little surprise that within today’s nominally democratic framework, the attitudes and structures of the old regime are re-asserting themselves. There is, for example, no longer a Komsomol (Communist youth movement) – but there is in Astrakhan an ‘Organization for Patriotic, Constitutional and Physical Youth Development’ carrying out the same activities (minus political indoctrination, to be sure) run by the same people and 100% subsidized by the City Council. The highly efficient Mayor of the city, (who was also Mayor in the last years of Communism), seems to have a skill reminiscent of the early Blair in reconciling traditional factions, such as the Veterans’ Associations and the street committees, with Thatcherite economic drives to privatisation and housing reform. It’s democracy, Jim, but not quite as we know it.
The real and necessary changes will come, it has been piously intoned since 1991, when Russia develops a middle class. This entirely Tory approach has been propounded not only by the World Bank but by the European Union and even by DFID under Clare Short (although it has cunningly reworded this objective as ‘poverty reduction’). All of them have promoted various development aid schemes, often targeted at the promotion of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME), to encourage the nativity of this redeeming social phenomenon, to very little visible result. The economy has stayed firmly in the hands of the big boys and, if some of the larger corporations have developed ‘company men’ who might correspond to the middle class in the West, there has been until recently very little diffusion into their surrounding society.
Take for example the little town of Maloyaroslavets, about 100 miles south of Moscow. Ten years ago, the giant Gazprom decided to invest heavily in the town, with its advantageous location on the road and railway network. Before that, nothing much had occurred in Maloyaroslavets since it changed hands eight times in as many days during Napoleon’s retreat of 1812. Soon it had three or four brand-new factories and a sparkling new suburb to house the Gazprom executives and technologists running them. The new suburb, Maklin, also boasts a sensationally equipped school, one of the best I have seen anywhere in the world, all supplied with Gazprom investment of course. But the school is about the only facility that Maklin shares with the rest of the town. The new factories might have given opportunities to local SME – but in fact they are serviced by other Gazprom subsidiaries. Gazprom people don’t seem to participate much in the political life of the town – they look to Moscow for their shopping and recreation. Now that Gazprom is being broken up, and its component parts are being given tax exemptions to make them attractive to buyers, local tax revenue from the Gazprom subsidiaries has plummeted and the town as a whole faces financial turmoil. Standing in the road dividing Maklin from the old town, an inhabitant of the latter ruefully joked to me ‘this side Russia – that side Europe’. Similarly in Astrakhan, the few modern or fully refurbished buildings belong to, or are financed by, Lukoil or Gazprom – the ‘states within the state’.
And yet there are unmistakable signs of something changing, inevitably most visible in Moscow. For example, over the past eighteen months a new feature has appeared all over the capital – coffee shops. Not Starbucks – but indigenous variations on the theme, with the requisite vast repertoire of coffee types and pleasantly edible cakes and food; and the clientele are of course Russians, as there are few tourists around these days. These cafés seem busy all the time – some of them are open 24 hours – and I would say they are the place to spot the emergent middle classes (as opposed to the para-criminal noviye russkiye); twenties to thirties, able to spend the equivalent of three or four dollars on a snack, the women confident enough to spend time there with each other without anyone assuming they are on the game. This is quite a change in social mores; and it’s not only happening in Moscow. Amazingly, whilst strolling through Astrakhan one evening, I found a local equivalent – admittedly, at 50% of the prices and the quality of Moscow, but smart, friendly and thriving. This is a real revolution, of the sort we went though in England in the early sixties.
But there is still a long way to go. After our first day in Astrakhan, intense with introductions, speeches, and seminars, we sat down with the Mayor and his entourage to the traditional spread; cold zakuski of enormous variety – including, inevitably, Caspian caviar; the occasional arrival of an equal variety of hot dishes – including, inevitably, Caspian sturgeon; and the whole extensively irrigated with Georgian wine, Russian shampanskoye and litres of the local vodka.
Around the twentieth toast, the Deputy Mayor for the Leninsky district, a Muslim, (but all the same an enthusiastic participant in the drinking), mentioned that he would not be around next morning, as he would be attending the mosque for the festival of Kurban Bairam. When we politely asked whether we could accompany him, the devastating reply was ‘Certainly, if you are willing to get up at six in the morning’. We could hardly do other than express our eager desire; noblesse oblige when you are a visiting Western ‘expert’.
So three of us (myself, a Dane and a Russian) stood on the hotel steps awaiting the Deputy Mayor’s car as day broke across the Volga before us. Unfortunately, our hopes of catching some sleep in the preceding hours had been dashed by continual squalling and shouting in the hotel’s corridors – the Swedish engineers working on the oil pipe-line had come to town, attracting a feeding frenzy of city’s available lady companions.
The city’s noble Ak-Myachet’ or White Mosque, built in 1810, is under restoration; our destination proved to be a modern detached house in a distant suburb, which had been donated and converted by a member of the congregation in memory of his father. It was already crowded when we arrived and the faces of a good many of the city’s 140 nationalities were discernible. Ninety minutes of prayers in Arabic, whilst seated cross-legged, was for me not quite as excruciating an endurance test as it might have been, as every few minutes there occurred some response, reading or action recalling something similar or parallel in the synagogue service with which I am familiar. At the close of prayers, the Deputy Mayor made a speech of the type one might be unlikely to hear at Finsbury Park, commending the congregation for being such exemplary citizens, and presenting them with a splendid carpet on behalf of the Mayor and administration.
Yawning and stretching after this experience, we were expecting a lift back into town; but the DM had other plans for us. On this day it was traditional to visit the cemetery to pay one’s respect to one’s ancestors. A further lengthy ride took us to the Muslim cemetery, thought by many to be older than the city itself, where we were greeted by a short, beaming character whom the DM introduced to us as the cemetery manager - ‘I call him the Mayor of the Cemetery, but he has a much better job than mine, as his constituents never complain’.
The Mayor of the Cemetery had been expecting us and had laid on an extensive breakfast in his book-lined office – tea, bread, cakes, some delicious mutton pies which he told us were traditional for the festival, and, inevitably, several bottles of vodka which we once again demolished in a series of toasts; a truly Russian start to the day. Before we left, we were invited to inspect, in a shed adjacent to the office, the two sheep (one belonging to each Mayor) which were to be slaughtered following the festival, no doubt to be converted into shashlik or further pies.
As I attempted to gather my sozzled wits on the journey back to town in preparation for the day’s detailed schedule, it seemed that my breakfast in the cemetery must have some profound metaphorical implication – but if so, I still haven’t quite worked it out.
Allen Buchler, March 18, 2003 12:19 PM