re: What is Russia like today?

Stray thoughts

Moscow is incredibly clean. There’s no litter, anywhere. People are also very polite, and very generous. I was struck by the way even a shop owner would treat you like a guest in their home.

The food is wonderful.

The police don’t leave their sirens blaring. They turn them on, briefly, to clear traffic. And then shut them down.

You do see a disparity in wealth.

The inner ring of Moscow is a different world from the outer rings, old and beautiful buildings, and so much more money.

The GUM shopping center makes me think of Galleries Lafayette in Paris.

The security presence was muted. I hardly saw anyone around the Kremlin for example. I have a memory of one truck come through the gate, with three soldiers sitting in the back.

Everyone was very relaxed.

When I was there it was election week and I did see a handful special police in riot gear, waiting to fight demonstrators (according to my girlfriend.)

They were standing around a statue of Pushkin, but it was 01:00, and there wasn’t a soul in sight, so either it was overkill, or they expected young men to show up from bars eventually. I didn’t feel any tension though. It was odd.

Moscow is an incredibly safe city. You could feel it.

It’s also beautiful, between the parks, the Moscow river, which winds through the city, and the center ring, with old the old Tsarist era buildings.

When you leave the city, it gets rural very quickly. And it gets much less developed.

There’s a massive concentration of wealth and investment in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The countryside is quite poor.

Corruption also gets worse the further you get from the big cities. One of my friends had a small but successful technology startup in Tatarstan. The mayor of his small town told him, either you sell your company to me, or I’ll take it.

He sold it for a fraction of its value.

His sorry reminded me of what you read in 19th century Russian fiction.

I suspect Russia is probably what it was 300 years ago. With a veneer of modernity applied on top. Society hasn’t changed much though.

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Russia made me homesick for the America of my childhood. I was struck by the way people reminded me of how we used to be.

One of my mentors in school was an ex Soviet diplomat. I remember that he said once that we were similar.

There are differences though. The Russians have a consideration for other people that we don’t have. I won’t say they’re communal, like the Japanese or Chinese, they’re not, but the respect and recognition of other people is very different.

I was always treated as a person, and that was very important to the Russians who were interacting with me.