On Contracts, Pronunciations and Flu

Today I stayed at home to cure my lethal flu and to work on my paper about Danube navigation law, but as the flu seems to be incurable and, consequently, I don’t have the brains to make up witty phrases on navigable channels and pilotage, I decided to post here.
I was asked to write something about the university where I study law. We have both international and Russian subjects and although I’m not sure I’ll ever really use my knowledge of Russian criminal procedure, it’s quite interesting. What I’ve decided to write about is not directly connected with my studies – more with the Scyllas and Charybdises of making deals in Russia.

The word договор is translated as contract, but the idea behind a договор and a contract are not at all the same. Of course, the textbook definition of a договор is very similar to the one of a contract – a binding agreement between two or more parties for performing, or refraining from performing, some specified acts in exchange for lawful consideration, blah-blah. But as soon as you quit the lecture hall, you get the feeling that the post-Soviet understanding of a contract goes like this – a piece of paper required by some stupid law, signed by both parties then forgotten for good.

Perestroika Lost

A truly moving piece in the New York Times by Mikhail Gorbachev, written for the anniversary of the Perestroika. Gorbachev is a widely hated personality in Russia and he seems to be fully aware of this, the article is overloaded with remarks of self-defense. At the same time, he boldly comments on how badly Russia needs a functional civil society in order to modernize its economy and reach a higher level of development. Pity he's a lone voice, and also pity that most probably this act will turn out counter productive as well, for not only did he, "the failed modernizer" dare criticize the course of politics in his country, but he also did so in the New York Times. (Which one of my teachers referred to as  a "tabloid" recently.)

There's only one point I didn't quite agree with: he says the biggest mistake they made during Perestroika is that they failed to modernize the communist party in time. In my opinion the biggest mistake was that they didn't follow the Word Bank's recommendations but liberalized prices rather than introducing and executing privatization first. This way they created a situation of complete deficit in products and skyrocketing inflation.  They should have created a clear and workable structure for the economy, and only then introduce new measures.
This is partly why the legacy of the transition has turned out as it has, because people remember only the chaos and the empty shelves, not much more. I've heard it a thousand times - during the communist era they had seen shortage in most products, but nothing quite similar to what they experienced under Gorbachev. The Russian public lost faith in Gorbachev the very first moment, which provides a powerful argument for defendants of the present regime until this day.

The Dorm at Tyepli Stan

Now that I’ve moved to a third dorm here, it made me think about the previous ones. It's funny how universities here are so international, but not Valencia or Amsterdam-like international. It looks like Moscow is a different hub. During the two and a half years I've spent in Russia, I've lived together with people from at least ten different places in Africa, Australia and mostly Asia.

I moved in the dorm I've just left when I got transferred from the Peoples' Friendship University to MGIMO in September 2008.

At first I hated it, and I was scared to death by my roommate. She was a very traditional girl from Dushanbe, Tajikistan, a prude and a bore. The other room was shared by two Kirgiz girls, and a Mongolian spending her senior year at MGIMO. She hated everyone except me for some reason. She desperately wanted to leave Moscow for Tokyo where she was planning to get a masters degree at the United Nations University.

Russian (TV)Reality

When you start a battle against stereotypes on Russia, you feel like Saint George fighting a several-headed dragon, a righter of wrongs in shining armure ready to slash, cut, dismember all the evil and icky heads of the beast. However, sometimes your pleasant daydream of a world free of prejudice gets shattered by a rude call from reality: victims of stereotypes aren't always victims, and all stereotypes aren't always that far from the truth, unfortunately.

Comrades, we might have lost this battle, but the war isn't over. Remember that there are still out there clichés, platitudes and received ideas on Russians and the rest of the world to be slain. Just to set things straight, French people DO wash!

Back to basics: Booze and Buterbrods

Moscow is the land of thriving fast food and coffee chains. Choose a random place, walk 5 minutes in any direction and you’re sure to hit one of these infinitely duplicated restaurants. They hide whatever makes Moscow specific, and soon enough you’re walking home, looking at your feet, voluntarily oblivious of the city around you that seems to be only a tiring collage of similar scenes.
I was at this low point when I stumbled on a рюмочная. Oddly, I had never heard of this kind of place before. Inherited from the Soviet era, these small usually run-down joints were meant to serve vodka shots (рюмки) to whoever felt like a little liquid joy. As selling only vodka was forbidden, these were always served with a side dish, traditionally bread with either cheese, marinated fish or salami. There were no chairs, only tables or a high counter: these places weren't for lengthy, cozy stops, but just for a quick, blood-warming gulp.
Today, the concept has evolved. Some рюмочки have stuck close to the original Soviet heritage, while other have adapted to modern taste while keeping the details that put them apart from usual coffee places. They are in general much more present outside of Moscow.
To start with, the food selection has widened even though it has stayed basic and limited. Think stolovaya. No sushis or pizzas (very good sign). Chairs have also appeared sometimes. Decoration stayed pretty Soviet, in a plastic flowery kind of way. However, what really got me was the fact that this might be the only place were coming in alone to drink and grab a bite is considered normal and actually has a homey feeling to it. Most clients (95 % older men) get in, hang their coat, order a soup and a vodka shot and sit down to read a newspaper. Don't get me wrong, no one comes here just to drink. Alcoholics stay outside and buy a full bottle of vodka which is much cheaper, even if the prices in a рюмочная are low (50 roubles a vodka shot).
Sitting with my tea and my liver stuffed belyash served on a white plate with a collar of green fruity designs (a rare luxury as рюмочные rather resort to discardable tableware), I felt I was touching again what made the Russians Russian, a feeling I hadn't had in a long time.
This may not sound like a breakthrough experience at all, but after you've been in Moscow a while, or if you're just sick of trudging around in the snow/mud, the nice, no BS glow of this kind of place makes you understand again why the hell you chose to live Russia and not some sunny place in Latin America. Try drinking tequila with borsch…

Photo credits: article from Bolchoï Gorod on рюмочных (http://www.bg.ru/article/7344/)

Mr Rogozin's Twitter Wonderland

Really, Dmitry Anatolevich couldn't have chosen a less suitable person for the post of the Russian ambassador to NATO. A New York Times article on Mr. Rogozin's rhetorical bombs.

Missile Defense, Military Doctrine and the Connection Between the Two (if Any)

The fact that you should be careful when reading Russian papers is a common place and I find it boring when foreigners complain about it much. Especially because most foreigners who live in Moscow do not even speak Russian well enough to afford such comments. However this time I found it quite exciting how the lecturer at my “Introduction to the Applied Analysis of Foreign Policy Measures” class, Professor B. managed to convince the audience that they should never trust the author an article entirely, be it published in Kommersant, the Economist or the New York Times. It had nothing to do with finding excuses for the pathetic standards of the Russian press, the lecture was supposed to make it clear that information could be the trickiest thing, that while we were trying to produce reliable information ourselves, we had to stay alarmed that what we were reading was not important or reliable enough. I wouldn’t have found it so interesting if it hadn’t been for the way he illustrated it.

Professor B. is known for being the best teacher at the faculty, but he is also an impossible person, he hates women, looks down on political science students (although he wrote most of our textbooks) and tries to show off at any occasion.