Our
travels to Moscow began with an overnight train from St Petersburg. I pretty
much love trains, but this out me over the edge. It was the most soviet looking
train I had ever seen. We had a sleeping cabin with was so tiny, but we enjoyed
it. Being rocked to sleep by a train, USSR issue or otherwise, is one of my
favorite things.
In
Moscow we did typical things like Red Square, St. Basil’s Cathedral and the
Kremlin.
On
Friday we had academic meetings. The first thing we did was visit the youth
branch for United Russia, which is Putin’s political party. I accidentally
chose this day to wear my new red beret.
They
asked us to say things that we think of about Russia. My class then started
saying things like “large” and “Europe vs, Asia” and I, forgetting my wardrobe
choice, was like “communism”. I mean, come on, there’s no reason to pretend
that the US doesn’t lump Russia and communism together. It’s a fact.
Then
the party members spoke about their party, and then my class presumed to ask
pointed questions about corruption and fairness of democracy. To be fair, it’s
silly to assume America doesn’t have unfair practices (campaign funding anyone,
2000 Presidential election?) and people were asking questions about things that
weren’t even true. Also remembering that this is a class where I am the only
one who has ever voted and one of few who actually pays taxes, I was pretty
annoyed.
So
I decided to make the point that America has an obnoxious habit of benchmarking
democracy as anything that is a mirror image of the United States. I pointed
out to them I was embarrassed by this. So Russia’s president has a 6-year term?
That’s fine. What is it that could determine that 4 years is the exact amount
of time someone should be allowed to be president without reelection in order to
be a “true” democracy? Nothing.
Anyways,
they wrote about us on their website. If you could read Russian you would
actually see that they mention my comment in their summary. There’s also a
classy photo of me laughing when they made fun of my hat.
We
then took a guided tour of the Kremlin, where I promptly took inappropriate
communism photos wearing my red beret and Leslie’s United Russia scarf.
We
had a farewell dinner and time the next day to shop at a souvenir and flee
market before it was back to Copenhagen.
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