#5
Moscow News
No. 25
July 3-9, 2002
Extremism and Nothingness
Yana Djin

Nostalgia, a notion that has never been too popular in the land which has customarily regarded even its own past without sentimentality, has acquired a new meaning, and one gets a queer sensation that if the end of the world is nigh indeed, it will be a relatively quiet affair - a stretch of time drenched in paperwork of falling corporate giants and melancholy for the past glory.

After the initial reaction to the events of 9/11, the patriotic spell has given way to the all-embracing sense of uncertainty. Although the belief in democracy is still strong among the people, the latter are already admitting that the way to preserve it might be at the cost of their jobs and financial security. This is a big blow to Americans, who are used to planning everything in life, even their own funerals as if they are going to be mere guests at them. So, from the extreme bouts of patriotism Americans have plunged into extreme bouts of nothingness.

U.S.A., though, is not the only country where nostalgia, mixed with the grayness of reality, might become a cause of inner or outer unrest and rebellion. Two weeks ago Russia celebrated a holiday dedicated to its own self, and the Western press unanimously hailed it as a country that is no longer a threat to the "civilized" world but just another part of it. Yet for anyone with a more thorough knowledge of Russia, this nonchalance seems a bit forced.

Indeed, if we look at Russia's foreign policy, then yes, in the wake of the WTC attacks, it has become an equal member in the alliance against Islamic extremists. But looking at the daily life of an average Russian and, let us say, American or Swede, we'd have to admit that the latter two are more equal than the former.

If Americans are in a moral and financial crisis, then it would be safe to say that despite the economic growth Russia has been enjoying over the past three years, most Russians are suffering from moral and financial despair the end of which is not in sight. Moscow's central streets, sporting Western-style ads, restaurants, nightclubs and casinos, should not serve, as they often do for many Western men and women of the press, as a valid index of Russian life. A halfhour trip from the city would suffice to conclude that even Muscovites, let alone inhabitants of other Russian cities, cannot afford the luxuries their city offers.

If most Parisians can frequent a cafe for lunch, most Muscovites cannot afford to pay $2 for a cup of coffee on a daily basis. If most Americans are entitled to unemployment benefits and severance pay after they lose their jobs, Russians faced with a similar predicament are left uncared for.

After my recent visit to Moscow, I got a sensation that the rumors of economic and moral stability in Russia are greatly exaggerated. The various young people I talked to had one thing in common: spiritual indifference verging on devastation. Their attitude to their own futures was not only uncertain, but submerged in cynicism which regards only financial gain as a value worthy of pursuing.

Incidentally, a recent poll conducted among the young people of Russia revealed that 78 per cent suffer from total absence of goals, laziness, and lack of interest in their own lives. The Russian teens' occupational ambitions focus on making a fast buck and range from investor to gangster, depending on the immediate economic situation of the given teenager. Thus, a future financial planner is more likely to come from a better-off household that a future gangster.

The results of this poll should not surprise anyone. When you are regularly bombarded with images of vulgar consumerism and loud, incoherent noise passing for music, when you are fed the garbage that comes out of Hollywood and are led to believe that this is what the kingdom of heaven on earth looks like, is it any wonder that a youth would rather envision himself in a red Cabriolet than come up with a new vaccine? Is it any wonder that this kind of spiritual devastation is fertile ground for all kinds of extremism? After all, why should it be surprising that a bunch of city hooligans shave their heads, arm themselves with steel bars and beat the living daylights out of passersby simply because that's what skinheads do? They have plunged from the extreme form of nothingness to extremism.

Russia is reacting with harsher laws against such lawbreakers. It is adopting the American way of dealing with crime which, incidentally, is still rampant in this country despite the death penalty. Perhaps, rather than imitate the failures of the United States, it would be smarter to pay attention to its more successful programs. It would perhaps be more profitable to take homeless children off the streets, provide them with shelter and values that do not draw from B-rated movies but from humanistic sources: literature, poetry, and music. Do the right thing, as the people in American ghettos say and often do. Give them something to believe in other than the immediacy of physical gratification.

Any intelligent leader knows that when people have nothing to believe in, they start believing in anything. But somehow it is more profitable to borrow the worst traits that American society offers and to disregard those U.S. values that are less easily acquired, for they demand work and generally do not fill the pockets of the minority who do the borrowing.

That should be in the interest of America as well, if only to diminish the growing anti-American feeling in other countries.

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