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Friends United Meeting |
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November 1998
Visiting in Russia
By Johan Maurer
According to a joke circulating in Russia, two bankers are conversing:
"How did you sleep last night?"
"Like a baby"
"How could that be??!!"
"Every hour I woke up and cried!"
(Interfaks -AiF, September 18)
When I arrived here in Elektrostal, Russia, two weeks ago, I knew I was coming to a country in economic crisis, whose government seemed powerless to act. The U.S. news media had been emphasizing the worst; with dramatic scenes of lines at currency exchanges and warnings of the global consequences of Russia's economic instability. Some members of the Board of Friends House Moscow, whose meeting was one of my reasons for being here, seemed ready to postpone the meeting entirely. What would happen if hyperinflation took over? Would a military adventurist fill the power vacuum?
Things are actually deceptively calm here. The Russian newspapers, which a month ago were full of apocalyptic headlines are now more philosophical, often reflecting (and fueling?) the cynical attitudes of the public with their own gallows humor. The weekly Argumenti i Fakti published an article with the front page headline, "How the Bankers Stole our Money." The biweekly Interfaks-AiF ran a headline, "We Wait for a Change," followed by the subtitle, "If the crisis is all in our heads, it's not necessary to beat us about the head so hard."
Life on the streets of Moscow, Elektrostal and Volgograd seems amazingly normal. The only unusual activity is that life's daily rounds of shopping and (often unpaid) work now also include frequent trips to the currency exchanges, as people draw on their hoards of dollars to pay for food and other necessities whose prices had often doubled or tripled since mid-August. (Of course, not everyone has little stashes of dollars, but many did collect at least a few for a rainy day.) Often people find that the exchanges have closed for lack of rubles. Here in Elektrostal, it took me six visits over four days to two different places (and one private "banker" operating out of his car) to collect enough rubles to pay for my train ticket to Volgograd. That hassle was a concrete, if minor, way I could share the daily reality of millions of Russians.
Underneath the appearance of normalcy (the usual activities of working, commuting, gardening to the very last moment permitted by weather, and so on) there is a quiet desperation which is only dealt with by concentrating on one day at a time. "I can't even imagine how we will get through the winter, so I just think about today," said one of my Elektrostal friends. Another friend, in Volgograd, described how her elderly parents are coping: "They are spending the money they set aside for their burial. I go to the store for them, so I see how their money is getting used up. They try to buy things for me, too, but I tell them I have everything I need." In saying that, she is simply lying; she can only count on some bread and one meal at the school where she teaches. Ordinarily she has to pay for her meals at the school canteen, but the director is allowing them to eat on credit until they are paid their salaries again. Not that the long-postponed salaries are much to wait for; hers is about $100 a month in newly deflated rubles.
She ended her visit to me with these words: "The most important thing is that I know Jesus Christ is with me." In prayer and the unity of faith, I hope we can be with her and the millions in Russia who are in the same situation. And may the same faith bear fruit in political life: the Russian people are fully capable of coming up with the policies needed for their country, but forming and applying the necessary political willpower seems to me to be a supernatural task.
Johan Maurer is general secretary of Friends United Meeting and editor of Quaker Life.
Copyright (c) 1998 Friends United Meeting
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