March 10, 2011 Time to End The Book
It was the plastic bag that made me realize that this book is done.
Larisa and I were walking down the main street of Prochlodny the other day when she pointed at something and said “Look how much better the economy is doing.” She was pointing down at a small public trash can in front of a business. The “amazing” thing was that it had a plastic bag as a liner. “A few years ago, someone would have stolen that bag in a minute.” She was right. Things have changed even here on the frontier of nowhere.
Some of the change is because of money. Salaries have tripled in the last 8 years. There’s been inflation too, but real earnings are still way up. When I first got here, the average monthly wage was between two hundred and three hundred dollars. Now the average wage in Moscow is about $1700 a month and down here it is close to $700. Unskilled labor like floor washing and store clerking pays about $300 a month and mother’s pension has risen from $120 a month to $200. It doesn’t sound like much to the average American who gets $4000 a month, but it’s the difference between grinding poverty and being poor with enough money to buy an occasional cheap TV or make the payments on a motor scooter.
But the change is bigger than just a little more money. During my first or second visit to Prochlodny/Premalka about eight years ago, I decided to buy my mother-in-law a microwave. It took about a half an hour to get to the bazaar on the Marshutka; most of it spent waiting at the bus stop. The bazaar was the only place in town where a microwave might be found because there were no appliance stores closer than Nalchick.
I spent over an hour wandering from booth to booth searching for anyone who sold microwaves and finally found one vendor that had them for sale – at only twice the Best Buy price.
I had to get a cab to get the thing home because the box was too big to fit comfortably on a Marshutka.
There was no need to rush. Elvira had never owned a microwave before, but she knew that it was worthless, dangerous, and used too much electricity while it fried you with radiation. It was days before she agreed to try it, and weeks before she began to actually use it.
Last month I needed a new microwave for the apartment that Larisa and I are renting for this visit. Mother said that of course we had to get one before we moved in, because she used hers every day. We jumped into the car and made the 10 minute trip down to the new Techmart that opened a few months ago. Aside from CD’s it has everything that a good Best Buy has and at about the same prices. We purchased a simple model for about $65 and took it home in the car.
On the way home we stopped at the supermarket for microwave popcorn, diet Pepsi, tea, and some cheese.
That’s also a big change. There was only one “supermarket” in town when I got here – and it was about the size of a 7-11. Small items were purchased at kiosks and all serious shopping had to be done at the bazaar. Diet Pepsi and popcorn were seen only in American movies, never on the shelves.
Cooking is very important to Elvira so most days began with a trip to the bazaar. Even after we got a car, she would stubbornly march over to the bus stop in the morning because it was “silly” to use a car when a perfectly good marshutka would get her there for 10 rubles.
Now, several mornings each week begin with my wife asking “Are you going to take mother to the store this morning?” (Did you ever notice that women always act as if you already knew what they wanted and they can’t understand why you haven’t done it yet?)
Not only does mother want a ride in the car, she also prefers to shop at the supermarket. Now that there are several Magnet supermarkets in town, she even prefers to shop at the big one. The only time she takes the marshutka is when she wants a rest from all of us.
Besides the microwave, her apartment also has a washing machine, air conditioner, and a flat screen television. She uses them all.
Uncle Victor, the last die hard communist in Premalka was forcibly retired from the hospital last month. Now, the man who told me that “There wouldn’t be any Chechnyan problem if Stalin was still alive. He knew how to handle those bastards.” is renting an office of his own and has started life as a capitalist, self employed physician.
There are still fewer cars here than in the states, but it seems like more because the roads are rotten and the cities were designed without parking spaces. When we first got here, no one in our apartment building had a car, and when we purchased our first car a few years ago, virtually all of the cars in town were Ladas. They were cheap, unreliable, cheap, small, and cheap. Now Ladas are still the most common car out here in the sticks, but Toyotas, Audis and Chevys are everywhere. The explosion of good cars has been helped by increasing incomes and that great American invention “Kredeet”.
New pieces of civilization show up frequently. Our local bank has seven or eight windows that handle different types of transactions. People have always stood in line for up to an hour waiting for a window that often turns out to be the wrong one. Arguments and fights about places in line are constant. Yesterday they installed a new computer kiosk. When you walk in, you select a service type and it assigns you a number. A board on the wall works like a California DMV gadget. When your number comes up, it flashes on the screen along with your window number. It has totally civilized the bank.
Of course, as I said, the change is only half money driven. Most Russians are still the aggressive, inebriated, pain in the ass, lazy, the “world will never get any better” people that inhabit so many of the pages of this book, but there is a new generation coming. Communism has been dead for twenty years now and it is beginning to wash out of the country. Every person under the age of 35 graduated school in a world without Lenin. A lot of them are joining the middle class and they aren’t scared of their government any more, they’re angry at it. These people expect to make money and don’t expect the government to steal it.
They use the internet to bypass the biased press, flash mobs to circumvent demonstration restrictions, and they complain – loudly – through bullhorns and signs and internet blogs.
Russia still isn’t really in the Western world, but on the personal side it is close enough to stop being constantly humorous. There are still big changes afoot for this county, but they will be played out on a larger stage and the proper venue for talking about them is elsewhere.
Maybe I’ll see you there.