Description of My Interest in Russia

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People often ask me how I got interested in Russia, why am I interested and why do I keep going there. For this, I have written on my thoughts and experiences. I will try to tell this in roughly chronological order. This document should contain the main points.

When I was a child, when I was growing up, I was told that I was lucky. Even now, when I see the world, everyone always seems to think that America is great. People like American culture, it symbolizes wealth and freedom. But to me, it feels imposed. I do not belong, I am trapped and forced to be someone I am not. Even now, I struggle with the assumptions people make with regard to where is better, what people are expected to want.

I also remember having an image of myself as a winter warrior, I guess. There was a book - Julie of the Wolves - of an Inuit girl in Alaska who joined a wolf pack. As a girl, I wanted to go to Alaska, where the wolves were.

In 2009, when I was an undergraduate, I went to Montreal, Canada for a science fiction convention. It was not the first time I had been in a foreign city, but it was the first time I had realized what it meant that there are other peoples, other cultures, other possibilities. When I returned I had some dreams.

And I remembered something from before. One of my philosophy professors had taught me about Marxism. He had also told us about a conversation he had with one of my physics professors, who was from the Soviet Union. I hadn't realized this before I was told. We know many professors and students in a university are foreign born, but it never seemed important to me before.

There was an article about Pyotr Kropotkin, the author of Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution, among other things. His beliefs and experiences which contributed to this came from Imperial Russian beliefs, not anarchism as he was well known for. I realized from this that in the Russian Revolution, there were the Reds, Whites, and Blacks, and all believed in working for the good of the community or society. All of a sudden, life could make sense. 

I had assumed I had gotten interested in the USSR due to the connection to socialism. Either that or because it was obvious in my mind at the time. So I ignored it. But by the time I needed to choose a graduate school, I knew I wished to leave the country. Because if it is foreign, at least I need not conform, even if there is no place "better." And I would no longer be trapped.

I had ended up at Perimeter Institute, at the PSI Masters' program. We were a group of 31 physics students from various places around the world. I had talked with many of the other students. For instance, I remember one student from the US who said he was also Russian. He said that he spent a year in Russia. I didn't understand how he felt such a sense of connection.

I also had a roommate who was Chinese who would talk about some of the issues with her government, but mostly about her issues with culture shock. She, like me, seemed to constantly have this sense of being told by society that who she was was not legitimate. She was not happy when I made the comparison, however.

There was a Vietnamese student who couldn't eat the food in Canada. Apparently there is a strong connection between food and culture, and it just wasn't possible for her to eat the Canadian food.

My mother had told me that since I am uncomfortable with American culture, I will be uncomfortable with other cultures more. Life for me would probably always be as if I am in a state of culture shock. And I would never understand nationalism. At least outside the US, I would not have the sense of being forced to be someone else as much. But this changed.

I had gone home a few years ago, 2013-2014, when struggling to do work due to issues in part caused by mold in my apartment. When I was home, I was thinking about trying to write a story as I had wanted to make a web comic for 10 years. However, when I was putting this together, rather than the stories I had expected, my mind focused on the stories from the dreams I had in 2009.

When I went back to school, things continued to evolve. I wasn't just interested the Soviet Union and my story. I start developing feelings, familiarity, a sense of belonging. I had started to have this desire to stand up for Russia, modern Russia, be involved and help. And I don't mean help in the sense of feeling sorry for someone, but like having a sense of responsibility for people, for each other. This interest, when I encountered it, I couldn't shake it. I didn't understand. I was not taught this is how such things worked.

Last time, it wasn't until I studied Marxism that I could deal with politics, economics, or cold war topics. I was at home when the Ukrainian crisis developed, but my perspectives developed much differently. I hated seeing how people would talk as if being European was right and Russian was wrong. Just because some countries had managed to find themselves in a situation where they have more privileges in the world does not make their culture better, does not mean they have the right to tell others how to live. Much of the wealth difference and "democracy" difference is accomplished by chance and force. Every system with inequality gives more freedom to those with privilege, and the global system is no different.

I remember watching Snowden talk and being jealous. For instance, there is this video of him talking to John Oliver. When you listen to someone talk, you can get this sense of how they think from the pattern of how they respond. Listening to the dissidents talk, you can understand patriotism, just as I learned of culture shock from the international students. And I just remember in the video, them talking about "hot pockets." I remember when I had the sense of missing food.

There was one time when I went to visit my parents, and I had first experienced them having had removed the excess sugar from their diet. I had always previously eaten lots of sweets, a pattern amplified by not liking most food. When I returned to Canada, I tried Russian food for the first time. The experience gave me the first sense of what it is like to be able to experience and enjoy food. I had started after this being frustrated when people kept serving the types of food I did not like. I learned that I have a place in the world, then was forced to go back to being forced into the same identities as before.

After this I tried making borsch when I was on vacation with my relatives during the summer. I came back and managed to go from eating sweets all the time to effectively removing the addiction and eating sweets only occasionally. A few weeks later I went to a conference in the US and struggled finding food and disliked not having my soup. When I wanted to go to a (Central?) European restaurant in the area, the people I was with made fun of me for the situation. Things got better and less alienating over time, but when I went back to my parents' house before going to Russia, I remember having issues finding buckwheat in the stores in the area.

In the video, John Oliver states he does not want to be stuck in Russia, but I want to.

I have looked for a postdoc position in Russia, but there are very few as there is not much money. I could probably get a programming job, but I do not know if I am ready to leave academia or how good I would look to non-US employers. I have gone to conferences, given seminar talks, and tried to talk to Russian researchers, but it is difficult for people to understand my desire, even if I do more work visiting Russia for a month than I did in one year in Canada.

In 2014, when I was home, I remember watching an interview of one of the Americans who was kidnapped by Iran, charged as a spy, and forced to remain in jail for over a year. They comparing the conditions in Iran to the solitary confinement conditions in the US, describing what these conditions do to a person. And I remember myself relating. And I hate that since, because I am a "privileged white American," and these people are thrown into horrific conditions by the state. But the symptoms are the same, just as I relate to girls who were experiencing culture shock, or the the indigenous nations in the US and Canada who had to deal with the conditions of genocide, including this forced adoption process, or the Soviet citizens who complained about how the state did not let people travel abroad, in some cases comparing the situation to a prison ...

I remember my mother training me that I had to fit in, or else I would never be accepted. That I had to conform to American culture. I was constantly told I had to do things which I could not do. Or told that I had to be someone who I was not. And I still have this sense of dread that I am going to be forced to live in the US. And I will never be accepted and my needs do not matter.

But I am reminded by the indigenous activists that I am not of the indigenous nations. An I know this. When I study them, I admire certain things, but know I am not one of them. I am warned against cultural appropriation, as it has been used as a tool of genocide. If I do not feel comfortable in the settler culture, I should look to my ancestors culture, because all peoples have a legitimate culture.

There was a lie introduced within my ancestors' culture, as part of the process of genocide. I was raised Jewish since my father's mother wanted this, and she plays matriarch. And even when the European Jews talk about where their culture comes from before, everyone talks if they are from Israel, despite that being 2000 years ago. For my father, they immigrated from Imperial Russia, about 100 years ago. The entire family tree on his side seems to trace back to the Pale around that time period. We know and recognize the history, but it is never relevant.

And I can see the separation between myself and my parents' culture. I can tell from my relatives that they belong in the US.

For my PhD defense, my parents and grandmothers came in, and they come to my house and don't take off my shoes. Little things like this help to develop the sense of cultural difference, and what they consider correct to feel so wrong.

And whenever I return and talk to my relatives, I am reminded that I do not belong. Not just my parents, but a lot of my relatives, can have the most frustrating perspectives on politics. I know that one is supposed to avoid the subject, but I often want to talk to someone when frustrated.

My grandmother, for instance, was watching the news, and I had tried to point out an issue, where some speaker had said that Putin only understands force. I tried to point out that he has always tried to work things out with negotiation, and  preferred negotiation, but always tried to stand up for Russia on the world stage and reacted with force when confronted with force. She said she disagreed and I knew there was no way to debate.

When talking to my mother about the doping scandal and the IOC's decision to ban a country from playing (for 2016, the first time), she seemed to not have any issue with it. I don't tend to like the Olympics because it is a big nationalistic competition, but it is wrong to purposefully alienate one nation on the world stage because that is where the whistleblower comes from, and this gives an excuse to alienate a current favored target of alienation on the world stage. All the measures taken are quite clearly not to prevent the issues of doping in sport, but to prevent the Russian flag from flying.

At one point, my mother was telling me that Putin was unpredictable, but he never seemed to me to be unpredictable. It may be that Anglo-Saxons can't understand Russians. There is a saying which indicates such: "an enigma wrapped in a riddle" or something like this. Everyone always says that Russians do things which make no sense, but every description I have seen of the culture has always felt to me to be instinctual and familiar.

For me, Russian culture makes me feel human, like I finally am allowed to be human. But it still feels denied to me.

Links

Russia Beyond has a series on people who have also "found themselves" in Russia.

I don't think of this love of Russia as coming from some "mystical" aspect. It is quite easy to explain as this commenter does: In Russia, there is a different type of freedom from the US, there is a freedom to be human, to be spontaneous, instinctual.