Socialist realist experiences

Half way through our stay Bill invited the four of us to either a welcome or a good-bye dinner, the exact occasion of which was quite difficult to ascertain given its tardiness or earliness. Perhaps he was cleverly combining the two. The dinner was to be held at a Russian restaurant named Volga, whose name gave away that it must have been somewhere by Volga river, as Bill clarified, near Samara square, which contained an important geographical and historical landmark – “the hood monument.” Bill promised that the restaurant itself would not be disappointing from the cultural point of view, containing many a humorous remnant of the not so distant Soviet past. Bill’s hood coinage proved rather confusing for Samara’s locals, who assured me that no such monument existed at the square. Nevertheless, after an hour of fraternal marshrutka traipsing through different parts of Samara, we finally arrived at the square. Much to my oblivion, Samara square paralleled Samarskaya street where I had wondered earlier with my camera, snapping away at old houses. My brother and I crossed Samarskaya into a tree-lined public garden whose massive oaks and weeping willows made a cool shade for gossiping grannies on benches. Their grand-children were peacefully napping nearby in occasionally rocked strollers. Landscaped bushes and flowerbeds broke the thicket of trees, while an iron-cast cherub fountain murmured the toddlers a lullaby. Bill’s promised remnants of the Soviet past apparently weren’t just inside the Volga restaurant, as we came upon a billboard reading: “Ostalos rodit sina.” (The only thing left is to birth a son). The phrase was splashed in bright orange on a wall of a satellite-studded apartment complex with a patchwork of glassed-in white, blue and rusty brown balconies in different states of disrepair. Was this some government-sponsored pro-generation effort or a private joke for an apartment mortgage proudly displayed on these drab walls? The phrase rang consonance with one of Bianca’s songs seen earlier on TV where she wailed to her dead lover that she could have birthed him a son. The chauvinism was a bit enraging here, as boys grew into raving alcoholics dependent on their mothers and wives and forced women to carry the work and family burden while wasting away in drunken stupor. The Barnard days and cynical corporate reality thereafter led to conclude that men were more trouble than anything else. As a matter of fact, they were completely unnecessary and one could do quite well without them. Why the local alcoholics were so important was incredibly baffling to my feminist self. Even in the popular 1980 Soviet hit “Moscow doesn’t believe in tears” the single mother heroine had wearily searched for love despite its disillusionment. When she tried to join a dating club, the poor woman stumbled upon year-long waiting lists to date pensioners. While I found the concept of a man deficit rather amusing, the movie had seriously proclaimed it as the Soviet Union’s greatest social ill. Judging by the couples around me, this ill perhaps still plagued Russia, while American-style feminism was just beginning to emerge in outrageously funny businesswoman sexploits of Cosmo and Vanity Fair. To quote a popular colloquial saying, “na besrybie i rak ryba” – when there is no catch, crab can also be catch. And so it was that these pitiful alcoholics became the women’s catch, while birthing sons retained some of its old cultural value in modern advertisements.

The sun-birthing slogan opened up to a panoramic view of the Volga and the open expanse of Samara Square. Flooded by blinding silver rays of the evening sun the river split around a forested island, then merged back into its southern course. Samara’s City Hall rose on one side of the square, while a pretty Russian church stood on the other. A solid fortress of gray marble slabs, the City Hall was an exact replica of Bishkek’s White House, apparently a common architectural style for Soviet administration premises. In the middle of the square the famous hood monument shot high up into the sky. A long thin obelisk of steel and granite at least twenty stories high, this was definitely the most phallic structure I had ever seen. On top of its dizzying height stood a socialist realist man of steel, fearlessly facing the earth’s abyss sans vertigo, his gaze fixed on the distant future ahead. The man was holding a V-shaped metal sheet, which could have also passed for a paper airplane, or Bill’s hood. The setting sun violently deflected off the obelisk, making a grandiose Soviet experience as its blazing steel ray punctured the soft falling sky.

The square was quite popular with teenagers since its smooth surface made perfect ground for sports like rollerblading, skate-boarding and fooling around on bikes, all these our favorite childhood activities on Bishkek Square. However, the modern crowd was starkly different from its Soviet predecessors – punk chain-laden teens in un-tied Adidas and Vans sneakers zoomed around on much sleeker and faster stunt instruments, ears clogged with i-pods. The teen-age spirit of je ne sais quoi was alive and well across generations, as the spunky crowd cut into another traditional activity taking place on Samara Square premises – communal weddings. Zooming youngsters occasionally intercepted the massive bride invasion streaming down to the square and descending upon the church and its neighboring grove, clamoring for scenic photos in the sun’s last warm rays. These en masse weddings strictly followed the village harvest traditions with their timing. With winter preparations well under way, the fall’s Indian summer was the official wedding season when the harvest had already been picked, jars of pickles and jams stocked on basement shelves, and high time had come to kick back and get hitched. Dressed in opulent white, the brides were accompanied by their somber suit-clad grooms who tangled in and stepped on long trains, bumped into puffy hoop skirts, and, perplexed, lifted their poofy statuettes off the ground in various poses. Photographers maneuvered between parties on ever so active a look-out for clear scenic views, and expertly angled their cameras away from nearby trash cans, warm champagne bottles and yellow plastic cups waiting on the ground for toasts. Couples lined all along the square’s edge, kissing, embracing, and playfully showing off wedding bouquets, parasols and other festive accessories. They seized the church, one pair arduously kissing on a step, another frozen in an arms-akimbo Kate-Leo embrace on top of a side pillar. When the toasts finally happened the newly-weds passionately chewed off each others lips, while everyone around them heartily chanted “Gorko! Gorko!” (Bitter! Bitter!) before downing bubbly warm champagne. Camera on-hand to capture this hearty communal entrance, I began snapping newly-wed merriment, catching the multiple brides together with details like trash, graffiti and the classic deliberations over champagne.

Having had our taste of communal merriment, we descended towards the Volga restaurant which was tucked away below the square in beach-park greenery, and turned out somewhat of a misnomer with no river view. I turned around for another look at the obelisk, and was welcomed by graffiti splattered all over the wall and staircase behind me: a perfect mix of socialist realism and punk. We met Bill’s wife Sveta (Light), a petite Russian brunette whose luminous name contradicted her timid manner, and son, Bob, who was fluent in both English and Russian and looked exactly like a little version of Bill. Bob was an adorable well-behaved toddler who quietly ate his food, occasionally demanding Sveta to clean his mouth and hands, and chattered in a lovely high voice. Once he finished eating Bob quickly got bored of our company and began to trail after the waitresses, observing them prepare other dinner tables. Restless like Bob, I took the occasion to slip away and explore the restaurant inside, to see for myself it had actually lived up to Bill’s promised Soviet remembrances.

Volga’s interior certainly did not disappoint in its Soviet penchants. I walked into a spacious room of gray marble walls akin to those of the City Hall, and looking very much like an extension of Samara square. The long narrow windows were dressed in raspberry velvet curtains that also matched a raspberry carpeted stage. The best thing about those marble walls though, were the Soviet posters, rather model behavior commandments for Soviet citizens. One poster prohibited frequent phone conversations: “Telefonnii boltun – posobnik fashistkogo shpiona” (Telephone chatter-box – fascist spy aide). Another gave detailed directions on cleaning floors in times of plague: a village baba was bent over on all fours cleaning the floor with the following directions writ below: “Sledite za chistotoi v chume, ezhednevno podmetaite pol, obryzgav ego vodoiu. Chashe chistiti doski pola nozhom. Ne nado plevat na pol” (Keep cleanliness during plague, sweep floors daily after sprinkling them with water. Often clean floor boards with a knife. It is not necessary to spit on the floor). However, in my favorite and most expressive slogan a sober Soviet citizen rejected a lunch-time glass of vodka with a red “NET!” The proper, yet decadent imagery of this poster had thwarted some common perceptions or perhaps misconceptions of proletariat lifestyle. Dressed in a crisp blue suit, striped blue-white shirt and red tie, the man was beginning his lunch with a fork and knife, while the rejected vodka glass was made of crystal. His somber appearance harkened back to the Breshnev era when both mother and grandmother fondly remembered eating caviar by spoonful. Perhaps this was a Breshnev poster, for times had certainly changed since. No matter how hard as I tried, I could not find a single silverware knife in my middle-class apartment, and had become accustomed to seeing neighborhood drunks cradling large three liter vodka jars, not crystal glasses. Anyone in such crisply ironed suits would have stuck out like a sore thumb in my neck of the woods. In fact, this model Soviet citizen was very much disconnected from the present-day reality of Russia’s working class.
The mock-Soviet parade continued in Volga’s entertaining menu, which humored the Soviet theme with creative dishes like “Profsoiuznii bortsch” (Trade union borsht), “Kurinaia pechen po MID-ovski” (Chicken liver a la Foreign Affairs Ministry), and my favorite, “Mechta tuneiadtsa” (Sleuth’s dream), stuffed cabbage leaves in cream, which I proceeded to order. My brother showed his usual erroneous judgment by ordering sushi, the most expensive and least reliable dish on the menu, and I hoped for his own sake that he wouldn’t get sick from it. After a long leisurely dinner where we became familiar with many of Bill’s views on Russia, microfinance and many other things, we decided to explore Samara and head over to the old city.

The old city by night turned out a stark contrast to the old city by day, its streets completely deserted except for our little group. Occasional street lamps and slanting cottage windows lit our way. From time to time suspicious-looking groups emerged from rickety fences whose doors were about to swing off the hinges, and dispersed. As if to make matters worse, my brother and Grant began to speak loudly to each other in English, while Almaz started taking out his oversized Samara map and fumbling with it under various street lamps. Taking a wild guess that the next road opening ahead was our tram street, I told our group to hasten their pace and prayed to find our way. We entered a neighborhood of abandoned apartment buildings with broken windows and boarded entrances.

My instinct turned out right, and we finally emerged onto a familiar street with a tram line and bus stop at the crossing. Some drunks were loudly arguing on the steps of their decadent wooden cottage – wrinkled, puffy faces of yellow bile and uncombed hair, leering and shaking fists underneath the street lamp. While I was asking a woman on the bus stop for directions, Almaz once again unfolded his cumbersome map and tried to locate us in one of its quadrants. His action interested everyone on the bus-stop and they stared at us as if we just fell from the sky. That infectious interest spread to the drunks, one of whom, thankfully a woman, crossed the street toward us. She came dangerously close, her awful smell of vodka, dirt and sweat hitting my nostrils, and bluntly stretched out her hand for money, arrogantly staring into my face. The woman took offense at my shrug, giving me an angry look, and stumbled over to others on the bus stop. I took this as our cue to leave and we started down the street, as Almaz had finally located us on his map.

At last we came to the main road with all our trams, buses and marshrutkas on the way home. More tipsy celebrants were standing near the bus stop. One group was quite self-absorbed however, and hence entertaining for us. A tall waif-like man with a white bandage encircling his head was leaning against his short, pot-bellied friend. The two buddies were absorbed in babbling, all the while tenderly holding and occasionally petting each others’ bottoms. On the other side of the short chap stood a chubby Russian baba in her mid-thirties, whom he held by the waist with his free arm. She wore a tight shirt that snugly hugged the love-handles drooping over her short thick waist, but more importantly, her large maternal breast. A tight skirt squished her fat posterior, drawing attention to a pair of Botero thighs. In sum, the woman looked like a pig on heels, and just needed a pearl choker and bouquet of scarlet roses for a completely decadent look. I wondered if she was aware of her partner’s friendly relations with the bandaged friend. Although Almaz and I were itching to snap a picture of this brotherly love for time immemorial, we figured that our camera flashes would blow any cover that they had left, and attract unnecessary attention to both them and us.