Midnight in Moscow. Which, as I write, it very nearly is. We — Mr. & Mrs. — arrived here the evening of November 29, so this should really be December Diary stuff. Readers have been e-mailing in to ask what the heck I’m doing here, though, so I’d better explain myself.
There is a Russian monthly magazine named Vokrug Sveta (“Around the World”), a fairly precise equivalent of our own National Geographic. (There’s a Hippie-pedia page on it here.) The magazine is celebrating its 150th anniversary this month, and they’re holding a festival here in Moscow to commemorate the event.
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Vokrug Sveta has always been a window on the outside world, though in the worst of Soviet times it was necessarily a narrow one. It has thus been a player, at least in a comprimario role, in the centuries-long tension that has shaped Russia’s national life: the tension between, on one hand, the introverted, autarkic Mother Russia of the birch forests and steppes and full-bearded priests in old wooden churches, and, on the other, the desire of many Russians — by no means only educated urban types — for their nation to be a normal European country having normal relations with other peoples.
In that spirit, Vokrug Sveta invited some foreign pop-science writers to the anniversary bash. One of my math books has sold quite well here, thanks to a superb translation by Alexei Semikhatov. So here I am, enjoying a week of hospitality from the good people of Moscow, in return for three public lectures and some media interviews.
Nothing but nice. What hospitality it is, too! Everyone has treated us like royalty: not only the Vokrug Sveta people, but waiters, chauffeurs, lecture-hall technicians, and random people on the Moscow streets when I have stopped them to ask directions in my rudimentary Russian.
If our experience is anything to go by, you can altogether forget the old Soviet stereotype of the surly, suspicious Russian. We have met nothing but courtesy and kindness here. Also a surprising level of English proficiency. Even those met in random street encounters will manage a few words of English at least one time in three; if you go into a store where there are a dozen customers waiting, you can be sure one of them will speak excellent English.
The downside of Russia was well advertised to us before we left. Over-advertised, perhaps: I have no doubt the Moscow police are to be avoided at all costs, and that con-men, muggers, and pickpockets (categories that, we were told, intersect considerably with the gendarmerie) do lurk around every corner. We just haven’t encountered any of that: Whether by sheer luck or otherwise, I can’t say.
Past and present. The very first thing I saw in Moscow was the manufacturer’s name on the plane’s disembarkation tunnel: Thyssen Krupp.
Bearing in mind the relationship Krupp Industries were having with the people of Russia 70 years ago, it’s hard even for a temperamental pessimist not to think the world has improved some.
A pleasant ramble, thank you.
On your point: “A liberal is always a totalitarian at heart, though half of them don’t know it,” I think you have seized on a valuable point. If force is the liberal’s sine qua non, who will be forced and who will be the enforcer?
I believe a budding totalitarian will lose his enthusiasm if it is pointed out to him that his sword of social justice has no shaft.
Derb, car radios that give you the name of the performer and the song have been pretty standard for American cars made in the last five years or so. Rest assured that we're keeping pace with the Russians (or whoever manufactures cars driven over there).
I find the car radio thing does not always work very well, as the signal is occasionally scrambled by what I presume to be atmospheric phenomena and the text therefore is as well. And not every station seems to broadcast the information. But it IS fairly standard.
The way to keep up with that sort of thing is to rent cars periodically. You see all the new gewgaws and learn of all the new irritations. For me, that would be headlights you can't manually turn off in gear [I hate turning narrow residential crescents late at night and beaming directly into some sap's house], headlights and interior lights that turn on automatically when parking [what I presume to be a security measure that actually increases driver and passenger INSECURITY], climate control that makes it difficult to just get regular outside air, you name it. But the radio features are cool. Especially when you rent a car that just comes with satellite at no charge. Slick.
Always a pleasure to read your ramblings. Moscow is indeed a very interesting place and the women are as you noticed. I fell in love with the place and have had a lovely wife from Russia for the past six years. The traffic is as you post; perhaps even worse than you wrote. My brother commutes across Moscow every day to work and his stories are horrendous. Avoiding the Politzia is indeed wise, but most people are warm and welcoming. Being an international pilot, I have seen most of the world but find myself most at home outside of the US in the small towns and cities of Russia.
Regarding the Table Talk excerpt. As a young man at University, my girlfriend died in an automobile accident. I was immobilized by grief. I could not understand how anyone could be walking about here and there, smiling and laughing. How was it possible that there was happiness anywhere in the world?
I adjusted, in time, and I still do after the loss of friends and loved ones, though it hasn't gotten easier. Recently re-reading A Passage to India, I noted this passage: "It's only one's own dead that matter." That is true, and is only natural, however acutely we feel it.
I see others have already commented on the car radio situation, so I'll just add that it was information included with the music broadcast, just I never knew about it until I bought a used 2004 Maxima in 2007.
By the way - what did you mean that we can improve how we think with this scientific knowledge about human understanding? Just not sure what direction you were thinking... (Genetic improvement?)
Also, of course, those on the Left certainly want to give a man half his pay if he doesn't show up for work at all... It's not that the (Junior) student is smarter in that case, but that he is not taking it to the next level... The employer SHOULD pay you even for not working at all.
‘We really need a word here, one ending in “-ology,” for the emerging science of human nature, encompassing all its encroachments on psychology, neurophysiology, anthropology, ethology, sociology, genetics, economics . . . ‘
How about HUMOLOGY.
‘As Jonah said in his lecture: The more we can know about how the human mind works, and how human groups work, the better chance we have of making it all work better.’
I think your friend Jonah just described Social Science…which is a liberal pseudoscientific discipline used to figure out the best way to social engineer humans to get them to do what liberals want.
Mr. Derbyshire…looks like that clandestine dormant liberal streak buried in your subconscious activated without you realizing it.
John
I have to agree with RobL here. If the "ologists" do discover some "ology" that convinces them and a lot of us that they have discovered the springs of human nature and that they can now tweak these springs for "our own and society's good" we are truly doomed. I flee the one who wants to make me "better". Your presence in Russia should have reminded you that the folks there have already been down that road to the underworld.
I must quote Jack Lewis:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
C. S. Lewis
'..it’s shamefully heteronormative and patriarchal-oppressive of me even to notice; but my goodness! What an amazing number of nontrivially attractive females there are in Moscow.'
Harold Steptoe comes to mind, 'you dirty old man'.
The link to the lecture (i.e. slide presentation in English) at the Moscow Lectorium of the Polytechnic Museum (on Dec 3rd) on The Riemann Hypothesis is here: External Link
Just scroll down introduction in Russian and click on the blue link: "Презентация Джона Дербишира (ppt)"
I was in Moscow (and St. Petersburg) in 2000 for my honeymoon(!). It was my first time in Russia and I too was shocked, absolutely shocked, at the number of beautiful women I saw on the streets. It's like there was a factory somewhere producing them (the sweet results of a Five Year Plan?!).
Needless to say, since I *was* on my honeymoon, I couldn't exactly chat all those beautiful women up in my rudimentary Russian. But at least now I know why they had that Iron Curtain: to protect their beautiful women from us! :)
