Funny Story About Russian Students

To brighten up everybody's day, I want to share a story about my days as a university student back in Ukraine. I will begin with this very old joke about Russian students that my non-Russian readers have probably never heard.

Researchers ask an American student, "How long will it take you to prepare for an Advanced Placement exam in Chinese if you never studied Chinese before?" 

"Well, about 3 years," the American student responds.

"How long will it take you to prepare for an Advanced Placement exam in Chinese if you never studied Chinese before?" they ask a European student.

"Probably about 18 months," the European student answers.

Then, the researchers approach a Russian student who is smoking in front of the university and ask him the same question.

"Do you have the textbook?" the student asks.

"Yes", the researchers say.

"OK, then," the Russian student responds, "let me finish this cigarette and I'll go pass your exam."

When I was a university student in Ukraine, I hardly ever showed up for any classes. It wasn't easy to survive in the Ukraine of the 90ies, and I worked day and night to provide for myself and my husband. In every course, the final oral exam constituted 100% of the final grade. Lectures consisted of professors reading chapters from the textbook out loud. There were never any discussions or anything that even remotely resembled discussions. So, obviously, I, who was a very highly paid translator, considered these classes to be an awful waste of time. Before the finals, I'd just get th textbook, read it, memorize stuff from it, and rattle it off at the exam. I was considered a stellar student, too.

There was this course in International Relations that I didn't attend once during the semester. This course used to be titled "The History of the Communist Party" and was still taught by the same KGB guy who had taught it during the Soviet Union. The exams had this weird structure where you could show up any time over the course of several hours, get a paper with questions from the professor, prepare your answer for 15-30 minutes (without consulting anything, of course), and then recite your answers to the professor.

It so happened that I arrived early for the exam in this International Relations course. The classroom was empty. There was just this professor sitting there. I had no way of knowing whether he was my professor and whether I was even in the right classroom because I hadn't attended a single class that semester. 

"Are you here for the exam?" the professor asked.

"Yes," I responded tentatively. I knew I was there for an exam, I just didn't know if I was there for his exam.

"So come in and get the paper with the questions," he said.

I got the paper with the questions, hoping that the nature of the questions would elucidate whether I was in the right room with the professor who was my professor and not, say, a professor of quantum physics. When I got the paper with the questions, however, things did not become any clearer. I had no idea what the questions even meant, let alone what discipline they could belong to. There was, for example, a question about the combined tonnage of some country's warships during the 20ies. I knew that the only way out was just to bullshit my way through the responses.

When I approached the prof's table, he really saved me by asking in a severe voice, "So are you interested in international relations?" 

"Oh, I love them!" I gushed feeling happy that I was at least in the right room. Then, I made an impassioned speech about how the young people of today were criminally indifferent to the world around them and had no political stance. Our grandparents, however, really changed the world with their passionate Communist beliefs, and so on, and so forth.

"OK," the professor said. "I'm guessing that you have no idea how to answer any of these questions, right?"

"Not a clue," I confessed brightly.

"Fine, you can go," he said. "I'm giving you a B."

So if you think that people in the KGB were all humorless and cruel jerks, think twice.

Are There Differences Between the Russians and the Ukrainians?

Even though we mostly speak the same language, there are important differences between us that are the result of our different history, geography, climate and culture. Here are some of these differences:

1. The most important invasion that was suffered by the  Russians was that of the barbaric, fiercely militaristic and nomadic Golden Horde. The presence of the Mongol invaders (who did nothing but burn, rape, rob, and ravage) throughout the 13th century isolated the Russians from the rest of Europe, putting them behind other European countries in terms of culture, economy, politics, religion, etc. While this was going on in Russia, a part of Ukraine was subjugated by the Lithuanians (who were behind the Ukrainians in terms of their civilization and development and quickly adopted Ukrainian culture and practices). Another part was conquered by the Poles (who were highly civilized ans sophisticated and brought European trends into Ukraine.) The consequences of this can still be felt today when the idea of being European and belonging to Europe is very attractive to most Ukrainians. Russians, however, are a lot more oriented towards Asia and view Europe with suspicion.

2. Most of the Russian lands are infertile and it is very hard to survive on them. For this reason, there were always strong communal tendencies between people who lived on the land. It was a lot easier to survive if you joined your paltry possessions with neighbors and cultivated the land together. The lands in Ukraine, however, are among the most fertile in Europe. Everything grows, blooms, and requires very little effort to become productive. This is why people are a lot more individualistic. It was a lot more difficult for Stalin to enforce collective ownership in the agricultural areas of Ukraine than it was in Russia. Also, the respect for private property is a lot weaker in Russia than in Ukraine. 

3. There was a very strong legacy of democracy in Ukraine that was completely absent from Russia. Between the XVth and the XVIIth centuries, Ukrainian cossacks created a democratic government where no distinctions were made between people of "high" or "low" birth. Russians, however, were always governed by extremely autocratic rulers. This is why today, Ukrainians are still trying to establish a democracy in their country, while the Russians seem to be quite content with their authoritarian government. 

4. Women always had much greater freedom in Ukraine than in Russia. Since the Middle Ages, Ukrainian women had an opportunity to choose their partners freely. Unlike in Russia, Ukrainians did not practice arranged marriages where women were not allowed to see their future husbands before the day of the wedding. The practice of having the women's side of the house where women had to stay was prevalent in Russia, but nobody ever heard of it in Ukraine. Women did not cover their heads in Ukraine (unless they felt like it), while in Russia they had to do so and cover parts of their faces as well. 

5. As a result of a greater freedom for women, sexually Ukrainians always enjoyed a much greater freedom and fulfillment. The sexual revolution in Ukraine began at around 1910 (earlier than anywhere else in the countries of our Western Civilization) with the writing of one of our greatest writers (and the future Prime Minister of the independent republic of Ukraine) Volodymyr Vynnychenko. 

6. Since their land was so fertile that people were pretty sure that they wouldn't starve no matter how little they work, Ukrainians became a lot more laid-back and likely to engage in prolonged spells of happy-go-lucky procrastination. You want hard-working and determined, go with a Russian. Looking for relaxed and happily snoozing on the sofa? Choose Ukrainian. 

Who Caused the Collapse of the Soviet Union? Part II

The first post in this series got a huge number of visitors, which makes me think that the topic is of interest to people and has to be developed further. So I'll keep writing on this subject until I run out of things to say (which will not be very soon.)

Now, the most important thing you need to do if you want to understand what happened to the Soviet Union and what's going on in its former republics right now is forget about the United States. I know that there are many people who like to believe that every single thing in the world is caused by the United States. Pseudo-liberals unwittingly demonstrate just how much they despise those of us from other countries by their insistence that if life in our countries does not correspond to their standards, that must have been caused by the interference of the US. This attitude is condescending, reductive and wrong. Today's reality of the former Soviet countries was created and is maintained by people in those countries. And it's not a reality that makes them unhappy, so fake compassion for us, poor unintelligent victims of the bad, all-powerful US, is completely misplaced. If that's the direction of your thoughts about us, you need to reexamine what psychological issues make you want to exaggerate the importance of your country at the expense of others.

Even Naomi Klein, who in her imaginative and often funny book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism demonstrates a grievous misunderstanding of the post-Soviet Russia (she refers to Yeltsin as Russian Pinochet, for Pete's sake), recognizes in a grudging manner that the Russians beat the IMF at its own game. Those of you who have read the book know that it's informed by Klein's extremely Americentric agenda. Still, even she doesn't manage to create a convincing account of American protagonism in the collapse of the Soviet Union and the further fate of the former Soviet republics.

Now that we have established a productive framework within which these events should be discussed, we will be able to continue exploring this topic.