The Humanities in Russia: A Conversation with Dasha Rudakova

Patrick Powers

Listen to this conversation on SoundCloud.

A little under a month ago—although the days are starting to blur together—I left Russia. Like so many other students studying abroad this semester, worry had quickly turned to fear and then to grim pragmatism as our respective governments, universities, and study-abroad programs grappled with policy towards the COVID-19 pandemic. When the decision was finally made to send us home, I was more relieved than anything else. There would be time to be sad later, but in the moment, any concrete decision was better than the uncertainty we had been facing. The time spent packing and saying goodbye seemed to slip through my fingers with impossible speed, and before I knew it, I was back home in sleepy, rural La Grande, Oregon.

Since coming home, I’ve gone through different phases of emotion. I felt all the selfish sadness I couldn’t let myself feel in the frantic rush before I left—missed all friends I had made and mourned the loss of all the ones I had yet to make. I felt angry and helpless facing the injustice of it all. I felt, and still feel, incredibly grateful for the stable home I have to return to and the relative financial security I have to fall back upon. I entered a deep lethargy and anxious laziness that I am only now, in early April, starting to drag myself out of. More than anything, though, I feel that a great part of me is still in Russia, still in the city of Saint Petersburg. There is so much I did get to experience there, and so much left for me to process. To that end, I decided to use my contribution to this first edition of Soupbone to take myself back to Petersburg, and hopefully to bring a piece of Russia a little bit closer to all of you. There are, of course, many ways to go about this. I could simply write, and I’m certainly writing here, but since the thing I enjoyed more than anything else in Russia was talking to my Russian friends, I figured I’d just do more of the same. Fortunately, my good friend Dasha has both fantastic English and what I think of as a Soupbone-esque approach to life.

You’re more than willing to skip straight to our conversation if you’d like, but I’ve included here a few words about the history and politics of Saint Petersburg.

Saint-Petersburg, often called Petersburg or even just Peter, is the second-largest city in Russia. More than being a big city, though, the city is associated with a vast array of ancient and modern cultural touchstones that add to its importance and distinguish it from Moscow and the rest of Russia. Situated on the Baltic Sea, at the head of the Gulf of Finland, Saint Petersburg was founded by Peter the Great in 1703 to secure and make a seaport out of land he had just captured from Sweden, Russia’s then-perennial enemy to the Northwest. For Peter, named “the Great” largely for his attempts to modernize the Empire, Petersburg would become much more than a seaport. To him, “Modernization” meant Europeanization, and Petersburg quickly became a symbol for all that was Western in Russia. Peter even planned a canal system for the city—to build a Venice of the North—although it never came to fruition. So taken with the idea of westernizing Russia was Peter the Great that he made the city his Empire’s capital. It would remain the seat of government until the Empire fell in 1917. In that time, Petersburg cemented for itself the image as the cultural heart of Russia, replete with theaters, museums, and a vast literary mythology whose contributors include Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoyevsky, and countless other great Russian authors. After being stripped of its Capital status by the Soviet Union, Petersburg (now Leningrad) fell from prominence. The city suffered immensely in the Second World War, enduring almost 900 days of brutal siege at the hands of the Nazis.

Today, Petersburg has returned to cultural prominence, widely recognized as one of the two cities (along with Moscow) that stand significantly above the rest of the country in terms of living standards and wages. The city’s prominence has been helped, no doubt, by its most infamous son of the modern era, one Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. The president pays a great deal of attention to Petersburg, and he highlights the city’s heroic wartime sacrifice as part of his larger mission to use World War II to foster a perennial rally-around-the-flag effect. Petersburg remains proud of its past. If Moscow is a symbol of the new Post-Soviet Russia, one of glitz and business and corruption, Petersburg remains a symbol of the old Russia. Its cultural and artistic institutions remain strong, and arts and culture remain central to the city’s culture. This background will be of great use when Dasha and I speak about Russia’s “two capitals.” Dasha cares a lot about these topics, and she has a very insightful take on it all.

Today, while Russia is generally much more authoritarian than the West and more conservative than the West or China, Petersburg is one of the most liberal cities in the country. This is in line with its European heritage: as the “gateway to Europe,” residents of Petersburg are regularly exposed to foreigners (like me) and other ways of life. Moreover, centuries of idealizing the West (France in particular) means that most young Russians today look to Europe and America as a positive alternative to their current system. This is especially true at the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences, because its connection with Bard College allows many Russian students to study abroad there. Most of them like it a lot, and they tell their friends about how much more fun it is than Russian university (they go for free and don’t have to worry so much about grades). To further explore the social consequences of Russian politics or Russian/American perceptions of each other would be immensely interesting, but it is also far beyond the scope of this project. For now, I hope I’ve provided some useful context for my conversation with Dasha.

Transcript

PATRICK POWERS: Алло, Даша! (Hello, Dasha!)

DASHA RUDAKOVA: Привет, Патрик. (Hi Patrick.)

PATRICK: Готова? (Ready?)

DASHA: Конечно. (Of course.)

PATRICK: Привет, привет, окей… хорошо, ну все. Давай на английском, тогда?  (Hi, hi, okay… good. Let’s go ahead in English, then?)

DASHA: Конечно, давай. (Sure thing, let’s go.)

PATRICK: Отлично, раз, два, три, English. (Fantastic. One, two, three, English.) Dasha! Hello.

DASHA: Hello, Patrick!

PATRICK: Thank you so much for joining me. So, to start, why don’t you just tell me a little about yourself. Who are you?

DASHA: My name is Dasha, I’m a second-year student at the faculty of liberal arts and sciences at Saint Petersburg State University. Originally, I am from Siberia, from a small city, Angarsk, which is located close to Lake Baikal. I moved to Saint Petersburg to study two years ago, and now I’m studying cinema and art history here.

PATRICK: Amazing. Now, we’re speaking over Zoom, not just because we’re practicing good social distancing, but because we’re on opposite sides of the world from each other. Just last week, I was also in Saint Petersburg, and although the coronavirus outbreak sent me back to Oregon, not that long ago we were both in the city, studying at the same faculty. And when we were there, it was a surprise—a pleasant surprise, but a surprise—to me and the other Americans, that you and your friends are really, really engaged with arts and the humanities. We would go to museums all the time, and you seemed to know about all the different artists, theaters, museums, and concerts—all sorts of different cultural events going on. So, it seems pretty clear to me that arts, culture, and the humanities play a pretty big role in your life. Is that right?

DASHA: Yeah, culture takes an essential part in my life, it’s true. For me, it’s somehow a way to find empathy. If the natural sciences help me to understand the structure of the world, the humanities help me to understand people. Art captures fragments of history, not by facts, but by other people’s experiences, emotions, patience, and their mental reality.

PATRICK: So, how do you engage with culture on a day-to-day basis?

DASHA: Through discussions about art, just studying culture, and through that I feel like a part of a bigger cultural process. I think the most important part is to be a part of this international community. Even in the context of our conversation, culture becomes a universal language, and that’s why I want to talk about it, I want to share my knowledge, to visit every exhibition in Saint Petersburg, to go to the theater every weekend. So, I think this is my way to engage with culture, with art.

PATRICK: This is definitely something that I noticed, especially going to theaters and going to different exhibitions pretty much every weekend. And this is something you can do in Saint Petersburg. Is this true of the rest of the country? Or is Saint Petersburg Special?

DASHA: I think that Saint Petersburg is special in that way. It’s called the “cultural capital” of Russia, because culture makes up its life.

PATRICK: Do you think that’s a stereotype, or do you think that it really holds true?

DASHA: Of course, stereotypes about петербуржцы—citizens of Saint Petersburg—exist, but to be honest, Saint Petersburg has a really inspiring atmosphere of creativity. Visiting theaters, museums, and concerts, is the life of people in the city. I grew up in a pretty young city, so it doesn’t have cultural heritage. The study of art history, for me, took place over the internet or through books. When I moved to Saint Petersburg, almost everything I watched on the internet was here. Now I can look at it and touch it. The best Russian artists studied here, wonderful books by Russian writers were written here, and, I think that I was raised by this city, even though I didn’t grow up in it. And maybe that’s why moving was easy for me, and I seem to know everything about Saint Petersburg, about its culture. I was faced with the fact that almost every citizen of Saint Petersburg has quite significant knowledge in the field of culture, and this city gives me motivation to develop myself, to attend interesting lectures, and to be a part of large-scale events in Russian culture. So I’m glad to be here, and to be a part of this cultural community.

PATRICK: This idea of a “cultural community” and a whole city being this particularly culturally rich place, that has a reputation that expands all the way out to Siberia is really interesting to me. It’s especially interesting because I generally associate hubs of arts and culture with the biggest city in a given region—think New York or Los Angeles in the united states. But that isn’t necessarily the case with Russia. Even though Petersburg is the second biggest city in Russia, Moscow is a lot bigger, but it seems like Petersburg has a pretty starkly different reputation than Moscow. Can you describe that a little bit?

DASHA: So, I think it’s quite easy to explain. Russia has two different capitals. In the Russian empire, Saint Petersburg became a “window to Europe,” and after the [1917] Revolution, Moscow regained its status as the capital. And, it turned out that here there are two “capitals” because of this historical division. And, of course, they are two very different cities. It’s believed that people go to Saint Petersburg to be cultured, and go to Moscow to earn money. And yeah, there are lots of stereotypes about it. But Saint Petersburg is a quite homogeneous city that I think tries to preserve history, and Moscow seems to be more modern, open to technologies. It’s faster, and I think it’s enough to compare photos and understand their difference. But, funnily, the tallest building in Russia, Lakhta Center, is located in Saint Petersburg, so it’s funny.

PATRICK: I think one of the things about Saint Petersburg that you touched on that has always been interesting to me—especially as I started to learn more about the city— is the idea that Saint Petersburg is, at least in part, an attempt by Russian culture and the Russian Imperial court to become closer to Europe. This desire to westernize—to look at, historically most particularly France as this paragon of culture that should be emulated and looked towards with admiration—I think is really enduring. And maybe, the modern iteration of this is the faculty at which you study, because this faculty of liberal arts and sciences is not a particularly Russian idea. Can you talk a little bit about what it is and how it’s, I guess, marketed to Russian students?

DASHA: I went to that faculty because I was told that I could get two diplomas: One of Saint Petersburg State University, and one of Bard College, in the United States. They [emphasize] that you can study for a semester in America, and for me it was a unique opportunity, because here I can not only study culture at one of the best universities of Russia, but also try something new, and study abroad in the United States. It’s pretty far from us. My generation has already watched American TV shows, and I’ve seen a lot of [The United States] in my childhood. So, this opportunity for me was really great. And that’s why I decided to go into Liberal Arts. And also, our faculty has a really big list of courses, and I have a great opportunity to choose everything that I want to study while students from other faculties don’t have this opportunity because their schedules are very strict, and they don’t have a chance to change it.

PATRICK: One of the things that you mentioned just now is definitely something that I noticed when I was in Russia—which is that whether it’s films, music, or just culture in general, America is kind of everywhere in Russia. What do you think about that? Is it good? is it bad? is it just something that is?

DASHA: I think that American culture in our life is just a part of it. We watch a lot of American films because they’re just great, we listen to American music because, also, it’s just great, and we enjoy your culture because it’s… a new culture for us. We highly appreciate the culture of past generations, like the culture of the 19th century, but culture of America is kind of new, more modern, and this is why we want to be in it, to engage it.

PATRICK: This is so funny, and it makes so much sense, and I think it plays into a classic American stereotype about Russia which is that Russians are much more literary than Americans. And it comes from a lot of the things we see around Russia, right? Like the main airport in Moscow is named after Pushkin, and all sorts of streets are named after writers, in Petersburg and in Moscow. You know, there’s a metro station in Saint Petersburg named after Mayakovsky, and a canal named after Griboyedov, and another metro station named after Chernyshevsky. So, the names and the heritage of classical Russian culture really are everywhere. But it’s also really interesting that it’s only the stuff from the past that gets emphasized. I think it gets emphasized more than it does in America, but I’d be interested to hear why you think that is.

DASHA: I think that this emphasis takes place because of the financing of the cultural sphere. The state gives money to the cultural field, for the organizing of cultural events, and it takes a decent amount of money, of course. When we talk about cultural institutions, the ministry of culture, it seems to me that no significant change has occurred since the USSR. In my opinion, the word “soviet” in the sphere of culture and education is associated with stagnation. There is the feeling that the ministry of culture, their way of making decisions still lives up to the standards of thirty years ago, and it creates a negative connotation. In the USSR, there was a division into “permitted” and “forbidden.” Many films were banned, books were not published, artists were not allowed to put on exhibitions. But censorship is also emergent now. A few years ago a conflict took place when the film The Death of Stalin was forbidden to be shown in our theaters, and last year the scenes from the movie Rocketman were cut from the film, because it’s “inappropriate content for the Russian viewer”—

PATRICK: —wait, which scenes were cut from Rocketman?

DASHA: The scenes with gay sex.

PATRICK: And they were deemed “inappropriate” for the Russian audience.

DASHA: Yeah. [pauses] So I think that general approaches to culture seem to me to be maintained from the USSR. So maybe that’s why we just want to enjoy culture from other countries. Like America.

PATRICK: Interesting. Okay, thank you so much. I have two more quick questions for you. First, with the coronavirus crisis, everyone’s world has been turned upside down, and that’s true in Russia too. Your classes have been cancelled and moved online, right?

DASHA: Yeah, that’s true.

PATRICK: So, how is this going to change the way that you interact with arts and culture?

DASHA: Every museum, every theater now is closed. So, now, I’m spending my free time watching movies and listening to music… in my home.

PATRICK: I think that’s the way we’re all having to deal with it… that sounds pretty familiar to me! Alright, one last question. I’m interviewing you as part of what I’m thinking is going to be an ongoing project for this humanities collective, Soupbone. It’s a collective of college students, people outside of college, people in academia and outside of it, talking about humanities and what use they are. I want to read you a little quote from the “about” section on our website and ask you to respond to it. I’m interested to see how the anxieties that we have about the humanities translate into the Russian cultural context. So, we say that, ”Soupbone is an ongoing response to the question: what good are the humanities? One of our main goals is to explore how the humanities can help navigate the difficulties of living in a technologically advancing and globalized world.” How do you respond to that?

DASHA: So, I can say that worries about choosing my field of study haunt me almost every day. My friends and I are often in a state of uncertainty, and I have a feeling that everything depends only on my choices. There is much more responsibility, because a universal path for every humanities student just doesn’t exist. I cannot answer questions about my future job, or even my plans for the next couple of years. We often talk about—we at the faculty [of liberal arts and sciences] of course—we joke about liberal arts education, but actually I don’t think I am getting useless knowledge and skills. Maybe I don’t have a clear direction now, but I hope to find it soon. Over two years of study my life has changed dramatically, and I’m grateful for these changes. Probably it sounds pathetic and trite, but I learned to think critically! [laughs] I learned to think critically, to analyze, and maybe to take an active citizenship. My [high] school education didn’t give me these skills, and now I’m developing them. I’m glad to be in this humanities community, and to talk with you, and it’s just amazing.

PATRICK: Well, it’s amazing to talk with you also. Dasha, thank you so much, спасибо большое за разговор. (Thanks so much for the conversation.)

DASHA: Спасибо тебе, Патрик, за это очень интересное интервью. (Thank you, Patrick, for such an interesting interview.)