Another highlight of my trip so far was stumbling upon a club where a cigarette company was doing a promotion night, handing out free cigs and badges. What? Badges? I think that company’s PR team may need to rethink what is meant by ‘target the younger demographic’. Having said that, they clearly understand the effectiveness of such a campaign is scientifically 10000 times more likely to succeed if you have fit girls handing out aforementioned badges. This largely explains why now I have a badge saying ‘Why Not?’ in Russian, which I use to cover up a hole in the crotch of my jeans (from an unrelated incident).
The fact that it is legal to hand out free cigarettes amazed me, but I suppose it’s not so morally reprehensible considering that the huge majority of Russia's population already smokes. However, allowing such promotions certainly does seem unfair considering that some time in the next year, the government has decided to increase cigarette prices by TEN TIMES in order to combat rising cancer deaths. That’s like suddenly deciding a child is too old for milk and then putting it on a shelf in plain view. Basically, if the Russian government doesn’t want something to happen, they just make it illegal, or impossible, and if people don’t like it then tough borsh (that makes no sense, it’s a kind of soup).
That is, although in economical terms Russia is firmly a capitalist state, in terms of freedom of speech and press they have most definitely regressed back to the Communist period. This is ironic, or maybe just surprising (whatever you think, no one actually understands the meaning of the word ironic and no one ever will. Ironic is so ironic that if you look it up in the dictionary it tells you the wrong meaning, which probably isn’t even ironic, ironically) considering that the opposite occurred under Yeltsin. The latter handled the economic transition into capitalism incredibly badly, completely failing to educate anyone as to what it actually meant (not saying it would have been easy), thus allowing a few opportunistic individuals to hoard 95% (let’s say) of the country’s wealth; but he at least understood the need for people to be able to vent their opinions and emotions, allowing for instance, talk-shows criticising his policies etc. Putin on the other hand, has overseen a huge boost in Russia’s economy (though how much of that money has filtered down to the people is another matter), yet essentially rules as a dictator, something he has largely been able to do through seizing control of the media and disallowing almost any form of criticism against him. Of course, freedom of speech in the everyday is basically allowed - I know most of this through discussing it with a Businessmen I teach. We had quite a funny moment when we started talking about Big Brother and I told him to ‘sshhhh’ as a joke, and he sort of laughed and then quickly scanned the ceiling for cameras. You can take the man out of Communism, but you can’t take the Communism out of the man.
Anyway, this bar I was talking about is also home to one of my favourite Russians, a DJ known as ‘Reject Monkey’. I tried to tell him that that sounds more like a thrash-punk band for 14 year olds, but he's simply incorrigible. Harmless I suppose, until he decided to spit a full mouthful of beer in my face while DJing, I think because I was wearing a shirt while there was dubstep on. By this logic, I should be constantly gobbing on him as he wears dread locks whilst having white skin on. He did come over to me to apologise, saying ‘it’s rock and roll man’ (by which I think he means ‘shit dubstep’), but unfortunately my Englishness got the better of me and I told him, with a smile and reassuring pat on the shoulder, how I didn’t, ehrm, well, you know, really mind at all, actually.
I suppose the only thing about the guy that serves to illustrate a broader point about Russia is his DJ name. Since Russia has had Western capitalism shoved down its throat in such a short space of time, understandably there are things they get, and things they don’t. Sometimes they come up with cool names for stuff, like ‘Barackobamabar’, sometimes not, like ’Reject Monkey’. It’s a country full of contradictions in general: on one hand they make fun of America’s gaudy, tackiness, and on the other I’ve seen a bright gold BMW 4x4, as well as a variety of other cars with tigers, naked women and guns spray-painted onto them; on one hand you see guys who ride round the city on bikes with speakers strapped to their backs blaring out d’n’b, which is pretty cool in a gangster kind of way, and on the other the same guys will strap multicoloured merry-go-round lights to their wheels, so that it ends up more like a bad NERD video; on one hand the fact that you are foreign means a bouncer will do anything to get you into a club, since he thinks you’ll spend money inside, yet on the other the more savvy club bouncers will also ask for a ‘priglasheniya’ or ‘invitation’ (which means ‘bribe’, because you’re not on the ‘guestlist’, and because they don’t ‘like you’). This random door policy all came to a head a few days ago when my friend tried to get into a supermarket, but was refused for being English. I’m pretty sure that’s the first and last time I will ever see someone denied the chance to buy bacon based on where they live.
As I’m slightly embarrassed about the recent club-centric content of the blog, I’ll make an effort to write more about museums and stuff next time. Of course, there’ll be more on clubs too, which is clearly unavoidable since I was once described by a Rugby boy at uni as ‘L-A-D positive’, which incidentally made me want to eat my own face*. Also, there are three more book, film and music reviews up, found through the corresponding tabs running across the top of the blog, go get em!
Do Svidaniya (that means ‘bye’ by the way),
Ronan Davidovich
*Jason Warren’s joke, a controversial up-and-coming stand-up
