I suppose everyone already knows which country is the biggest in the world – Россия. But that’s the kind of second-hand knowledge one acquires from studying a map of the world. If you’re actually in Russia, and not on a train or on a plane traveling through it, but walking around in a big Russian city, you won’t believe that this country has the amount of space it (allegedly) has, because everywhere you go here it’s cramped or crowded. The Russian equivivalent of the English expression “It’s a small world” is «Мир тесен» [The world is very crowded/cramped], and uses the adjective «тесный» which translates into ‘crowded, cramped; tight, compact, close; fig. close, intimate; tight’. Surely, for the people of the world’s biggest country, the rest of the world might seem “cramped”, but then again – where else in the world were families forced to live in one room for the better part of the 20th century? Flipping through «Русский репортёр» this Saturday morning, as always thoroughly enjoying a new issue of the weekly magazine with the slogan «вдумчивое чтение для интеллигентного среднего класса» [thoughtful reading for the intellectual middle class] I came across the following article: «Мечта о миллионах домов: Первый указ Медведева хорош, но трудновыполним» [A dream about a million houses: The first decree of Medvedev is good, but hard to fulfill]. Though while walking through any city of Russia you’ll get the idea that they’re building as much as possible here, wherever and whenever feasible, the truth remains a bleak one: they’re building far from enough. And what they’re building is not what is needed the most, but what generates the most money – luxury apartments that the avarege Ivan can’t afford even with risking everything on a loan or high-end fashion malls where the average Tatiana can only dream of shopping. The larger part of the population can’t afford even a half-decent place to live. Today I was very happy to see the new president concerned with this very same problem, that has bothered me for quite some time now, too bad the cautious journalist who wrote the article is realistic enough not to get as optimistic as me and Димочка.

The article opens up with the following:

«Дмитрий Медведев хочет, чтобы в стране строилось много недорого жилья.» [Dmitry Medvedev wants a lot of unexpensive housing to be built in the country.] «Одно их главных препятствий – отсутствие земли под застройку.» [One of the main obstacles – the lack of land for development (are you kidding me?!).] «Президент собирается отчуждать неиспользуемые земли у государственных собственников – министерств, Академии наук и других госучреждений.» [The president plans to estrange unused land from state owners – ministries, the Academy of Sciences and other government establishments.] «Но эксперты опасаются, что амбициозные планы серьёзно пострадают, столкнувшись с суровой российской реальностью.» [But experts fear that the ambitious plans will be seriously damaged after ecountering the harsh Russian reality.]

The article explains the hopes of Russia’s new president, details his plans (he wants an annual 140 million square meter of housing to be built, compared with the number 64 million that was built in 2007), but describes even more detailed why his plans are unlikely to find good soil in the country. It’s the same old problem as usually, the problem that has haunted Russia, haunts Russia and will always haunt Russia (though I secretly hope it can be turned around one day) – the enormous size of the country makes control hard, and without control on lower levels, far away from Moscow, local officials are very, very likely to destroy the project and take the government money they’ve been given to build cheap houses for their underprivileged citizens and use them to build for the privileged instead. Maybe that’s the reason why Russians seem to dream illogically of Moscow, of making a career completely under control in the capitol, while living in a remote suburb and having to take two buses and then the metro to get to work, thus spending more than three hours in public transport with other likeminded – who also came here for the province to live the dream?

I’m sorry, but to me that makes no sense. It seems to be imperative for Russia that all of the country’s regions should be active and hold opportunities for both life and work, because with only a strong center, you get a system where decrees from a high level never reach the people they were meant for. To this there are two unwanted reactions: 1. ordinary people think Moscow doesn’t care about them, 2. curious foreigners start asking questions and having their own opinions and comparing Russia with other countries, seldom to Russia’s favor.

I hope Medvedev doesn’t give up, though, despite of everything he’s up against. It is an enigma, and not of the same kind as, for example, the Russian soul, which is an enigma in its own right that should remain a mystery. The other one is best to get rid off, the one who has made this country one where people live in tiny apartments and students are forced to live two, three or sometimes four in one and the same small room, where the buses are always over-the-top crowded with passengers, where the streets downtown are too narrow to fit more than four lines of cars, and where even in the empty woods outside of the cities there’s always a feeling of someone else’s presence – mostly because Russians don’t pick up their trash and that’s why in Russia, everywhere you go, you’re never alone. To me this makes no sense. (Am I repeating myself?) And I know I’m not the only one to think about this, my American roommate says this has been her issue since she first came to the Urals five years ago. In average a Swede has roughly half as much space per person as the average Russian (being purely statistical now), yet despite of this Swedish language has a word for ‘privacy’ (Russian lacks such) and has grown up seeing wide open spaces being used as just that – wide open spaces. At first I thought it was just me, and that it was Sweden’s fault. And most likely it is Sweden’s fault that I find Russian’s cramped life style ridiculous, and even more so completely unnecessary. There’s absolutely no need to build your «дача» [summer house] next to the house of someone else, so close that the house can only have two rooms and the garden one row for tomatoes, one for cucumber and three for potatoes? I grew up in a house big enough to give all the five people in my family a room of their plus an alternative private space, I grew up in a town where the buses were never even half-crowded because that would be ‘unsanitary’ according to Swedish standards, I grew up in a land where there were so many places where you could be alone I didn’t even know what it was to feel “lonely in a crowd”.

And yet I love Russia. Perhaps because of the contrasts with my home country, perhaps because we’re so alike after all anyway…

And one more piece of the new president in the news: «У Дмитрия Медведева и Николая II одно лицо» [Dmitry Medvedev and Nikolai II have one and the same face]. The picture is hilarious, check it out!