Names on a Wall

        It seems that every place I visit in Russia has it’s own museum. These “mini-museums” range in size, from a small room or two cluttered with relics of the past, to a historical building with items neatly organized in glass cases and walls lined with paintings. Unlike many western museums where plaques nailed to the wall inform inquisitive visitors, the typical Russian museum is void of such conveniences and for this reason, visitors usually participate on a guided tour rather than explore individually. After visiting a number of these museums, I started to find them quite tedious and rather boring. I have seen the soviet-era coins, the traditional Russian, Tatar, and Chuvash costumes, the rusty tools and instruments of war, and letters so old and stained that I can barely read them. There was a time when I was enamored with tangible objects from the past, but two-hundred-year-old tinker things have since lost their power over me; I have found so much more value in stories and memories than physical trinkets.

            The museum in Cheremshan, a small village located in the southeast corner of Tatarstan, differs from other Russian museums because it also defines itself as a memorial center. The first room of the center is lined in photographs and portraits of researchers, professors, military figures, authors, political figures, and individuals who made significant contributions to the region’s development. When I first walked inside, my eyes settled on an oval frame holding a hand-painted portrait of an old Tatar woman. Below her picture was written her name and the reason the people of Cheremshan remember her in this museum—одинадцать дети (eleven children). At first it was laughable that the woman’s claim to fame is that she raised eleven children. Of course I have heard parents joke about how childrearing is a battle, and I admit that raising a family of eleven is quite the accomplishment, but the simple fact that this woman had eleven children is not the real reason her portrait hangs on the museum wall. No, she was not a mayor or an author or a soldier, but she was a beloved part of the Cheremshan community and, to the people who knew her or her family, is part of the region’s history. History is not only constituted of the relationships between countries and regions, but also (and perhaps more importantly) the actions, decisions, and relationships between individuals.

            Moving from the first part of the museum to the second was a shock to the eyes. Whereas the first room may as well have been wallpapered with photographs and paintings, the walls of the second room were covered in names. The strict lines of Cyrillic letters are overwhelming, and they only become more so when you realize that each name represents a life that was lost on the battlefront. Cheremshan recognizes every person who was lost doing what they believed was right for their country on these walls, from soldiers who fought on both sides of the Russian Revolution, to the 8500 soldiers who were sacrificed during the Second World War, to the women who were lost their lives while working as nurses on the front. Our tour guide told us that when she first started working at the museum, she got to know an old woman who would visit every week and ask to be shown her family member’s names. Every week she would say the same thing, “Each of these names represents a life—a young person who wanted to study, or travel, or love, it represents the opportunities that they never got to have, and it represents their family who suffered the loss of a loved one.”

As horribly sad as this woman’s words are, they are true and incredibly relevant to our current global situation. In a world where peace is a dream but not a reality, and schoolchildren constantly complain about studying history, I think that it is time for us to return to the names and remember that it is the individuals who influence the course of history. Furthermore, we have to remember that sometimes those names are in capital letters and those are the ones that are easier to remember—presidents, great and terrible leaders, famous activists, etc.—but sometimes the names are carved in lowercase letters into a wall. 

Personal Space Bubble, or Lack Thereof

          Even though I am living in the biggest country in the world, most of the time it feels like I’m living in the smallest. I have nothing but fondness for Kazan and all of its people, but sometimes at the end of a long day, I start to feel crowded. Buses brimming with students, men with mustaches and tattooed fingers, and old fat ladies wrapped in fur lumber down narrow streets behind masses of Ladas and old Ford models. Everyone is in a rush to get to where they should have been an hour ago, and no one is getting anywhere. In addition to this physical crowdedness, getting used to a social “crowding” that I have never experienced before has been even more exciting, overwhelming, and sometimes frustrating.

            In my experience thus far, Russians are much more straightforward than Americans. If a student is unprepared for class, the teacher will call him or her out on it in front of the other students. If you fail to return an acquaintance’s text, don’t be surprised if they ask whether you are really interested in talking to them. Coming from New England where people are notoriously passive aggressive and have trouble expressing their true feelings, this shameless forwardness seemed abrasive at first. Over time though, I have come to appreciate how this cultural difference has helped my language skills. Back in the States, I always enjoyed getting to know exchange students, but I always avoided correcting their English for fear that it would introduce some kind of complication to the budding friendship. Here though, my language skills have reached the point where I learn more about the flow of conversations by having conversations with my host family and friends than I do working through practice drills in class. Where I always shied away from offering linguistic advice to foreign students, my Russian friends and acquaintances aren’t afraid to let out a giggle if I use a construction that sounds funny. Realizing that I don’t harbor some secret hate, but actually am extremely grateful for the Russians who are bold enough to correct my speaking, I find myself wishing that I had offered the same experience to the foreign students I befriended in the past. While the American concept of courtesy seems to be foggy with white lies, honesty and respect are tightly bound together in the Russian psyche.

            While I have become accustomed to, and even grown to appreciate, Russian honesty and straightforwardness, I sometimes have a hard time when what qualifies as “personal” in the United States and what qualifies as “personal” in Russia don’t overlap. As far as I know, I am the only person living in my body and I am therefore the only person who knows when I am cold, but since Russians dress for the calendar rather than the thermometer, I can expect to be scolded by a stranger if I am not bundled up enough in January regardless of the actual temperature. God only knows how many lectures I’ve endured from babushka’s I’ve never met regarding the effects of sitting on a bench at the bus stop in the cold on my fertility. If that’s not personal, then I don’t know what is! Even when it’s tempting to use the age old “you’re not my mother” retort when a stranger instructs you to put on a hat, knowing that these pieces of advice, regardless of whether or not you think they are appropriate, come from a place of love (and usually from the heart of a babushka) helps me to slap a smile on my face and just put on the gosh darned hat no matter how much I’m already sweating in my incubator of a coat.