A stranger to Russia again

A cluster of futuristic skyscrapers dominates the skyline to the west now, casting a shadow over the seven Stalinist “wedding cake” buildings that once defined the city. Good restaurants, wine bars and coffee houses line the boulevards, and cars clog those 16-lane thoroughfares. The street vendors and kiosks that gave personality to the neighborhoods have vanished, and I shudder to think where the Gypsies, beggars and buskers have gone.

Moscow is polishing itself up for the World Cup that begins in a few weeks, and I fear they may have rubbed off a bit of its character as well.

But the changes aren’t all visible to the eye. My husband and I spent time with Russian friends we’ve known for 30 years, friends who’ve always been able to shrug off the vicissitudes of our governments to find common ground in our shared humanity. This time, dinner table banter among well-educated, middle-class Russians had an unwelcome edge to it.

We heard barbed comments about western “aggression” at the Russian borders of Ukraine and the Baltic states. Our comments about a logical response to the annexation of the Crimea, snatched from a sovereign neighbor state, were rebuffed. Their retorts of “it’s always been Russian so, of course, it belongs to Russia” startled us.

They liked President Trump, they said, because he was a businessman with a successful business empire. When I replied that I found it impossible to support a man who felt free to grab women’s genitals, one woman said, “In Russia, women would line up to be grabbed by him!”

Another asked, “Who would vote for Clinton any way? She’s got a brain tumor. We saw her collapse on television.” When we explained that she had pneumonia and had fully recovered, they rolled their eyes.

We began to grasp the idea that the pro-Trump propaganda that was filtered through social media during the election campaign in the United States was actually the steady drip of daily news in Russia, packaged by the state-owned and state-regulated media. Recalling the recent revelations about the television stations across the United States owned by Sinclair Media, ordered to read identical editorials spouting a neo-conservative message, raised goose bumps on my arms.

I met with several young people in St. Petersburg who offered a different perspective. We’d arrived just a few days after demonstrations, led by opposition leader Alexei Navalny, had filled the streets of Moscow, and images of teenaged protesters bludgeoned by hooded police had flooded the internet. The 20-somethings whom I talked with applauded the activists and told me that social media (which the Kremlin, somewhat belatedly, has begun to try to block) is the antidote to a state-controlled press. They turn to political and dissident blogs and YouTube channels to shape their views.

But where are the remnants of that free and independent press that I went to Russia in 1995 (as the U.S. Information Agency’s Journalist-in-Residence) to nurture?

On life-support, I’m afraid, now that Russia rivals Afghanistan as the most dangerous place on Earth to practice journalism.

We left Russia impressed by the transformation of Moscow and St. Petersburg, but deeply saddened by the ever-widening — and carefully orchestrated — political chasm between them and us.

Michelle Carter, the former managing editor of the San Mateo Times, is the author of “From Under the Russian Snow,” her critically acclaimed memoir of the year she lived in Russia.