Russia not immune to the crisis

"We are not afraid of the financial crisis, are we?" asked the showman at a club in St. Petersburg, Russia, one November night. "Ne-e-et," responded the young crowd and continued swaying to the techno music.

Although the global economic recession causes morbid consequences to the rest of the world, it prompted Russians to invent new, themed jokes and have a nice laugh over the crisis together. During my fall 2008 study abroad semester in St. Petersburg, I encountered widespread media banter about the economic recession that ridiculed investment bankers and made fun of the whole industry. Still, the majority of the Russian people remained indifferent toward news about the economic downfall. It seemed like they were immune to it.




However, Russia is impacted by the recession and to a great extent. "In the current crisis, Russia is confronting virtually all the negatives at once-sharply declining export earnings from energy and metals, over-leveraged corporate balance sheets and a chorus of bailout appeals, a credit crunch and banking failures, a bursting real-estate bubble and mortgage defaults, accelerating capital flight, and unavoidable pressures for devaluation," Stephen Sestanovich, a George F. Kennan Senior Fellow for Russian and Eurasian Studies, writes for the Council on Foreign Relations. Continue reading

The Mount Holyoke News

Top 5 Photos Taken in Russia

These are my top five pictures I took in Russia during the study abroad program in the Fall.











1. near St. Peter and Paul Fortress
2. Gatchina
3. Tallinn, Estonia
4. Pavlovosk
5. Арка Генерального штаба at Dvortsovaya Square

A Goodbye That Really Counts

I have left a lot of places. I left Bulgaria for the U.S., I left the U.S. for Russia, and now I have to leave Russia for Bulgaria and the U.S. This is my hardest goodbye.



It is the night before my flight tomorrow afternoon—I am packing my luggage, listening to my “no title” music folder on iTunes and suppressing the lump in my throat. I get distracted and start going through my “Russia” pictures. Green picnics and careless walks in welcoming parks, orange, red and yellow seas of falling leafs, frozen lakes with sleeping ducks, unafraid of the snowflakes’ play. I go back to those same sceneries colored by the birds’ songs, the smell of freshly baked peanuts and the invigorating touch of the wind. And I cannot make myself leave this place.

All my other goodbyes were more or less easier. I used to prepare myself mentally for the next adventure and start making plans for my first food choices. But when my father called me 3 hours ago and asked me about my dinner preferences on Sunday, I just shrugged my shoulders and responded, “I don’t really care. Really.”

This goodbye is different because it might be my last goodbye to Pushkin’s motherland. Even if it isn’t, I will never again relive these same moments, that my 21-year-old naïve self experiences now. Naturally, this moment of realization holds true for every single place I visit. Although I leave a piece of my soul everywhere I go, I am now leaving most of it here, in the Soviet-time apartment buildings, in the shapeless Christmas light decorations, in the Neva river and in the hot borsht soup.

Good night, sunshine!

Since the age of eighteen, I have changed several housing situations. In Bulgaria, I lived with my family in a big apartment in Varna and often visited my grandparents in the countryside. In the U.S., I have lived in a dormitory in Massachusetts, shared a house with strangers in New York and had the fortune to stay in the fine apartment of a wonderful alumna. I have never, however, experienced such a complex living situation as the one I am enjoying now in St. Petersburg.

The study abroad program arranges it for all its students to live with host families during their stays in Russia. Home stay, you would think, is as old as the world and shouldn’t have surprised me at all. Well, probably that holds true for home stays in Paris, London or Vienna, but is definitely a new and all-engrossing experience here, in Russia.



My host mother, or so-called hazyaika, is in her 50s. She loves cooking, solving crossroads while sipping her favorite black tea and watching musical TV shows. She also loves putting on make-up, reading educational books and feeding the ducks with her 3-year-old grandson, Ilyosha. In short, she combines so many different nuances of Russian culture that simply knowing her is enough to become fully acquainted with Russia.

Nina Anatolievna prepares my breakfast and dinner, does my laundry, gives me advice about life and blesses me before I set off on a trip. She shows me the gifts she bought for Ilyosha, offers me a warmer scarf or rainproof shoes and tells me stories from her youth. She is a good cook, half-insomniac, very well educated and my personal bridge to smoothly cross from one culture to another or, better yet, from the outside world to my understanding of it.

I will be leaving Russia in a month and know exactly what I will miss most about it. I will miss going to the kitchen, telling my hazyaika, “Good Night,” and her responding softly, “Спокойной ночи, солнышко!”