AFTER OBAMA SOCIALISM HAS DESTROYED THE UNITED STATES....

[Christian]

Survival in Times of Uncertainty: Growing Up in Russia in the 1990s

News about political upheavals, signs of impending economic disaster
or projected natural catastrophes tend to generate strong 'fight or
flight' emotional reactions in readers. We want to sell all we own,
run for the hills and barricade ourselves in a fully stocked compound
- preferably one with a bomb and meteorite shelter attached to it.

Major changes to our lifestyle are inevitable; yet the time frame and
the exact way the changes will occur are uncertain, which only adds to
our stress. I grew up in Russia during the collapse of the Soviet
Union and the accompanying economic upheaval, i.e., during the time of
high uncertainty. I was 10 when the Perestroika started in 1985. The
economic situation got progressively worse, with the very worst
hitting in the early 90-s. I admit I don't remember things as well as
I should have. Psychologically and physically, I was sheltered by my
age and its petty egotistical concerns, by my parents' effort to
provide for the family, and by living in a close-knit community that
had a lot of strength, spirit and intellectual resources. Now that I
think about it though, memories and conclusions are coming up that I
never thought about. Some of them are unexpected and counterintuitive
to the prevailing survivalist mentality; but they may be relevant to
the coming changes and end up being useful to someone.

The crisis in Russia was as much ideological as it was economical.
People had to let go of everything they believed in, in an
unconsciously religious sense. The history of the last 70 years and
beyond was completely re-written in my school books, with good guys
and bad guys switched around by the time I was graduating from high-
school. People found themselves in the midst of a national identity
crisis, with their cultural background modified or erased and together
with it their self-respect based on their country's achievement. While
neither the "democracy" nor the "free market" constitute a truly
robust ideology for the masses, people in the US have a sense of
entitlement and believe in the superiority in their way of living.
Therefore, one might expect some confusion and disorientation as their
illusion of the USA as the "beacon of light" for the world collapses
around them.

The federal government used to plan and control every aspect of one's
life in Russia. While inefficient, it did provide a sense of security
and self-righteous comfort. Today this way of life has disappeared in
a flash, giving way to a very uncertain future. The USA has long-
lasting traditions of local control and the entrepreneurial spirit,
but people in Russia had to learn those from scratch or rediscover
within themselves. However, there was also an upside to the
centralized government-run economy. First, there was no major housing
crisis. Housing in the USSR was government-owned, and eventually was
privatized by residents; quite a few fortunes made and lost, and
individual tragedies happened, but the majority of people kept a roof
over their heads. Second, not as many people were actually laid off
from their jobs. The government institutions and services were hit
very hard, the industry was at standstill, and some plants did close.
Most, however, simply didn't pay salaries for months and there was
very little work to do. But things were still moving, public
transportation was working, and people still had access to basic
medical care and services. In the case of an economic crisis in the
US, organizations and enterprises would likely function more
efficiently than they did in Russia, but when they collapse people
will simply be thrown out on the street.

The immediate bodily memory from that time that comes to mind is the
sensation of cold. Cold winters, faltering heat, cold homes, cold
classrooms in college; wearing coats in lecture halls and hallways,
pen ink freezing. Warm clothes and small space heaters are a must-
have. Also, vitamins and supplements were great items to have on hand.
I remember a large bottle of multivitamins from some western charity's
'humanitarian aid', and how much better we felt after taking them.

By the time the Soviet Union collapsed in December of 1991, the retail
stores were routinely empty. In the winter of 91-92, the starvation on
a national scale was narrowly averted. In 1992, "The First Default"
hit and the currency took a plunge, obliterating everyone's savings. I
went to college later that year and my stipend, which was supposed to
cover one's basic living expenses in a free student housing, was just
enough to buy a chocolate bar.

To survive people resorted to subsistence farming. Everybody had a
"dacha" - a small plot of land, sometimes with a summer house,
sometimes not; whoever didn't have one rushed to get it. A plot of
land just over an acre, planted compactly with all kinds of things,
plus a smaller plot of potatoes, fed the family of four through the
year. Tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage etc were pickled and canned;
berries and apples were made into jams and "compot" -- a kind of
boiled sweet drink; potatoes and root vegetables were stored in a root
cellar.

Those who before the default had put their money into tangible media,
were able to do better financially. Foreign currency which retained
its value was a popular choice. Also, it had proved useful to have at
hand some valuable everyday items, such as alcohol, cigarettes,
chocolate, followed by soaps, cosmetics, etc. These weren't used as
much for bartering as a currency of its own for services rendered.

As I was thinking about this topic, I was struck by the following
realization, counterintuitive but supported by evidence. The limiting
factor in the survival, on both the level of the individual and the
community, was not the ability to produce your own products and not
even the available resources or lack of them. It was transport and
infrastructure - the ability to trade, deliver your surplus elsewhere
and from there get other things you need.

This is why rural areas and small towns in Russia took a very hard hit
in the 90s, and may never fully recover, as some say. One would think
it should be exactly the opposite - people would have gone into the
remote villages and live off the land and the woods. However, even in
the most self-sufficient household one cannot produce or make
everything needed. And being in a remote location makes it difficult
to deliver surplus to others in a timely manner for trading or
exchange, especially with the roads being as atrocious as they were (a
problem endemic to Russia, but can be an important factor elsewhere as
well). Plus, as the government budgets dry up, the collective farms go
bust, the village school is closed, the general store (already empty)
is closed; there is no library, no cars and no gas for them, no TV
reception - in short, absolutely nothing to do other than to drink
yourself into oblivion, making bad home-made vodka from your decaying
surplus grain. The sense of community is gone, people flee like rats
from a sinking ship. The "dachas", mentioned earlier were a different
matter - they were clustered in suburbs and used by town dwellers and
they were flourishing, but in the villages there are still many
deserted houses to this day.

A similar thing happened in small towns. For example, in the town
where my relatives had resided (population 15, 000), the only
industrial enterprise - an assembly line for radio-transmitters - had
closed; the rest of the industry (a bakery and a milk and cheese
processing facility) served local needs only. In a town such as that,
the roads are better and one can bring in things to trade - but one
can only sell as much as people can purchase, and people can't
purchase much since there is no other way to make money besides the
meager salaries of teachers and doctors. Again, the sense of community
weakens, people begin to leave.

Those who stayed back and managed to work in the new conditions -
reorganizing collective farms efficiently, running their own personal
farms, organizing local industries (my relatives had a small fish-
smoking plant that was making good profit) and revitalizing their
communities through those activities - did well though.

The lesson from this is that the desire to hide out in the boondocks
results from a 'fight or flight' emotional response to a stressful
situation, and in the long run is counterproductive. Instead, a
survivor should network within the community, stay just close enough
to major traffic routes, keep the transportation lines open and have
some kind of vehicle at one's disposal. A truck is good if there is
reliable fuel available (the rising prices of oil should be
considered). A horse too, if things get that bad. It is best to be by
a river or another body of water, it is very good to live by the
bridge, ferry or a dock on one's property, and a boat.

In 90's Russia a lot of people who had a bleak job situation and "no
marketable skills", as we would say, got involved in transport and
trade, which serves to further emphasize the importance of
infrastructure for survival. These people were called
"chelnoki" ("chelnok" means "a shuttle"). One could recognize them by
the giant striped plastic coffers that they carried around. In the
early days, somebody could board the train, go to the Chinese border,
fill the coffers with mass-made cheap flip-flops or hair scrunchies,
bring them back to town and resell for profit in retail or in bulk to
other traders who would take it further. Other people went to Poland,
Bulgaria or Turkey. Very soon, these importing operations became more
centralized. Many traders would go to the bulk warehouses in bigger
cities, buy whatever they specialize in and take it to corner markets
for miles around and resell for profit.

This is where having a vehicle really comes in handy. For example, I
remember that an acquaintance's family through some scheme or other
owned a truck, the size of a small U-haul. At first, the parents sold
clothes from the back of the truck in the market. Later, the father
began working as a hired driver for a bigger operation and the mother
no longer had to work. With all that they earn noticeably more than
college professors with extra income, and had no need for a "dacha",
being able to buy everything they need in the market. More often
though, the trading and whatever else, were done on top of the
subsistence farming.

One thing that is important to mention is that organized crime moved
in very quickly to control all the trade and businesses. Mafia and
gangs banded together based on location and/or ethnicity. Therefore,
one shouldn't be afraid so much of people with guns who come to take
your food away, but rather of people who come with guns and demand a
regularly paid share of your profit or surplus. This is another
downside of survival in a remote location: pathocratic organizations
can only be countered with an educated and decisive community effort.

To reflect the growing instability, in Russia personal and corporate
security grew as an industry. Many ex-army officers and military
conflict veteran got involved into the security business. Self-defense
items like Mace, electric shock devices, knifes were sold; martial
arts and weight-lifting became popular. People were putting steel
doors on deadbolts and steel bars on the windows on their apartments,
not paying attention to fire safety. A lot of people got large dogs, a
Rottweiler or a German shepherd (which really isn't a good idea in
small apartments), and insisted in training them to attack.

With organized crime comes, well, all kinds of vice and the
surrounding industry - gambling, prostitution, drugs and human
trafficking. The not-so-glamorous past of some of the top Russian
fashion models goes back to those kinds of things. One should be aware
of that and protect the most vulnerable in the community.

Another surprisingly counterintuitive point is directly linked to the
above, or rather to the underlying general values and the self-serving
aspect of the human behavior. The bare necessities were essential for
sure. But they weren't things that were traded in the most visibly
brisk way. Rather, those were the unessential items that symbolized
status, from tiny trinkets like chewing gum to jeans, fox fur hats,
and entertainment centers to luxuries like certain antics and such. A
couple of recent studies, aiming at figuring out correlation between
earnings and happiness, showed that it isn't so much the absolute
income as the fact that you are earning more than your neighbor that
makes people happy. Another reason may be that those things served as
a measure of prosperity that made one feel that his or her hard work
was paying off. Human nature, I guess.

I remember in the winter of 93-94 walking around the city's main
street and going into a store - not the fanciest one either - just to
stare at a bottle of liquor that cost more than 1 million rubles. To
put it into a prospective, my straight A monthly stipend was a couple
of thousand rubles which could buy me a few large chocolate bars
(things have gotten better since 1992). Yet, there was that bottle,
waiting for its buyer, and there were people in the city who could
have bought it and probably eventually did. This could give us some
idea as to what kinds of items may be useful in the coming economic
crisis for trade with the outside. For example, animal breeders were
doing well - and one could understand the demand for large guard dogs
- but somehow even in the hardest of times there were people who would
sink $100 (yes, dollars, i.e., many monthly stipends) on a rare
Persian kitten. Some poor teachers or librarians were literally living
off their pets, selling the litter and spinning wool out of the fur
and down.

Personal survival and the survival of the family depended on a right
mix of flexibility, on one hand, and staying true to oneself on the
other. The more invested people were in their job-related identities
and past achievements, the worse it was for them. In general, women
fared better than men. The elderly were in trouble. When it came to
the world view adjustment, the middle-age men were hit hardest; too
many were paralyzed with all the changes and were content to sit
around in their cold and empty engineering or accounting offices,
drinking tea or stronger drinks and swearing at the government.
Oftentimes it was their wives who buckled down and traveled the
railroad with the striped coffers in hand. The birthrate plunged. The
children who were born during that time exhibited more language delays
and other learning problems (I have seen a crude estimate of 15-20%
increase from early education specialists) than those born a decade
before or after.

Younger men, those in their 20s or early 30s, took the plunge more
often, going off the beaten career tracks and into either business or
organized crime or both, as it happened. Some of them were quite
successful; I am not talking about oligarchs who had plenty of
connections to begin with - just the average folk. Yet presently the
life span of men in Russia is mid-fifties, 12 years lower than that of
women, and there is another demographic gap among the males in their
late 30s and 40s. A lot of the latter were simply killed off in gang
wars of the 90s; others are now succumbing to the delayed effect of
stress: heart attacks and degenerative diseases.

In my community most people worked in academia or research. Those jobs
were severely affected by the budget cuts and delayed salary payments.
Yet among the intelligentsia, leaving the academic career to trade
goods in the market was viewed as selling one's soul to the devil.
Some people have disregarded that prejudice and some of those who put
a sincere effort in their new endeavors ended up being quite happy
with their choices, not marred by their former colleagues' bitterness
over their success in their less than noble pursuits.

However, those who stayed in academia approached the situation
differently as well. Some just went to work day in and day out,
accomplishing little. Others looked for opportunities in the industry.
A lot of professors and researchers were getting R&D contracts with
government and business organizations to help support their budgets.
Still others refused to compromise and stuck to their principles of
doing what you love, i.e. fundamental research, and doing it well.
Those people made an effort to publish in international scientific
journals, to go to conferences and make contacts there to market their
primary skills. From there, foreign grants and joint projects
sprouted. It was common for a lead scientist to work most of the time
overseas, and with these grants finance the research at home. Many
people left and never came back, especially the young people who went
to graduate schools and post-doc positions, and then to fulfilling
careers abroad.

The value of education didn't decrease. On the contrary, it increased,
especially for certain professions. Often these fads were misplaced
and didn't correspond to reality. When I was applying to college in
early 90s, many people wanted to major in business, economics or law.
These degrees were considered prestigious but had at the time limited
further opportunities in academia, research or corporate work in a
provincial town. In truth the most valuable major in my college ended
up being geology and geophysics. It was the easiest to get into but
the graduates were snapped up by Russian and foreign corporations in
the booming oil and related industry, to do the exploration of natural
resources, and have on average done exceedingly well. This is an
isolated example, but it does suggest that in times of economic
uncertainty when trends can't be fully unraveled, simply doing what
you like best and resisting the peer and cultural pressure - in other
words, trusting the process - may be one's best bet. Another sure bet
is providing infrastructure for people's choices, whatever they may
be: college prep tutors and foreign language teachers have done well
for themselves, because no matter which major people choose to pursue,
they still need to make the cut.

It seems that in order to survive and then to live (which isn't the
same thing), sometimes you had to balance between being flexible and
staying true to whatever your personal convictions are, and sometimes
you had to make a hard choice between the two. The latter sometimes is
the matter of changing one set of social conventions for another - and
that is a very big thing for many people - but it can go even deeper
to the very essence of the person, I think.

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