For this semester, I have spent my time reading a genre which I believed was all but dead, the literary travel-louge. In this age of the information superhighway, the literary travelogue, with its cliched markets, leaning italics of words and phrases in the native tongue of the location in question, and contrived reflections on the state of the folk, seems to no longer be needed. Of course, there is the immensely popular genre of the video-travelogue, but I would prefer to put these, for the most part, in the category of “free-advertisement” for specific locations. In my almost half year in Russia though, I have been forced to the conclusion that the travelogue is an ever more necessary genre. Unintuitively, the closer our world comes together via digital media, the less the peoples of the earth understand each other. This is most acutely exemplified in the case of the American and the Russian peoples. And so to a limited extent, I attempt one here.

To a certain extent, this lack of understanding comes from the fact that Russia and the United States are reflections of each other. Both countires have a history of slavery that only ended in the 1860s. Both are countries that extended laterally, pushing out a native population in the process. Both are multicultural countries, although the ways in which they both became multicultural vary greatly. The American looks at the Russian, and the Russian looks at the American, and is afraid to find himself. This especially becomes true in the case of peoples’ imaginations in relation to the supposed “Russiagate.” Americans, unfortunately mainly liberal Americans, who praise themselves for upholding with all their strength the pillars of tolerance, inclusivity, and equality, start barking in semi-opaque tones when they even begin to hear the trilled “R” that starts the name of the country, “Rossiya.” I remember when I first came to Reed (for reference, this was in 2017, the first year of the reign of Trump), at the Russian department open-house, a newly matriculated student’s mother said, without the slightest shade of embarrassment, “Do you teach in your classes how to hack the elections?” And at the moment, I wished a slight breeze would have blown into the house, opening the bathroom door, so from across the kitchen, in the bathroom mirror she could see her eyes, which only about 25 years ago, read with pleasure the headline that the United States entered the elections that re-elected the then president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin. And so, the liberal American runs around, scared of their own shadow, knowing that that shadow would probably tell him to take off his shoes when coming into the house, and to not say hello over the door threshold.

Russians, especially those of the older generation, take particular joy in this picking at these parallels, like they pick at the bones of the river-fish they eat. “Crimea, this is like our Texas.” The logic was clear, just as Crimea had a referendum to break off from Ukraine to join Russia, so did Texas have a referendum to break off from Mexico to join the United States. While Crimea was once part of Russia, however, Texas never was part of the United States before its accession to statehood. On Channel 1 (the major state-run television channel in Russia), a documentary about the history of Texas was shown to display this point.

Of course, there are major points of divergence between the United States and Russia, which trickle down into our foreign policy. Primary among these is the split between the Russian and American mentalities, especially in regards to one’s material existence. The American, when presented with the opportunity to work more, and in turn earn more, without a doubt will jump at the opportunity. Americans fill their lives with objects, stuffing them like pastries, only to enjoy the visage of them in their minds, as they work away. A Russian provided with the same choice, would choose the opposite. Better to work less, and if that means earning less, so be it. There will always be the collection of cans stretching back 30 years, from which one can eat. When presented with sanctions, Russians don’t think, “How will I buy all the Western products I once enjoyed?” For Russians, the joy is not in the consumption, but in the process. Trips to Estonia and Finland to buy European cheese, coordination of relatives to bring different groceries from different countries, the attainment of multi-entry visas for day long grocery trips, and of course, the use of the black market. Sanctions only provide for Russian people another challenge which many gleefully take on, a return to the rituals of Soviet life, in which people took weekend trips to Moscow to buy sausages.

Russia is not a solitary state by its history, but a collection of differing principalities, yet another similarity with the United States. In addition, the ethnicities of Russia span from Russians, Tatars, to Caucasians, to Ukranians. As a result, in the back of the national consciousness, there is always a fear that the centuries-old seams will come undone. If anything unites the Russian nation it is the banya, or public bath. The smell of the banya is that of after a hot rain; it makes up the one leg of the trinity of Russian smells, the other two being the mold of Soviet apartments, and the smell of watermelons being sold on the street in the summer. Collections of branches, which are used for exfoliation (or self-flagellation), soak in vats of hot water. Men, with powerfully protruding bellies, saddle themselves, fully exposed in a changing room that doubles as a smoking room and impromptu bar. Little streams of dirty soap run from each direction. Further within, into the steaming chamber, there is the constant sound of leaves against flesh, as people whip themselves with the aforementioned bundles. The repetitiveness of it all, and the heaviness of the accompanying breathing reminds one of crickets before dawn. The Russian language, which slips into its most comfortable form in the banya, by itself has a certain chirp to it, as it oscillates between the rolls of K-T-K-T. If there is some US military high brass, sitting up in his tower, thinking of ways of how to destroy Russia from behind his velvet cape, he should not worry about the Kremlin. No military base, or naval installation should even be considered a target. Russia will exist, even if half of it is raised to the ground, and the other half is frozen over for a thousand years. But if the banya is targeted, and destroyed, so too will Russia vanish. As long as the Banya lives, so will Russia.