Dear Friends of CCI,
Mike Metz has sent another contribution to our foto-journals. He covers our entrance into Moscow and first days there. Experience his initial impressions of Russia along with us.
Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives
Coming out of a shiny new airport into the Moscow air one is hit with a Times Square-size digital billboard for Hyundai. The city is wealthy and clean, with wide boulevards, new shiny cars, and the same McDonalds, KFC, and Louis Vuitton shops as London, Beijing, or New York.
Our first session is with an American businessman, been here 20 years, came over with a large US company in the heydays of the nineties when fortunes were to be made. Had much to say about Putin, Trump, the sanctions, the Russian economy, but what struck me was when he said of US-Russian relations, “I think it always helps to try and understand what’s in the other fellow’s mind.”
And what’s in the typical Russian mind:- when the Soviet Union collapsed, and Russians wanted nothing more than to be like Americans, we sent advisors on “shock therapy,” bringing economic disaster, 40% unemployment, 1000% inflation.- for a hundred years Russia faced one western invasion after another, but both Bush and Clinton promised NATO “would not move one inch east,” and now NATO tanks and missiles sit on Russian borders.- a US State Dept-funded coup of the Russia-friendly democratically elected president of Ukraine, again on the Russian border, and NATO ships sailing into Sevastopol, Russia’s only warm water port, was only a matter of time.
There is evidence for all these, just as there is evidence against them, but these are some thoughts in the Russian mind.
Meanwhile, pierogis abound.
And the subways are works of art.
Michael Metz,
Citizen Diplomat
September, 2018