The Good Russian: Jana Bakunina

 

Aging depletes many of life's pleasures, as the sensory pleasures decline with cranial nerves (hearing, vision, smell, taste), and muscle mass slackens, and blood flow to the nether regions south of the border narrows--gradually things slip away.

Jana Bakunina

But one new pleasure in aging is the capacity to relish surprise. Once you get into your seventh decade, you start seeing things again and again, and the delight or despair which titillate the younger generations is ho-hum to the septuagenarian--seen it all before. So what? 

The American government embarking on foolish, disastrous adventures, (Korea, Vietnam), scoundrels ascending to control of positions of power with resulting disruption and unrest (1953, Joe McCarthy, then 1968, Nixon, 2024 Trump), stock markets crashing and the financial system teetering (1929, 1987, fill in the blanks). Been there. Done that. Wake me up when you've found something new under the sun. For the very young, everything is new, everything a surprise; for the simply callow, there are fewer but still frequent surprises. 

But for the old, an actual surprise is a real, piquant treat.

So, this morning, on his bike ride to North Beach, with his 21st century blue tooth ear plug plugged into his ear, connected to his new iphone,  streaming a podcast from the "Atlantic Monthly," Mad Dog found himself surprised, astonished even, lucky he did not ride right over the sea wall into the Atlantic. 

They were interviewing Jana Bakunina, a Russian expat, living in London, who has written a book with a startling premise: Russians are doing just fine, thriving even, delighted to be living in Russia and being Russian.

How many podcasts had Mad Dog listened to from the "Wall Street Journal," "The New York Times" and even the "New Yorker,"  mordant toned invocations of the approaching Russian apocalypse,  wherein the pundits were asked to expound on the terrible toll the war in Ukraine is having on the average long suffering Russian? But from Ms. Bakunina Mad Dog learns the average long suffering Russian is not suffering at all, but is having a wonderful time, and very happy, thank you.

Returning to Russia after years in London, Ms. Bakunina expected to find the same old dreary Russia she left, but she  is stunned by the clean streets, the new buildings, the dazzling cities and suburbs and the bustling restaurants, the wealth, the cars, the clothes, the good looking people all having a wonderful time.

Who knew? 

Mad Dog thought the poor Russians were struggling with the war against Ukraine. Runaway inflation. A collapsing economy. 

Apparently, not.

From their perch inside Russia, her Russian friends and family seemed hardly aware of Ukraine. It was no more part of their lives or concern than the next summer Olympics.

She Thinks She's Ukrainian

Russia is a big place, and its vastness has protected it from fires burning in the rest of the world.

Whatever Does Not Kill You...

As Julia Ioffe has documented, in "Motherland," the Russians are a people who march to the beat of their own drums. During the Second World War the Germans drove deep into Russia, conquering a territory the size of France, but, as Ioffe notes, the Russians could lose two Frances and still not be conquered. 

Mad Dog remembered his father's remark upon returning from Spain in 1970, where the fascist dictator Franco was still in power, "They all looked so prosperous and happy in Spain!" my father marveled, "Don't they know they're living under a dictatorship?" And Mad Dog had a similar experience in Hungary in 2024: Budapest was a happening place, filled with young, joyful people cruising the Danube and partying hard. Nobody seemed to mind Victor Orban.

                   If she weren't Russian, She'd be Irish

Ms. Bakunina tells a tale at once familiar and exotic to the American listener: Her father  loves Putin, and speaks of the forceful conquest of Crimea as "reunification," and her friends look around from their tables at the sumptuous restaurants and say, "We are doing great. Why worry about Ukraine?"

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/oVaSpBiYb1A

                                

Ukraine hardly surfaces in the Russian consciousness, apart from an occasional recruitment poster plastered on some random wall, advertising for new recruits to some mercenary force. 

Ukrainians are hunkering down for the loss of heating infrastructure, owing to Russian bombardment; they've already adjusted to loss of electricity during many hours of the day. How long they can hold out is anyone's guess.

But nobody in Russia Ms. Bakunina found seemed any more  concerned about Ukraine than Americans are about those boats in the Caribbean which keep exploding because the American Navy keeps blowing them out of the water without warning. Who cares if a few fishermen are mistaken for narco traffickers? Our tough guys are blowing their bad guys to smithereens.

Churchill, of course, famously said, "I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: But perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interests."

And why is it in the Russian national interest to subjugate Ukraine? Well, Vladimir Putin made no secret of it: He said the greatest disaster of the 20th century was the implosion of the Russian empire. Not World War II, mind you, because that came out fine in the end, despite 20 million dead. But the loss of all those subjugated states--that's what eats away at Putin. When Trump asked him why he invaded Ukraine, violated its borders, Putin reportedly replied, "Well, Ukraine isn't really a nation, you know."

Forebears

What other "nations" may be part of Russia--Hungary, Serbia, Slovakia, Poland, Georgia, Moldova, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the former East Germany remains to be seen.

 Sharapova When She Was Good 

Mad Dog remembers a tennis match on TV his younger son made him watch. Maria Sharapova playing some young Eurasian woman, a quick, small woman, who was much more nimble, displaying a variety of shots Sharapova could not match. Mad Dog never much liked watching tennis on TV--it is just so monotonous, droning on, back and forth, a metronome without pitch-- but his son insisted he stay to watch this match. "Wait," he told Mad Dog, "Just watch Sharapova. Be patient, for once in your life." So Mad Dog, thus chastened, stayed put on the couch, hunkered down for the hour and a half it would take Sharapova to patiently, relentlessly, inelegantly grind her opponent down. No tricky shots. Nothing spinning, dropping, line hugging, just sheer power, as Sharapova--who looked like a plodding giant compared to her darting, balletic opponent on the other side of the net, a player who was far more skilled and dazzling--but Sharapova ground her down. 

Mad Dog was getting fidgety, angry, but never bored, because Sharapova was showing what Sharapova did best, which is to say just not giving up, not discouraged--she knew her size and remorseless tenacity would simply outlast her opponent, no matter how flashy or plucky or slashing that opponent may be.  Sharpova could lose a point, a game, a set, the entire territory of France, but she would not lose.

Let Napoleon or the Wehrmacht come. The Russian will outlast you. Or, as Khrushchev  once said, "We will bury you."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ov_tDoDsAQ&list=RD-Ov_tDoDsAQ&start_radio=1

As Julia Ioffe suggested in "Motherland," these folks are not going anywhere. They will still be there.

CODA:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ech_a5WlgwA