It's no secret that I've got a bit of an ongoing fascination with Russia and other countries in the CIS. I've been visiting regularly since 2001, and I've made many, many friends there. I love the energy of the people and the clubs there, and I find it culturally extremely interesting.
The country is vast, a sprawling mass of contradictions. On the one hand you have the impossibly rich elite of Moscow and the major cities, fat from the spoils of the 1990s and Russia's huge wealth of natural resources, and the shamelessly wannabe rich, who have embraced US-style materialism like no tomorrow, sporting a kind of ultra-capitalism which sits rather uncomfortably with my European liberal mores. (Although as I'm reminded by well-to-do Russians, this is because twenty years ago, they had nothing, and maybe tomorrow, they will have nothing, so they're making sure they're enjoying the present). On the other hand, you have relative deprivation in the countryside - living in a "quaint" village is absolutely not an aspiration for well-heeled middle-class city folk like it is, say, in the UK. Strong individualism coupled with collectivism and a huge generosity of spirit; rampant inward-looking conservatism, but an ultra-liberal open-ness amongst many to everything that is new or foreign; extreme beauty and desolate ugliness; unbearably chaotic yet tightly regimented (the trains and metro are cheap and run on time! amazing for a Brit!); traditional values and decadent moral relativism (Russians tell me that when the Communist system was in action, they were essentially told how to think and behave, and since it broke down, and during the turbulent 1990's, there was a sense, that, hey, maybe anything is permitted); genius/talented/creative/destructive/violent/fatalistic; all or nothing.
Contradictions - Russia is all of these things and more, once you put your finger on any characteristic, it surprises you, morphs, and eludes you. I have a lot of affection for it, and particularly (and this is the main thing) for the many fantastic people I've met there. The famous "Russkaya Dusha", the Russian soul, at once hard, dry and pragmatic, and vodka-soaked and sentimentally romantic...
In the second half of 2008, Russia.Ru (Russia's biggest Internet TV website) asked me if I would be interested in taking part in a documentary series where a camera crew would follow me discovering the "real" Russia. I immediately agreed, of course.
This is the intro to "An Englishman in Russia", the first of an initial 10 episodes, filmed over the space of a few days in the Caucasus, the colourful multi-faceted and multi-ethnic South-Western region of Russia, on my way to a gig in the city of Stavropol. Directed by the acclaimed Russian documentary maker Alexander Rastorguev. Enjoy!
http://www.russia.ru/video/moussa_clarke_in_russia_p1/
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