How Do Russians Think

Daily life on Tretyakovskiy Proezd Street, Moscow, February 2016. Arthur Bondar

Justin Lifflander, American Foreign Service Association: Four Centuries and Three Decades of Russian Thinking

Conversations in Moscow with Russians of different social strata paint a vivid picture of a country grappling with the meaning of the past quarter-century's upheavals.

At first it seemed to me as if he was wearing X-ray glasses. Having purchased a fur hat from Sasha, the teenage fartsovchik (black marketeer) working the Oktyabrskaya subway station in Moscow that day in 1986, I earned the right to chat with him in my broken Russian.

As he scanned the passers-by in search of potential clientele, I couldn’t figure out how he was able to spot the foreigners. “Look carefully,” he explained. “The facial features, the shoes, the wrist watches, the eye glasses. …” I began to understand how he chose who should be offered his znachki (pins) or money changing services.

Thirty years later my fartsovchik is probably a successful oligarch. He and his countrymen no longer think they are “covered in chocolate”—a phrase going back to the Soviet era meaning “fortunate, lucky, living well”—as they build the socialist paradise while the West rots on the garbage heap of history.

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WNU Editor: Over the years I have read some posts that explain Russia that I wish that I had written .... this is one of them.