So, going back to the “what Russia lost” question. Excuse a bit of a personal and rambling analysis from someone who has been bouncing around the former Union and its periphery for about 20 years now with a few diversions.
I went to a Russian dissident rock concert in Prague last night, Nogu Svelo led by Maxim Pokrovsky. He left Russia well before this, in 2016. Anyway, the concert was lit. Lots of Ukrainian, free Belarus, free Russia flags. Hearing the chatter in the audience, lots of Ukrainian inflected Russian combined with Belarusian combined with pure Moscow accents and some Kazakh faces. Towers the end, he closed with a banger, “Россия назад” (Russia Go Back (Home) and lots of Slava Ukraina. And let me tell you, before he left he was a legitimate star in Russia.
I say this because the concert offered a window into a kind of Russkiy Mir based on consent and attraction that could have been. I’m not saying that Ukraine and Russia are the same brother nation. I’m saying that there’s a lot of shared experiences, that for decades Ukrainians saw no conflict between rocking out to Russian music and laughing at Russian comedians and that Russia had the opportunity to build a sphere of influence based on affection and shared experiences.
And more than that, I am here to tell you that lord of Russia in the 1990s and early 00s was COOL. It was different than American cool, but it was cool. The type of cultural ferment and turmoil and don’t give a shit attitude and fuck the system mentality that you associate with the 1960s except with that dangerous post-Soviet edge (even cooler). Hell, even the gopniki with track pants and bottles and paperboy hats were cool in their own way. The last badass, don’t give a fuck white people on the planet.
That’s all shit now. There is nothing less cool than a regime approved or even tolerated rapper. Generations of post-Soviet people who would have happily learned Russian to watch the latest stand-up comic (also a great scene, until they all fled) will teach their children that Russian is the language of the aggressor, the enemy, the opposite of cool. And you can’t have comedy in a police state. All the actually cool artists left, and you can’t remain cool and relevant as an exile.
All those people at the concert— no matter their passport— represent the last glimpse at a world where Russia’s neighbors liked her. A crowd of people, from Russia and beyond, screaming at Russia to fuck off in her own language.
That’s what Russia has lost.