Legacy

The NYT ran two pieces this weekend that seem unrelated but are actually variations on a theme. Clifford Levy:

Yelena Kasyanova booked her trip at a local travel agency in about as much time it takes to drop by the market for a few groceries. She was soon lounging here by the Mediterranean, a working-class anybody from an anyplace deep in Russia, a child of the Soviet era who still remembers the humiliating strictures that once made it difficult to obtain a passport, let alone a plane ticket. And all around the beach were so many just like her. ... There is perhaps no better symbol of the growth in Russian tourism than the very resort where Ms. Kasyanova was staying, the Kremlin Palace Hotel, a kind of Las-Vegas-does-Moscow-by-the-shore extravaganza whose buildings are replicas of major sights at the Kremlin complex and nearby neighborhood. ... "It is now so easy — buy a package tour for $800, and here we are, in paradise," said Ms. Kasyanova, who, like many Russians here, was amused by the resort’s trappings but also interested in exploring the mountains and other places nearby. "It speaks of the high standard of life in Russia, of the improvement in life in Russia." ... "For us, it’s like a fairy tale to be here," said Lilia Valeyeva, 46, a clerk from Chelyabinsk in the Ural Mountains who had never before been abroad when she visited Turkey two years ago. Since then, she has returned twice. ... Many Russians interviewed here credited Mr. Putin, the former president and current prime minister, for their ability to travel, saying that he was responsible for Russia’s new prosperity. "It is not like before, when we were afraid of everything,” said Larisa Kazakova, 32, a real estate agent from Yekaterinburg. "We travel, and we live a good life." ... The writer and commentator Viktor Yerofeyev said he had noticed that the more Russians traveled, the more they tended to lose some of the coarseness that at times characterized Soviet society. "Through all this travel, we are seeing a change in mentality at home," Mr. Yerofeyev said. "People are now seeking pleasure, whether it is in the night clubs of Moscow or in restaurants. Travel is a continuation of that pleasure. Just to have pleasant lives, not to suffer, to feel positive. Their life compass changes, from ‘I don’t care about anything’ to ‘I would like to have a better life.’ ... The biggest struggle now for the Turkish hotels is to find enough staff members who speak Russian. Those in the tourism industry who had mastered German and English are returning to language school. "Everybody is studying Russian now," said Suat Esenli, a worker at the Kremlin Palace Hotel...

And from Bob Herbert's column:

A man who described himself as a conscientious worker who has always pinched his pennies wrote the following to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont: "This winter, after keeping the heat just high enough to keep my pipes from bursting (the bedrooms are not heated and never got above 30 degrees) I began selling off my woodworking tools, snowblower, (pennies on the dollar) and furniture that had been handed down in my family from the early 1800s, just to keep the heat on. "Today I am sad, broken, and very discouraged. I am thankful that the winter cold is behind us for a while, but now gas prices are rising yet again. I just can’t keep up." ... Senator Sanders asked his constituents to write to him about their experiences in a difficult economy. He was blown away by both the volume of responses and “the depth of the pain” of many of those who wrote. A 55-year-old man who said his economic condition was "very scary," wrote: "I don’t live from paycheck to paycheck. I live day to day." He has no savings, he said. His gas tank is never more than a quarter full, and he can’t afford to buy the "food items" he would like. His sense of his own mortality was evident in every sentence, and he wondered how long he could continue. "I am concerned as gas prices climb daily," he said. "I am just tired. The harder that I work, the harder it gets. I work 12 to 14 hours daily, and it just doesn’t help." A working mother with two young children wrote: "Some nights we eat cereal and toast for dinner because that’s all I have." Another woman said she and her husband, both 65, "only eat two meals a day to conserve." A woman who has been trying to sell her house for two years and described herself as "stretched to the breaking point," told the senator, "I don’t go to church many Sundays because the gasoline is too expensive to drive there." Many of the letters touched on the extremely harsh winter that pounded Vermont and exacerbated the economic distress. With fuel prices sky-high, many residents turned to wood to heat their homes. A woman with a 9-year-old son wrote: "By February, we ran out of wood and I burned my mother’s dining room furniture. ... I’d like to order one of your flags and hang it upside down at the Capitol building. ... We are certainly a country in distress."

One might argue, perhaps correctly, that these are just momentary, newsprint-ready snapshots of a much larger landscape. Or that after centuries of insularity and suffering, Russia's upward mobility is both natural and long overdue. But the oil-related reversal in fortunes for the U.S. and Russia in just a few years is stunning. While Russians' "life compasses" change (check out the photo at the top of Levy's article here) Americans pawn family heirlooms, use dining room furniture for firewood, stay home from church because they can't afford to go, and fill up their cars a quarter-tank at a time. "Everybody is studying Russian now" sums up this administration's legacy pretty well. Instead of crediting Putin, Russians might want to send their thank-you notes to the White House, care of the Federal Reserve.