Another Russia

After my first 10 days in Siberia it is clear that I've moved not only to a different city and a different climate, I've also made a significant change in culture.

On the one hand it seems that I've traveled backwards in time as I moved east; there are aspects of life in the city that seem to have disappeared from the bigger cities in European Russia. One example – there are probably 50 people between my apartment and the nearest subway station 5 minutes away who spend their days on the street selling their garden vegetables, the mushrooms they've collected, or (if they are really desperate for cash) nick-knacks from around the house (in that last category is a woman who sits near my apartment and attempts to sell, among other things, an old computer keyboard and a single, warn-out shoe.)

The flower sellers are the most photogenic!

Another example would be the prominence of Soviet-era buildings in the city. This trait is especially clear if one is driving or riding on the bus, since the city is organized around a series of squares...that are actually circles – roads flow out of the circle like spokes on a wheel, and lining the diameter of the circle is a row of impressive “stalinki”. “Stalinki” were the apartment buildings built during Stalin's rule and almost all have a similar look about them (you can see one particularly colorful example below), and are highly valued by the people here because they are well-built and comfortable (compared to the later Soviet apartment buildings). 

A poorly maintained, but still in-its-own-way-impressive "Stalinka" in Novosibirsk.

St. Petersburg has plenty of old buildings, too, but those old building in the center of the city might be 18^th, 19^th or early 20^th century. In other parts of the city (the residential regions), you'll find many more buildings built in the 1960s and 1970s, including the infamous “khrushchevki” (named after Nikita Khrushchev, who decided to build cheaper residential buildings in order to help with the housing shortage in the Soviet Union.)

This postcard says - "A Khrushchevka - Khrushchev saw buildings for refugees in America
 and decided to build the same kind for us in Russia."

Novosibirsk is too young for old buildings. By the standards of European Russia (Novgorod, the first city I lived in, is at least 1150 years old), it is just a baby. Novosibirsk's development is tied with the rise of trade and railroad in this region a little over 100 years ago. Yet, you don't get the feeling here that Novosibirsk is behind St. Petersburg in terms of its development; instead, it feels like they are on different paths. One gets the impression that Siberians benefit, to a degree at least, from being far away from the seats of power. I'm reminded of that great line from “Fiddler on the Roof,” when the Rabbi indicates what would be a proper blessing for the Tsar: “May God bless and keep the Tsar... far away from us!” While distance from the capital means less access to some of the resources that are offered there, one gets the impression that this area suffers less from bureaucratic pressure of Moscow and from the “brain drain” affecting western Russia. Overall (and, I must admit, maybe it is just the beautiful fall weather that creates this impression) there seems to be a greater degree of calm here; people seem less stressed out and, therefore, less aggressive. If this turns out to be true, this will be a great help in my life here.


These are some of my first impressions, and perhaps it will turn out that they are way off target. Probably the winter will give a more realistic impression of what life in Siberia is really like. In the meantime, a few pictures:

Another example of feeling like I've stepped back in time - "Montana Jeans" and "Montana Coffee" have disappeared from St. Petersburg, but they were here to welcome me in Siberia. 

The sign in the foreground is all over the city - inside the heart are the letters Новосибирск (Novosibirsk). In the background is a large sign on top of a building on the other side of the street. It's a leftover from the Soviet era, and the store name was дружба ("friendship.")

There are birch and berry-heavy rowanberry trees all over the city.

And pine and cedar trees on the banks of the "Ob Sea," the large reservoir on the Ob river that flows through the city.