The New Russians: Nostalgia for the Occupier, Commiseration for the Immigrant

Abstract

In the summer of 1984, I took a language course in the East German provincial city of Halle. One night, after seeing the movie Tootsie, I was waiting for the tram to take me back to my dorm on campus at around ten in the evening. The tram which came consisted of three cars. All other passengers who were waiting on the square for some reason split into two groups and got into the first and the third cars. Led by an individualist impulse, I climbed in the middle car, to understand only in seconds why the others had avoided it-it was full of Soviet soldiers, returning to their barracks from the train station. The locals had spotted them watchfully in the middle car, but I had not. And here I was, a young woman on a tram full of Soviet soldiers. No German would ever climb into this car. But I was not a German, I was Bulgarian-by definition not as hostile and resentful to the Soviets.I The soldiers in the car could not possibly know this, however. To them I appeared German and what I had just done by pure mistake came out as an audacious provocation. Yes, Russians were present across Central Eastern Europe-- military officers, their wives and children, their soldiers, their support staff, all stationed there to secure the status quo of the region as a Soviet sphere of influence-but they were completely ostracized, excluded, living parallel isolated lives. The most interaction they would have with the local people would be to trade in smuggled gasoline or watches. Only lowest class women would get involved with them, and orderly citizens would take every opportunity to show scornful disdain for their unwanted presence. No one had asked the Russians to come. Everybody hated them. They were not just innocuous intruders, they were occupiers, many of them recognizing the awkward position they were in once confronted with hostility. Everything in our lives depended on the whims of the Soviet political leaders. These soldiers represented an extension of the oppressive political will that we all hated so much. There was a silent consensus among the East Europeans-as there is no other way, that we would endure the Russians but not get involved with them in any way. And here I was, breaking the unwritten code of no interaction. Only, I cannot tell who on that night was more terrified by this accidental incitement-me or them. There we were, caught in complete silence, I-terrified by my mistake, they-terrified by my provocation. Of course, I could get off at the next stop and move to one of the other cars. But I did not. I stayed there, petrified, for the whole duration of the twenty minute long trip through the industrially polluted and desolate city of Halle. The soldiers sat there, equally petrified. I was looking through the window, and so were they. At one point they got up and got off the tram. Mine was the next stop. Fifteen years have passed since then, and so much has changed. The Soviet Union is no more, the Russian troops have gone, and the countries of the former Soviet sphere struggle to situate themselves favourably within the new Europe. Weakened Russia is like a wounded ogre. Russian troops have withdrawn, opening up space for an influx of new economic migrants, and Russian is spoken from the Carmel market in Tel Aviv to the beaches of San Francisco. Alongside the changing international situation of the Russians, their international cinematic image keeps changing as well. They used to be Hollywood's traditional villains, demonised in a wide range of cold-war films. A side-effect of the warming of the political climate between Russia and America in the late-1980s was the disappearance of Russian villains, military, and intelligence officers from the American movies. Ever since, Hollywood has been living through an identity crisis, searching for replacement villains among Japanese, Arabs, Serbs, and aliens.2 The Russians are being humanised nowadays. The shift in depictions of Russians is visible in the cinemas of Eastern Europe. …