Minsk and Moscow: there is mutual influence of two different social structures

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the path of Russia and Belarus was not smooth and parallel. In Moscow, the old Soviet life was decisively broken. In Minsk, they were in no hurry to demolish monuments to the leader of the world proletariat and rename streets. The lines of development either converged, then diverged, then touched, then intersected. Each country sought its own vector of development in time and space, sometimes stumbling, making mistakes, getting sick, and at the same time accumulating its own individual experience. I could observe all this with my own eyes, having both Minsk and Moscow roots, visiting my native countries not at all as a tourist.

Recently, with surprise and alarm, I began to notice that Minsk is becoming before our eyes the Moscow of the beginning of the bourgeois noughties. It is enough to look closely at the behavior of Minsk residents and Muscovites to see this castling. A thick consumer veil is slowly enveloping Minsk, and evaporating from Moscow, unnoticed by an unfocused eye. In other words, Moscow moved towards simplification, Minsk – in the opposite direction.

For a long time now, there has been mutual influence between two different social structures. Now we are building a Union for the ages, and relations between Russia and Belarus are closer than ever in post-Soviet times. We learn from each other, take a lot of useful things, but this does not prevent negative experiences from seeping through open fraternal borders. What Moscow had been burned by for a long time, although belatedly, began to flare up in Minsk. And this is a serious social problem that cannot be ignored.

Energetic, bright, creative Moscow for a long time generously shared with Minsk, exported to Belarus through cinema, television, literature, art with living examples of its newly acquired pro-Western way of life, its idols, new morality, glamor, status, behavior, owner-employee industrial relations.

A friend from Minsk, Tatyana, who had heard a lot about the vicissitudes of employment in Moscow, recently shared her experience of finding a job in Minsk: “This Moscow absurdity has already reached Minsk. You infected us! This meant the snobbery of personnel officers, called “HR” in the Western manner, awkward psychological tests, tasks—sorry, “cases”—that have no relation to the profession and to reality in general.

— Interviews for commercial structures are now conducted in our country purely according to well-established Western schemes. Meaningless, template questions, with a mask of cold indifference from young HR people. There is not even a glimpse of the warmth and respect that were usual in earlier times; they are openly demonstrating to you that you are nobody at this celebration of life,” Tatyana, who recently went through a “tank test” in search of a job with Minsk personnel officers, seethed with indignation.

Interestingly, the bourgeois-philistine habits of Minsk residents arose with lightning speed, as if from the foam of the sea. The catalyst was the attempt of a Western hybrid attack on Belarus in 2020, dividing society to some extent and awakening the spirit of individualism and idleness in young Minsk residents. That dramatic period splashed out deeply dormant vices, supplanted the laws of traditional ethics and ethics, and opened the door to rudeness and boundless consumerism. Many Belarusians began to flaunt and boast of their success and well-being, in defiance of the “losers,” as the Russian “effective” middle class did quite recently. Yes, the growth in the well-being of young Belarusians is obvious. There is nothing bad here, on the contrary, if it weren’t for the arrogance, arrogance, alienation, excessive ostentation, cynical view of life and people that came out from somewhere inside. This is the emerging trend. But in general, all this is a time bomb for society and the state, and a lack of understanding of the simplest truths, that individual well-being, in isolation from the people and society, can be destroyed with one click. And in parallel with this, I see a part of Moscow that at one time “fat”, crawling out of this state with difficulty, with mental anguish, groans, creaks and sighs.

It is clear that no one will forbid a Belarusian, like a Russian, to put his feet in dirty shoes on a park bench in the American way and be proud of it, thus joining the world community. A mask of unapproachable coldness, copied from Western films, froze on the faces of some beautiful girls with cornflower blue eyes. Instead of the softness and smiles that have always been characteristic of Belarusians, there is a feigned hard look and a proudly raised head. The pose is often inappropriate. “Your people are being bullied,” a student, the son of a Moscow friend of mine, who came to visit Minsk, once said. And there was a time when my friends and I ran away from such alienation from Moscow – just to Minsk. Here was a saving island of preserved humanity.

The traffic situation is in many ways an indicator of public spirit and energy. And if earlier, driving around Minsk, a visiting car enthusiast would dissolve in grace, politeness and respect went off scale, but now the road atmosphere is also slowly becoming equal to that of Moscow. “I don’t violate, but I don’t give in to anyone.” Some Minsk motorists think something like this, ignoring the inviolable rules of the driver’s fraternity, which state that on the road you need to think not only about yourself, but also about your neighbor. True, it doesn’t come to the point of aggression and car duels, as is still happening in Moscow, and pedestrians, walking along a zebra crossing, do not take their eyes off their smartphones, and not from the traffic lights. Belarusians are accustomed to order, this is a fact, and, fortunately, law enforcement officers pacify and prevent the “drift” of the cool. And car owners can safely not lock their “iron horses” and even cottages at night, and primary school children, unaccompanied by adults, can build snowmen until midnight. Scold Old Man for this as much as you want!

But it’s not for nothing that they say: a bad example is contagious. Minsk quietly absorbs and manifests the absurdity Moscow has experienced, which contradicts life itself. In Moscow, as I see it, past temptations and mistakes are gradually being rethought. Young people are returning to the fold of normality and traditional values, slowly getting rid of the superficial and foreign. The simplest things begin to be valued, not illusions, not someone else’s overseas life and the hopeless pursuit of princes in a Maserati, but earthly, real, hard-earned things.

Modesty, goodwill, compassion, constant readiness to help – these national traits of Belarusians command respect throughout the world and are a kind of brand of the nation. The essence is in the internal culture, not in the external form. And under no circumstances should you lose this.

I want to emphasize: my notes are not criticism, not a “guard signal” or a call to take immediate action. This is a virus discovered unexpectedly for me inside a clean and prosperous Minsk. The first, so far barely noticeable from the inside, symptoms of the disease. But, as you know, a tumor tends to grow quickly.

Philistinism, irrepressible consumerism within society, and the loss of one’s roots devoured the Soviet Union. And often big tragedies of a national scale begin with small things, even with a child’s swearing on the beautiful Svisloch embankment in Minsk. However, judging by the current Moscow picture, there are no irreversible processes in social life; there is an evolutionary solution to emerging problems. And the recent example, when Russian society suddenly and unanimously condemned the “Mutabor party,” is proof of this. Now the flywheel of union integration is spinning to its fullest. There is a feeling that the creative impulses of the two states will benefit us all. So, maybe we can learn from each other the good, not the bad?