My last post may or may not have been a little too optimistic [the comparative got me carried away there for a moment], something I intend to make up for today with a more serious post on a gloomier subject. As I have to read my favorite Russian paper online these days, I stumbled on an article this morning that made me very sad: «Не все дома» [this article has made use of an idiom in the title, which can be translated literally – “Not everybody is home” (as is what I suppose the author of the text was going for) – or with English idioms of the same kind, such as ‘nobody’s home’, ‘not all there’, ‘to be gone in the upper storey’, ‘to not have all the horses in the stable’, ‘not the brightest crayon in the box’, ‘to be eighteen bob in the pound’ and so forth]. The article is about how the Russian tradition of «идти в гости (к кому-нибудь)» [visit, pay a visit, go on a visit (to someone)] is dying as Russians are more inclined these days to meet up with friends in coffee shops. To a person like me, who can’t come up with anything I love more than being invited over to someone else’s house (this is perhaps mostly due to my Swedish heritage, where being invited over always includes a complete tour of the home, or often house, including all private spaces) this is nothing but a pure disaster. Especially since the Russian way of ‘going as a guest’ includes much more than it generally does in the west – in Russia when they invite you for a cup of tea, that’s not all they have in mind. What they have in mind may perhaps be a cup of tea, but that’s far from everything there is to it; more likely you’ll be treated to a huge dinner that will stretch out into infinity with many courses and wine and then deserts and coffee and vodka and cucumbers and deeply intriguing conversations on life, death, politics, love and the meaning of it all. The article begins as follows:
Вы заметили, что мы всё реже ходим друг к другу в гости? [Have you noticed that we more and more infrequently visit each other (in our homes)?] А ведь это — серьёзный сдвиг в бытовой культуре, который обязательно скажется на нашем национальном характере: [And this is a serious shift in our everyday culture that surely will have an impact on our national character:] раньше-то это было исключительно московским явлением, но теперь и в других крупных городах друзьям всё чаще назначают встречи в кафе. [before it was an exclusively Moscow phenomena, but now also in other big cities people more and more often schedule meetings with friends in coffee shops.]
The article, though rather long, is very interesting and definetly worth to read. If you can’t master it all, the first few paragraphs might be enough. Further down, it points out how people spend time with each other differently in different countries. In Russia it is uncommon to see older people in bars, for example, whereas in Europe bars are more of meeting places for them than for the ‘kids’. What’s your opinion? Do you think it would be a disaster if Russians were to rather set a meeting with you in a coffee shop than invite you to their home to meet the kids and the babushka? Or perhaps you have an anecdote from an experience of your own to share with the rest of us?
4 Comments
I can only wish that I someday live in a place where people meet with each other for reasons other than money, sex or power (I live in the elite northeast US).
Let it die! If someone would kill Russian drinking tradition, now that would be a big deal.
After reading that article, I felt a pang of regret and nostalgia. I lived for a year in a town in Siberia, and in that place the tradition of “идти в гости” was alive and well. Some of my favourite experiences took place as a result of this tradition. Apart from the opportunity to glimpse real Russian life from the point of view of an outsider, this beautiful tradition summarises what I love about Russian culture – the willingness of people to allow others into their personal lives, their real personal lives. Apart from taking great pains to ensure that guests are treated to wonderful feasts, I found that the Russian people felt the need to put on astonishingly little pomp and ceremony, allowing others into their private and personal lives with what one could almost term a child-like innocence.
To hear that the younger generation in Moscow and other urban centres no longer feel comfortable either to visit as a guest or to receive visitors as guests represents in my mind a tragic loss of a beautiful aspect of Russian culture.
It would be a sad day if this tradition completely dies. When you идти в гости, you get to spend hours and hours just talking and learning about life, I think. I have learned more about people this way than any other way in the 6 years I have lived in Ukraine. While it’s not Russia, traditions like that are similar here. And it’s true that in Kyiv it is less likely to happen than in outlying areas of the country.