batwing soup

So this is it, the last Matthews Batwing Soup. I can't say I'm really sorry.


Writing a column is the ultimate vanity, and the temptation toward self-obsession it is not one I have avoided. Perhaps my successor will. For some reason, when I write this damn thing I never quite make the connection that it's actually going to be published. Hence the various embarrassing personal revelations that have crept into this space.


This column had its final, dying revenge on me this week, when my long-term and increasingly serious girlfriend Tanya found a copy of The Moscow Times at the Bangkok airport, of all places, and read about the other Tanya, the actress, whom I mentioned in last week's column. Disaster. After several tearful conversations, things have been patched up, but I am still kicking myself for my stupidity.


It's time for the traditional departing-The-Moscow-Times-columnist valedictory judgement on Russia. Unlike many jaded expats in this town, I actually think Russia is a land of geniuses. It takes genius, for instance, to transform the largest, mineral-rich and best-educated nation in the world into one of the most blighted and poverty stricken. It also takes genius to effect a change of status from feared world superpower to beggar-nation in just a couple of years. And most of all, it takes genius to humiliate the naturally resourceful, quick-witted and warm Russian people as completely as the Russian state has succeeded in doing.


Being -- but not really feeling -- half-Russian myself, I think I have a right in the best traditions of politically correct hypocrisy to criticize my mother's people. She, after all, lives in constant fear of Russians overrunning 'civilized' Europe like the barbarian hordes. Though she is firmly convinced that Russians are warmer, more generous, more sensitive and more soulful than any other nationality, she is terrified they might actually pollute the Western world with their backward ways. This from a woman who holds a doctorate in history from MGU.


She also constantly advises me never to marry a Russian woman. Being one herself, she may know something I don't. But in any case, the capacity for self-loathing seems a particularly Russian facility.


Another classically Russian skill is the ability to blithely ignore stark material reality. This lies at the heart of another Russian specialty, which is pathological and accomplished lying. Elizabeth Roberts, in her brilliant "Xenophobe's Guide to the Russians," from which I lifted much of this rant, describes it perfectly. Russian lying is different from Western lying. It seems less calculating, less sordid somehow, but is nevertheless prodigious and almost involuntary.


Take Tanya, for instance, who tells me herself never to believe a word she says -- an interesting problem for you budding logicians. She lies to me not really to deceive, but to hide the sordid truth. Honesty would be a sign of weakness, she reckons, a pointless and self-defeating exercise. Much better to stick to the beautiful --or in her case, banal -- lie than the terrible truth. Another defining Russian characteristic is an almost total lack of confidence in the future. Given the country's recent history, this is understandable. People steal as much and as fast as they can because they have no confidence that their nice little earner might be taken away from them by some arbitrary act of government or fate. Other spin-offs of this attitude are oriental fatalism.


So it looks like I'm destined to stay in Russia for several more years, despite my love-hate relationship with this strange and terrible place. But now I'm starting to sound like Jean Mackenzie, so I'd better shut up.