The Rise and Fall of Moscow's Expat 'Royalty'

My first day in Moscow was a shock. Not because of the dirty streets, the rude clerks or other banal inconveniences (which I'd expected), but rather because of the foreigners themselves. I was standing in the lounge of Park Place with a group of Americans in September 1993 when the manager introduced himself: "I'm sorry I'm late for the softball tournament, but my Russian workers are pathetic." When he heard that I'd just arrived in Moscow, he shook his head, put his hand on my shoulder and said, "You know, the difference between Russian workers and children is that at least you can teach children."


His attitude was the rule, not the exception -- at least among those Westerners in the overwhelmingly expat softball tournament. At night, a group of Americans took me to all-expat bars; later, in Western conveyances, they raced back to their Western-standard apartments under fear of the night. It was like an automated 18th century, with the expats as a kind of functional aristocracy, and the Russian masses as -- the masses.


In the modern mind, the aristocracy is marked by two characteristics: birthright and downfall. It is due to their birthright, to the fact that the aristocracy didn't have to earn its exalted place in society, that they eventually grew complacent, dull-witted -- and were toppled by those who had to work harder, who understood reality a bit better. Right up to and beyond their downfall, the aristocrats are known to have shown a deep contempt for the masses -- a contempt in which, considering the French or Russian revolutions, the last blood-stained laugh was on them.


We Westerners who showed up in Moscow in the early dawn of postcommunism were elevated to a sort of aristocracy merely because of a kind of birthright: our passports. In keeping with the script, it didn't take long for most Westerners here -- particularly those who came to make a buck -- to develop a condescending attitude towards the natives, a condescension that often slipped into sheer contempt.


Contempt, though, often leads to tragedy, and complacency leads to the final chapter of the nobility's script: the downfall. Nowhere has this been more evident than in that most blue-blooded branch of Moscow's expat aristocracy, the American Expat. We Americans were granted an exalted status the minute we landed, something we're not used to in Europe. So when the red carpet was pulled from under our feet, we fell hardest.


American expatriates can be divided into two easily recognizable categories. The first is the Ugly, or "typical," American: the culturally insensitive vulgarian -- the briefcase-toting bull in World Culture's china shop. The other is the Ugly American's awry twin, the Bohemian American: pious public-television types in thrift-store uniforms who tend to define themselves in inverse proportion to the Ugly American. Russia has been inhabited mostly by Ugly Americans, the sort of creature who will endure the most savage conditions in order to buff up his or her resume. Your average Bohemian American cannot sustain a progressive world view in Russia.


Something awful has happened to Americans in the last year. We've become nastier, wounded. We've taken a fall in economic prestige.


A few months back, I was at an American time-share dacha for a little get-together with a bunch of young expats, the type for whom a special discount really is better than sex.


Out of the blue, one of the guests launched into an invective against the Russian mafia -- not because of anything they'd done to his business but because of what they'd done to his self-esteem. "This so-called mafia is a complete joke," he sneered. "In America, we'd just call them 'gangs.'"


He was, of course, completely wrong. The real joke -- as the so-called mafiosi cruise past our Nivas in their 600-series Mercedes and sit atop unimaginable piles of offshore wealth -- is on us, and any ambitious American businessman who dares to acknowledge this fact inevitably suffers from a severe case of fiscal envy. For any decent American, fiscal envy is the final pit stop before an open Prozac prescription.


What interested me most was the instinct that clouded the embittered American's perception. He reflected not at all the aristocrat's contempt he was trying to market to us (a contempt that we desperately wanted to buy), but rather a deep resentment. Resentment is perhaps the single ugliest human emotion, more unappealing than raw hatred or Chess King clothing. But after all, resentment and contempt are nearly biochemical twins, differentiated only by point of view. Contempt reflects a position of strength and resentment, a position of weakness. This means that we expatriate Americans are today perceiving Russia from an altogether different frame. Now we American expats are the economically vanquished, priced out of our palaces, which makes holding the title de l'America painfully humiliating. What happened?


When I first arrived, real condescension and contempt dominated the typical American-expat operating system. But it was clear I'd arrived at the end of our reign: 1789, 1917, 1993.


Moscow reminded me a lot of the Arnold Schwarzenegger film Total Recall: In raising the Total Recall analogy to today's Russia, I am not referring to the outdated Marxist metaphor of capitalist exploitation, but rather to very concrete similarities. The film's depiction of the Terran monopoly over the Mutants' oxygen supply is roughly similar to today's precious Western aid that is carelessly dangled before a desperate Russian populace. Terran (Western) businessmen act out the white-collar fantasy equivalent to action-adventure heroes, leading a life among the elite 1 percent of the economic aristocracy in a way that would never have been possible on Terra (in the West).


The only part of the Total Recall plot that's missing is the ending: a brutal, flesh-ripping uprising against the Terrans, and the ultimate victory of the Mutants.


But wait: The uprising came after all, although the blood has only been metaphorical -- an economic bloodletting, in which most Westerners got left in the gold dust. Most of my friends from 1993, including the American entrepreneur who first invited me to Russia, have returned home with little to show but chronic heart palpitations and a falsified paragraph in their resumes.


It's painful to admit how far we fell -- but what really stokes my latent paranoia is what the future holds. Imagine this: American expats peering longingly into the windows of overpriced Moscow restaurants and whining bitterly about the prices while the garish all-Russian clientele, with a mixture of unease and contempt, whispers, "Hey, if these Americans are so great, why did they have to leave home in the first place?"





Marc Ames is a writer living in Moscow. He contributed this article to The Moscow Times.