One Resolution I Just Might Skip This Year

WASHINGTON -- New Year's is upon us, a time for reflecting on the achievements of the past 365 days, and making plans for the next set. I, like everyone else, am engaged in manufacturing resolutions for 1995.


I do all the usual vows, of course: better diet, more exercise, save money. I have a few specific resolves as well: I will dump Stan, my on-again-off-again significant other, and spend more quality time with my dog, Sasha. I'll help my old friend Fedya -- who has succumbed to a feel-good psychobabble movement -- to regain the cynical, manipulative Russian male persona I so loved and hated. And I will not lose my temper with nasty babushkas or rude salespeople.


But there is another promise I make faithfully each Dec. 31: This is the year, I tell myself, that I will leave Russia. Enough is enough. It's dirty, dangerous, and unhealthy. It's too expensive, it's exhausting, and the excitement of watching a nation in transition is wearing off.


So what keeps me there? The language? The culture? An addiction to living on the edge?


A week in the United States has given me a clue. I am not sure I can live in America anymore. My years in Russia have rendered me all but unfit for the high-spirited capitalism of my native land.


The lead story all this week has been the results of the Christmas shopping frenzy. Front-page stories in major newspapers, long spots on radio, television's morning talk shows and evening news -- all devoted considerable space to a detailed analysis of the American consumer this holiday season. The results, in case you're wondering, are mixed: The American shopper, it seems, is becoming more selective, and will not buy unless the price is right.


I, on the other hand, have no such scruples. My months of shopping deprivation have resulted in a wild orgy of spending, as I am only too willing to be convinced that this dress, that face cream, or those boots are exactly what I have been needing to make my life complete.


And American pop culture has become a total mystery to me. My car radio has become a major source of irritation. It used to be that oldies and "easy listening" stations were the most numerous on the dial -- just another bit of evidence for my contention that real music died sometime in the 1970s. At least listening to the old songs kept alive the -- to me, comforting -- illusion that the liberal, socially conscious baby boomers were still in control of the country's ethos.


But now, with even Doonesbury voting Republican, the FM band seems to be dominated by right-wing media icons and fundamentalist religious groups bemoaning the decline of the American family, the death of old-fashioned morality, and the pernicious influence of the modern welfare state.


I just can't appreciate America's fin de si?cle malaise. I now live in Russia, a country where the values and beliefs that sustained many people through decades were swept away overnight, where the economy is constantly on the point of spinning out of control, where murders of bank presidents are so common they're not even news anymore, and car bombs explode almost daily.


It is a country newly at war, where citizens in the capital are subjected nightly to televised scenes of carnage wrought by their troops in a small southern republic.


I can stay in Russia for all of that, or I can come home to Rush Limbaugh and talk shows on "cross-dressing couples." Some choice.