Getting used to rowing together

 

Subject: Getting used to rowing together.

The World Cup has once again shown a world nation in the rich technicolor of self promotion. These immaculate stadiums and near perfect playing surfaces, the happy faces not only of overseas fans but of local Russians.  Where was the oppressed nation of food shortages and the ever present Gulag, of secret police and assassinated  politicians, of a country you can't trust, who's propaganda machinery was even now contriving the scenes we see on our television screen. Gosh they must be good.
A friend of mine the other day suggested that Putin had, by diktat, told his citizens to smile and perform for the audience much like the enraptured crowd perform for the North Korean leader in the parades they hold.

Propaganda has softened our minds to such an extent that we don't know what to believe and of course it's propaganda from both sides. There is no doubt that Russia is a more authoritarian country than ours and that Putin is ruthless in maintaining his grip on his nation and yet in many conversations with men I work with, men who came to the UK from Eastern European nations which were once under the heel of the USSR and some from Russia itself, the story is of a fondness for the country it's history and its people especially their relatives who live there.

Theirs is a different story from the one pumped out on our media. It's one of a country which respects it's past and it's traditions, not in constant upheaval, ever changing, even decrying what went before, creating a near constant debilitating mental turmoil we do here in Britain. The love of their country is balanced by the pragmatism of work and wages. Their lives here are conflicted by the laissez-faire society in which the individual must constantly choose and remembers a more stable society, more paternal, less turbulent, less greedy.
So Putins eastern Mongolian features which rarely seems to smile belies that eastern inscrutability which so frightens the westerner with its implied conformity and willingness to accept rules. It's an anathema to the western mind brought up on the importance of being an individual.  To see society as a social concoction, a mechanism for getting on with people around you and recognising that we are all in the same boat which if you want to arrive at your destination you better get used to rowing together.