In Russia, lack of money means a loss of dignity. And in Europe, even with a small income is impossible to live without feeling humiliated and insulted.
After the death of the founder of IKEA, Ingmar Kamprad, someone remarked: “He has done for Russian families more than the government.” Exactly. And applicable not only to Russia.
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It’s not the fact that the furniture from IKEA are cheap, but that is almost only available to people of modest means designer furniture. Designer — specialist in the production of a decent life. Designer clothes from medizinisch functionally no different, but with them, life becomes a beautiful film that lifts us up. The problem of living in Russia is not that even IKEA is not expensive. And the fact that the threshold of the apartment decent life often ends. Because outside the home — or the ice, or dirt, or dust, and the machine evil buzzing in traffic and on the lawn not to go, and without a passport to enter… Now you are humiliated and insulted.
I’m always in Russia it is felt — and in Europe, the humiliation he felt, even when he lived there for very little money. Well, I worked in London on “Bi-Bi-si”: there are Russian journalists was some sort of internship, and the salary was also a trainee. A quarter immediately ate the taxes, and the remaining lion’s share went to the room in the hostel with the facilities in the corridor. But I didn’t feel turning into a little man. Partly because there started a chain of gorgeous parks: Kensington gardens, Hyde Park, green Park, St James.
Jogging I started Jogging near Kensington Palace, where a couple of times when I flew Prince Charles: the helicopter landed fifty meters away, and security was the only COP. Once or twice a week I wore skates and joined the crowd of rollerbladers that with music and screams rolled through the city. I was riding in front of a blocked off Oxford street, it is felt, must be the same that the Queen of England. And how great it was to lie with a book on the lawns of Cambridge…
Later, these were repeated in other countries — for example, now I live in Germany. Life beyond the threshold groomed, trimmed, sanitized. Out on the street, you’re from a decent situation to find yourself in a different, often better. Just now I see that decency is achieved.
“A beautiful life at their own expense” (often the only option for a decent life in Russia, and usually only available to the rich) is the third level. And underneath, in Europe, two more can guarantee quality life for everyone.
The first level generally rests not on money but on openness and freedom of public spaces. The Park is public domain, the lawn in the Park — also: can have a picnic, you can go to the head. But the main public space is the area. And then, of course, the West is very different from Russia. Imagine any Russian area, where they built a nest power. For example, in St. Petersburg in front of the Mariinsky Palace. There is a monument to the tyrant, the Deputy ranks of parked cars and a few police officers, unkind glances annoyance to pedestrians. In the Palace of the deputies without a passport and crossing is impossible, but even with them it is impossible, if you are a man without a tie, as so ordered by the head of the Parliament Colonel Makarov — big fan of lovely. Unlikely to be the Colonel liked Rathausplatz, the town hall square in the place of my stay — the capital of Swabia Augsburg.
Two areas of similarity — the only monuments to dead rulers. But parked cars in front of Augsburg’s town hall is unthinkable, but the townspeople are seen in great numbers. In the Augsburg town hall square — the place razlyuli-razgulyaeva. Almost every weekend fairs, celebrations, demonstrations, carousels, merchants, and entertainers. In the warmer edge of the square crowded with tables of the cafes, but the youth was lying in the middle and right on the pavement: brought eating sandwiches, sipping beer. No police chases, and the town hall anyone can enter at least in shorts and t-shirt (and without a passport, of course). If you look at the life of this “coral reef”, it is possible to notice a very special fish.
For example, I more than others like the local weirdo preacher in a white robe, with unkempt hair and a Karl Marx beard. They call him King, and he preaches his faith on an unknown (to me) language. King all love even recently shot for advertisement of the city. For me, the presence in the city freaks-freaks is one of the markers of freedom.
This is a big trouble, this plague, that in Russia (and other countries of the Asian type) public space the “public” interests of society are removed. But such spaces are many and their number is growing even in St. Petersburg, which samoubiyca calls himself “European”. As it is not so! Here is a couple of five-year closed facing the Sink garden, Mikhailovsky castle.
Once there fashionable ladies played with a Hoop, catching on the fly wooden ring and views the Cavaliers, and now only erect tents for a drink and a snack principalities, which do not come… Why throughout Russia closed the universities and campuses (public enterprises generally keep quiet)? Why the man in the street can’t go over 220-meter corridor of the Smolny (or at 275-meter — Twelve colleges)? Why in Moscow for the New year close to Red square? Why any picket if it came to the Kremlin, immediately dragged into the neighborhood?
I’m not talking about politics. I’m talking about what a worthy life is impossible without freedom. I mean, if space does not belong to citizens and authorities, it is not freedom at all. I mean, any dissent, dissidence — religious, political, social, musical! — are an indispensable part of a free life and greatly decorated.
And I mean, for a dignified life for the first level don’t need any investment — a lack of sufficient restrictions. That’s why the best time of public life in Russia, a short time gained the esteem, was the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the square flooded musicians, nonconformists, entertainers, artists. What was grey, the Treasury empty, became alive. And among the living, everyone can feel like a man.
About this period many have forgotten, and ideally a decent life in Russia, the form is a kind of dumbbell. At one end is a well maintained, Packed house, on another — shopping-Mall representing a surrogate town square. Sat down with the kids in the car, came petersilia to animators, to musicians, had lunch in the food court and back. Very reminiscent of the “Sapsan” train, which rushes from one capital to another, ignoring everything in between. It is understandable that in Malaya Vishera is nothing to do!..
And in Europe the “handle” of the dumbbell represents an important support structure: the second level of a decent life. It is an artificial public life. When public money is invested in something previously inaccessible (or uninteresting), and it was awesome. A simple example — the European cycle paths. I’m not talking about bike paths that are in all cities, and in Russia only in some places and look like a miracle — I just about bike paths. They laid through all the forests, fields and rivers of Germany: thüringen oak, elder and Westphalia, and Bavaria hops.
The quality of a soil covering is better than asphalt in St. Petersburg on the Fontanka embankment. Everywhere — signs, information signs: this path is for pedestrians only, and this only for riders, and here the route of the pilgrims-the pilgrims, but cyclists can also go…
After snowfall, the main bike paths or clearing up of the soil, or sprinkled with crushed granite. So this winter I rode in the snow on my bike on summer tires to the nearest lake: white wood, Siberian snowdrifts, in wormwood flapped swans fairy tale, which in Russia can only dream of.
Emphasize that a decent life is when everywhere, from sweet home to dense forests, well maintained, tidy, safe.
That’s a decent life for any country, and need for people to produce — how he managed to produce her recently deceased employee boring mass furniture industry Imrad Kamprad, the chairs of which where I started to write this text in one country and finished in another.
