Why the Trains Run On Time

One of my frequent commentators (who makes frequent, substantiated claims of being my mother), has asked a few intriguing questions about the fall of the Soviet Union, and about the freedoms Russians enjoy or don't enjoy today. I felt an answer is order, to give my readers a better impression of where Russia seems to be today:

1) Why did the non-Russian republics break away from the Soviet Union? Why didn't the Soviet Union simply evolve into one large, free and mult-ethnic republic?

Throughout the Soviet period, Soviet leaders gave lip service to the equality of non-Russians within the Soviet Union. But the facts on the ground were very different. The Soviet state actively suppressed non-Russian ethnic and cultural expressions. Although Lenin himself had considerable non-Russian ancestry (a fact hidden in official Soviet histories and biographies) and Stalin hailed from Georgia, considerable discrimination against non-Russians occurred in the Soviet government. Non-Russians were often denied education in their native language and could not reach the highest levels of the Soviet bureaucracy.

In addition, most of the non-Russian peoples of the Soviet state had come into that state as a result of conquest. The Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia) had been functioning, independent democracies when the Soviet Union conquered them during the Second World War.

Ukraine had a longer history as a subject people, having long been under the grip of tsarist Russia. During tsarist times, the Russian government often actively suppressed any expressions of Ukrainian culture and nationalism, at times even going so far as to prohibit book publication in the Ukrainian language. Moreover, during the early 1930s, Ukraine suffered a horrendous famine--largely kept hidden from the non-Soviet world--in which something like three million Ukrainian peasants died. The famine was exacerbated by Stalin's policies to the point that many historians consider the famine to be an act of genocide.

When the glasnost era came in the 1980s, non-Russians had their first chance in years to express openly their feelings about the way they had been treated in a Russian-dominated Soviet state. The non-Russian republics felt they had little chance of seeing their liberties protected in a Russian-dominated Soviet Union. And so the union ultimately dissolved.

2) If Russians are so free, why do the trains run on time?

From what I gather, they do and they don't. I have commented on the service quality of the Moscow Metro, which is a great source of civil pride within Moscow and which is maintained in exceptional order. The Moscow Metro functions as well as it does because the city has no other choice. The Moscow Metro serves twice as many passengers as the New York Subway and the London Underground put together. What I have heard about long-distance rail service in Russia, however, indicates that it has a much lower quality of service. Although trains usually do arrive "on-time" on long-distance lines, this has more to do with arrival times being set much later than they would be in Western countries than with any promptness of service. It is not uncommon, I hear, for trains to sit idly in the middle of nowhere for long periods, because of repair problems or to maintain a schedule.

On another level, though, I fail to understand the question. I simply do not understand how democracy and quality rail service are incompatible with one another. The United States may choose to neglect passenger rail service, but this does not make it an inherently freer country than Japan, the European Union, or Taiwan, all of which are functioning democracies, and all of which have excellent rail service.

3) Are Russians maintaining their "communal" traditions?

In many ways, Russia has always had a more communitarian culture than Western Europe or America. Much of this has to do with the nature of Russian agriculture. Russia has about half the growing season of France or Germany. What this means is that Russian farming has traditionally been labor-intensive. In America, we think of farms as family affairs, but in Russia, farming was undertaken by a whole village acting collectively. It was important for a farmer to be able to call on his neighbors when the crops needed to be brought in quickly.

I'm not sure what specific traditions my mother was referring to in asking this question, but it does seem that communitarianism remains a strong value in Russian society.