A Visit To The School For Self-Determination in Moscow, Russia

Click on writing link to left, to see the index to all the parts. You are viewing part V.

November 15th, 10pm

I have moved. I am now at Lyudmila’s house. I believe the folks at the school wanted me to have an additional perspective, so Lyudmila is a recent alumna who lives nearby with her parents. They have graciously welcomed me into their home for the next week.

Yesterday afternoon I went to the gym at the school. There were twelve boys about ten years old with twelve basketballs shooting hoops at eight baskets. The gym teacher was sitting at a table making a collage. The twelve boys were satisfied with playing independently of him and independently of each other. I entered the room and sat down to watch. The gym teacher came over to me right away and gestured so vigorously for me to get up and join in with the boys shooting hoops. She was not interested in any of my excuses. She just kept gesturing, arms flying. Since she was a pretty lady I had no choice but had to follow her orders. She gave me a ball, and so then there were thirteen boys with balls.

Then four boys decided it would be best to toss their balls to me, so I was forced to set mine down. Eight boys all playing independently, and four boys all throwing their balls at me, with me lobbing them back, trying to keep up. That lasted five or ten minutes. Then there was another spontaneous reorganization, with two boys challenging me and another boy to a game.

We played for another five or ten minutes until the gym teacher one by one took the balls away. When just one ball remained, she went and sat back down. The boys all discussed together who would get to be on the team with the big American. (It didn’t matter much to them that I lack the relevant skill of shooting baskets.) They kept asking me in Russian whether I approved of their various strategies for deciding teams, and I had no more interest in holding an opinion on this topic than the gym teacher. Not long thereafter, teams were decided, and six Russian boys without shirts challenged five Russian boys with shirts and one American ringer.

I did manage to score once, the first basket of the game, but that didn’t help our team enough to hold out against the three baskets scored by our more aggressive opponents. Their strategy involved passing the ball to their two best players, whereas our strategy involved passing the ball to our one tall player who mostly just passed it back, much like the game of hot potato.

After the basketball game, I spent a few minutes in the school lobby. Two chubby twelve-year-olds who had befriended me in the cafeteria earlier in the week came over to chat. One of them, the more hyper, did all the talking to me, while the other stood behind and slightly to the side for consultations. It appeared that the consultant was also interested in the conversations, and in fact has a much more extensive vocabulary of English, but was playing it cool. I have never seen these two apart. The front man has a working vocabulary of about fifty words, but the consultant triples or quadruples that number. They then followed me as I walked from the lobby to the theater, where a few days earlier I had announced that we would hold the American dancing lessons at 3pm.

A few minutes later, four other boys and six or seven girls entered the theater, one of them carrying the CD player. They all sat down. We started our dance lessons by experiential practice with the words left, right, hand, man, woman, line, front, back, and the numbers one, two, and three. Five minutes later, we were all dancing the basic east coast swing step, one, two, back-step, one, two, back-step. We switched partners along the line every thirty seconds or so. Once everyone had danced with each other once without music, I put on Lionel Hampton and we danced a bit to the music then learned a move, another move, and finally a third move. Some kids did quite well. Most of them had very little ability to use their English. (Most of the students at the school have never met an American, though they did have a British guest last year.)

The next dance we did was a circle dance, based roughly on contra dance patterns. And then finally, three girls who still insisted on more all got a quick lesson in the Norwegian polka. Everybody wanted more dancing next week and proposed Monday at 3pm, so we will meet then.

Afterwards, I paid a dollar for a five-ride card on the excellent metro and took the train to a station near Ilya’s lab, where we met. (I arrived fifteen minutes early and she arrived ten minutes late so I saw a ton of people walk by - maybe a train every minute and a half with a hundred people getting out of each train - cities amaze me!). Ilya and I bought a few ingredients for a salad, then took the train six stops to Dolgoprodny, where we got off and walked ten minutes to her dorm and made salad. I ate the salad then she insisted on feeding me soup. One thing I hate about traveling is all the pressure to eat food. I didn’t want to eat her soup! But when I refuse, I have to deal with this guilt trip these people put on me because they think I am lying. So I usually eat the food, on the one hand enjoying it because I always like food, on the other hand hating myself and them because they don’t trust me and they push me to do something because they are uncomfortable and have incorrect assumptions about nutrition and pleasure.

Then off to the music party in the next dorm. I expected maybe five people, or ten. There were forty or fifty people sitting on benches in the dark room, lit by four candles in the middle and four blacklights around the edges of the room. It was a large room - a dorm lounge, quite a skanky room like every other one I saw at that University (although the school is one of the most prestigious in the country). The first time the guitar passed by, I handed it on to Ilya. About every third person played, and generally the songs were Russian ones known by all, and sung by all. Then Ilya said she was leaving the room with her boyfriend for twenty minutes. I knew she wasn’t leaving for twenty minutes. I hate people who don’t know how to tell the truth. An hour later, the guitar came around again, and I set it down, picked up my mandolin, and played a tune. Then I picked up the guitar and belted out a vicious version of John Hardy. Everybody clapped hard.

Ilya came back in and sang a song, then everyone for the next thirty minutes just sang American & Beatles standards: House of the Rising Sun, Hotel California, Let it Be, She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain, etc. It was a charming bunch with some cute girls I was inclined to take out back and kiss in my fantasies as least.

Ilya said we could go if I was tired, and a few minutes later I decided it was indeed time. So we went to her room after two hours in the music room, around ten fifteen. Her boyfriend followed five minutes later, and she promptly showed me into her neighbor’s room, where I went straight to bed. I think he is jealous of me. It’s a tough situation: he got involved with a woman who was still in love with me, she didn’t tell him about it, she has not now either, he doesn’t know what’s going on just that she’s behaving strangely. At least we are all civil.

This morning I woke up around ten, caught up on email until eleven, then read a chapter of War & Peace. Ilya woke up at quarter-past eleven and we met in the hall outside the room. She said we would all eat breakfast together; obviously she hadn’t understood when I had explained yesterday that I was meeting Artiom at eleven thirty. I hate it that when she doesn’t understand something, she hides it. She was never like that before. I don’t like much about her anymore. And her nervousness is like a self-fulfilling prophesy. Since she screwed up her relationship with me two years ago, she has been sitting in a cesspool of her own creation, and the evidence suggests that she is going to stay in it. I am glad to have this chance to observe her cesspool from close up and glad to know it’s nowhere I want to hang out.

I had a great lunch with Artiom. He picked me up right outside the dorm and drove me five minutes to the yacht club, where I ate a seafood salad and green tea and he ate a greek salad and black tea. We talked about the projects he has been working on with his newspaper, about his children, about his parents, about my life, about education, about Russia. I am glad I met him two years ago. I asked questions like “Do you think there are disadvantages to having money?” and “Was it a problem that your mother was eight years younger than your father, or that she was Armenian and he Jewish?” and “Have you done the projects you were thinking about two years ago?” He asked questions like “What are your thoughts on what your life work will be” and “What are your observations about the school you are visiting in Moscow?”

After that, I walked around Moscow with my new friend Lyudmila. I learned that her younger sister attends Tubelsky’s school, and I also learned that their mother teaches there. We walked around downtown for two hours, talking about education and life. One of her fellow students from her University came with us but we didn’t include her very much in the conversation. I decided to ignore her almost from first meeting her. She was obsessed with demonstrating her inability to have an independent opinion, and even worse she was rude anytime Lyudmila presented any sign of independent thought. I was pleased that Lyudmila was able to withstand her pressure and continue speaking with me in her presence. Tomorrow we will take a bus to Yasnaya Polyana – Tolstoy’s home. I have been dreaming of going there for six years, since I first became a fan of his writings and life story. It is a great pilgrimage for me; though Lyudmila tells me that most Russians think it is an insane four hour bus ride to a boring house, a stupid choice compared to a one-hour bus ride to nearer fabulous palaces.

November 16th, 730pm

I want to record few more notes from my conversation with Artiom. “Do you think there are disadvantages to having money,” I’d asked. He answered something like this, “Yes, I think so - but I try to keep them in check. With my children, for instance, I have decided that they can have whatever they want, but they must wait six months before they can have it. It gives them perspective. But with money, I’ve actually always been lazy. It’s pressure that drives me to make money. First, it was that I had a family - so I had to make money to take care of the family. Then when I took over the newspaper from my father, I had all the employees, and I had to take care of them, and I had to have money to do it. Now, I have a compassion for all the Russian children in the educational system - it is always circumstances that drives me to make money. I can’t ask for it either, though. I have other people who do the sales work, because I can’t do it, I’d actually just give away the subscriptions.”

I also asked him to tell me more about the marriage of his parents. “It was very interesting - she had the wisdom of the East, he was of the West. She is Armenian. He was a Russian Jew. They met in Baku, he saw her on the street and followed her and though she was resistant at first, he knew there was something right about it, and eventually she came to Moscow, and they lived together for a year before getting married - absolutely strange for her background, and even for Moscow at the time quite different. And she pushed him - he was the educated one, he knew everything, but she pushed him that in his journalism career, he strive to be positive, proactive. It was her influence that pushed him to do the work he did with education, although he always argued against her and never would admit that she had influenced him. In fact, they argued all the time. She pushed him for freedom in education - education with a soul, she insisted - while he obstinately declared it could not work. I never once heard them arguing about simple things, like shopping or the house - they argued about things at another level. To be complete, in one way it did not work out - he had to leave the family.”

I now officially have a bit of a cold. I ate too much, and too much unhealthy stuff, over the past several days. Plus not enough sleep, and it’s cold here. So I have to slow down a hair. It started to hit me last night. I took five pills of Bi Yan Pian around 4am and it kept me up for several hours; it must have some powerful stimulants in it.

Whatever the case may be, Lyudmila and I spent most of the day in transit, mostly in busses, between Moscow and Yasnaya Palyana. We had some great conversation en route about the school and also about my ideas for community.
There was an interesting moment at Tolstoy’s grave. We were standing silently together, just the two of us, at the simple dirt mound. It was in the forest. I closed my eyes and an image of Tolstoy came to my mind. “Be love, and I will live in you.” “Who are you talking to? Who is us?” I asked silently. “The two of you, yes, you will be friends for a long time, and also all those others whom you can welcome.” Pleasantly auspicious. A big bird flew by overhead looking white from the bottom but calling like a crow.

The house itself was closed for repairs. The apple orchard was in moderate neglect, desperately in need of pruning. The ponds were charming. There was thin ice covering some of the ponds. The branches of many trees also had a thin ice coating, making them glisten white against the dead grasses and dark trunks.