What we talk about when we talk about elsewhere.

“In the west” she says: “you do it the other way,” and I think she means England. “All you care about is money and careers” she goes on, and so I guess she must mean America. But she tells me: “You have no regard for religious values.” So I guess it’s not America after all. Then she plays a while with her Iphone and looks out of Starbucks window at the Mercedes driving past the united colors of Benetton billboard, glad that Russia is nothing like that awful place.

Then I get it: it’s The West, Westland, Westistan, Westiya: that place where everything happens that isn’t happening either here or in China. That west where the deep south of the US and the Left Bank of the Seine are one, where the Pakistani districts of Bradford merge into the icy wastes of northern Canada, where Berlusconi has lunch every day with Harald the 5^th of Norway and Noam Chomsky, while kangaroos jump past the Reichstag…you know…the west.

  And we know the west is anti Russian because there was this leftist article in the Guardian and Romney said something rightist in Alabama, and we know it’s corrupt coz, well Berlusconi again. And they talk about human rights, with their Swedish Nobel prizes and London’s Amnesty international, but it’s all lies because look at what Bush did in Iraq.

So wearied again, I say she’s looking nice and she’s pleased and tells me she picked up the outfit in Milan.

 A couple of years back some random Russian government minister was on the BBC world service complaining about Britain’s hostile attitude to his motherland. The point for him had been proven beyond doubt by something written in the Independent Newspaper. There was a fair bit of argument going on until it suddenly became clear to the interviewer that his guest was under the impression that this journal, owned by a Russian, was a mouthpiece for Gordon Brown’s foreign policy. When asked if this was his belief, the minister himself had an epiphany: it had clearly not occurred to him that it might be otherwise. This is doubly foolish, because there are radio stations and newspapers here in Russia that remain independent, largely ignored but independent.

So even when the country is defined it is often defined simply as an anti Russian version of Russia. 15 years back when Russians found out you were from the west, they would ask if it was true that everyone abroad believed there were bears on the streets of Moscow. You don’t get that much now, but there are days when I wish it were still that simple.