Dreaming eRussia

Day 606, 01:59 • Published in Russia Russia • by The Cossacks HeadQuarters
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Some days ago somebody said me that eRussia is a “shithole”. Not a good idea to say this to me. It was our last conversation. I wanted to write about "what is eRussia for me" many weeks ago, but this incident gave me the last impulse.

Some people ask me what am I doing here, being obviously not a Russian. If you ask me in the real life, I would say that I am not a patriot, of any nation. I am more a secular humanist, and the only patriotism I can really understand as a political idea is the “constitutional patriotism” of Jürgen Habermas. Of course, I do like some cultures more than others, but I do not transform this in a political program because in the real life, “nationalism kills people”. eRepublik, however, is a completely different thing, so I decided to play an eRussian patriot because in the real life I am linked to the Russian culture and I very much like it.

But… why? Why is Russia, and what is eRussia, for me?

Ok… Russia is, for me, an woman walking along the Nevsky Prospekt without a ruble in her wallet but the elegance and dignity of a Queen. Russia is those incredibly huge blocks of buildings with a school and a park within, forming like a sea of many small and cozy towns. Russia is a taxi driver telling me that he used to work as a nuclear physician in a city which had no name… and able to prove it with equations. Russia is this old man who lets me looking his old photos from the Army as he goes to the cellar to get me some vodka I will never forget. Russia is a saleswoman in a Kiosk praising Dostoyevsky and Rachmaninoff. Russia is a young couple serving me the third plate of “vareniki” with a smile, and actually expecting me to eat it 🙂 . Russia is a column of boys and girls, proud in their uniforms, in a parade for the Day of the Victory. Russia is a middle aged woman at the 8th or March, with a flower in her hands, smiling at his man as if they were just married. Russia is the dangerous vitality of Moscow, the elegance of “Piter”, the pride of Volgograd, the history of Novgorod and the coziness of a town named Lutchengorsk. Russia is all this and much more.

Of course I also know the dark sides. Russia is also those armored black cars with dark window panes, and the traffic stopped for a politician going to work, and the caviar sold under a blanket in a street market.

But here, in eRussia, we can leave those things behind a construct… let me call it a dream. eRussia is not Russia. But it can be the dream of Russia. A dream of the country as it should be, as we would like it to be. Of course full of different people with different ideals about it, but still, a country without corruption, without oligarchs, without arrogant politicians and criminal gangs. The dream of a great country, full of hospitable people, never-ending forests, warm comradeship, direct sense of humor, sincere words and a deep but natural poetry pervading everything.

And yes, of course. This not eRussia either, We have our share of corruption, quarrels, idiots and criminals. I know. Maybe the eRussia I am speaking about is not even a dream, but only eRussia as it should be, as it could be…. the dream of a dream.

But you know what?

I don’t care.

Because it is a dream damn worth dreaming.