Sofia and Friends

Photo: Four-year-old Sofia

Sofia and I are pals. Sofia is Slava’s granddaughter, and he is “diye-da” to her. I’m “Shirwee.” Sofia and I get down on the floor together to play with dolls, or better yet, with the plastic cash register. Shopping is my specialty in the Russian language. I can play either the customer or the cashier. I can add numbers better than Sofia, and I also know how to make change with rubles and kopeks. In other spheres my vocabulary severely limits me. I’m not sure, but Sofia might think I talk like a three-year-old, definitely not like someone her superior.

Sofia’s older brother Nikita is 15. He’s 6’1” and may still be growing. Nikita is close to the age when he will need to make some serious decisions about his life. College entrance is at 17, and a specialized program of study starts right away. Changing majors is not common in Russia. Nikita is a fair student but not an enthusiastic one. He is simply trying to preserve his options as long as he can.

I’ve had short visits with friends from times past. They all say, “Shirley, you haven’t changed,” and I say the same about them. It’s easy to pick up where we left off, which was two years ago, on my last trip to Russia. But of course, our lives have changed.

When my friend Irina was a teenager, she decided to become a physicist in part because movies conveyed the impression that “physicists have more fun.” Soviet propaganda was definitely more successful than American propaganda in convincing young people to become scientists during the era of the Space Race. Irina thought that it would be glamorous and exciting to be a physicist. Although the glamour and excitement didn’t quite materialize, Irina found that she liked the work of an experimental physicist in the Metals Institute. With her facility with foreign languages (German and English) she got opportunities to travel when the Iron Curtain fell.

Irina has an entrepreneurial streak, and she started a business during Perestroika of importing medical equipment from Germany. The business was successful for a time, allowing her to buy some rental property real estate. She’s back in her lab at the Metals Institute, but the Academy of Sciences doesn’t have much money for equipment in her area. So once again she’s made a switch. She went back to school to earn a doctorate in a new field, one that’s only about ten years old here – ecology. And now she’s teaching classes in water resources at the College of Mining. She tells me that although most of the students in the college are male, in ecology the students are mostly female. She’s quite sure, however, that the few male students are the ones who will become bosses after they graduate. Irina is a proto-feminist. Although she’s something of a free thinker, she’s firmly convinced that feminism is a bad thing. No respectable woman in Russia, at least outside Moscow, would be known by that name.

Another of my friends, Galina, also had a career as an experimental physicist. Galina retired about ten years ago, at the age women are eligible for retirement, which is 55. Her monthly pension is about 3,000 rubles or $600, which is not enough to live on. She’s lucky to have two sons who are well off, one in New York, and one here in Ekaterinburg. Galina has prepared a cultural program for my last week here. Tomorrow we’re going to some art galleries, and the next evening to a production of “Die Fledermaus.” I don’t know if it will be in German or in Russian. Frankly, I don’t care. I’ll just swing to Johann Strauss.