The Law and Other Anomalies

We returned home Saturday evening, April 2, having left the US on the 4th of March.  Over the course of four weeks away, three spent in Belgorod, Russia, we developed some perspectives about the differences between our two countries:

*The general standard of living in Russia for people we can fairly identify as middle class is vastly improved since Soviet times.  Goods of all sorts are freely available.  There is no sense of scrambling for items of consumption, be they food or anything else.  And there must be a sufficient sense of well-being that people seem settled in, not tense about their economic status or the continued available of “stuff.”

*The middle class general standard of living in Russia is not as robust as in the United States.  The households are just not as fully “equipped” as here.  Although everything is available, there is clearly not enough liquidity to acquire it all.  Consumption is selective; obviously food and basic clothing is purchased freely.  But then choices must be made.  Housing is smaller and less “decorated.”  Bathrooms remain rarer than here; one is enough for a household.  Cars are small, older and one to a family; children living at home don’t seem to have one even if they also work.  Households seem to spend money on updated computer equipment, but not on kitchens, TVs, etc.  Camera and basic cell phone equipment seems state of the art, but state of the art pdas, Kindles and the like are virtually nonexistent.  Babies have deluxe prams, but there are no “baby transportation systems” where carriages break down for use as baby chairs and car seats.  There are plenty of parking spaces on the streets even though there is great housing density (apartments are the rule here); just not a lot of cars around per capita.

*There is a remarkable paucity of print media.  Now it may be true that the younger population of a Univerity town lives on the internet, but I never got the feeling that any of the students or graduate faculty, or full faculty for that matter, were news hounds getting updates from their computers.  It is eerie to be in a city of 450,000 for three weeks and to never once have seen a newspaper blowing in the gutter, or sitting on a table in a home or in the student areas.

*On the other hand, televisions are everywhere.  They have invaded restaurants and cafes, even the best restaurants have a TV overhead in virtually every room with music videos playing continuously, and mostly in English.  Of all the places in which we ate over three weeks, only ONE (the dining room of the fanciest hotel in the City) did not have TVs blaring in the dining room (although even there I think I saw a screen lurking on a back wall).  When I met the chief judge of the arbitral court in his modern courthouse and luxurious offices, he sat at his desk and his eyes drifted often to the television, playing during our conversation, on his credenza over my shoulder.

*People don’t eat out much.  There is no restaurant scene.  The best food (outside homes) may be fairly characterized as “average.”  People do not drink wine and such wine as exists is served warmish and sweet.  People don’t drink vodka in restaurants, although the vodka selection on store shelves is vast and low-priced; I am not sure who drinks it all, where and when, except at “celebrations.”

*But vodka IS a ritual drink.  Toasts to guests are with vodka.  Celebrations involve vodka.  We have stopped for an early lunch with our hosts, on an outing somewhere, and have been presented with vodka by the bottle at 11am.  The other day I was invited to the 55th birthday party in the University of a senior law professor, and at 10:30 am his office was filled with pastries, sliced cheese, luncheon meats and vodka glasses.  I sure hope it is true that you cannot pick up vodka on the breath, because a lot of those folks went out to teach class after the half-hour celebration.

*There is substantial interest in and ignorance about the US.  This applies to our life styles generally (people understand we are “richer” but aren’t sure what that translates into, in practical terms) and our legal system in particular.  Questions from students, faculty and the judges of the arbitral (business) courts indicated that they just don’t understand our basic legal mechanics, for example.  The judges asked me (in my presentation to the assembled court) to please explain how a trial works in the US.  Jokes about LA Law and Boston Legal and Perry Mason to the contrary notwithstanding, people don’t even seem to have a popular misconception of our trial system and the jury process.  It was explaining something not to the misinformed so much as to the clueless.

*The students were courteous, friendly and some were always interest and all occasionally interested.  But I would not say that as a group there was great focus on learning the specifics I was teaching; it was more an opportunity to absorb a different world view than a true academic experience.  If I were to give an even simplified exam to the group of students, I am sure that 8 or 10 of them would nail it, but that the vast bulk of the class would earn a C or a D (the grade range that one sophisticated teaching assistant suggested as the level of achievement she would expect from these students if tested on a Western scale).  Since there was no text book, no assigned reading (we were told they wouldn’t read it anyway), and since the school declined to post my lectures in Russian or English on their website, and further since attendance was not consistent (not terrible, but not universal) and only about half the class seemed to take notes, these would have to be extraordinary intellects to come away with what a US lawschool would consider to be a workable knowledge of the subjects presented.

*My last lecture was on how to design a legal system most favorable to business.  I did not sense an entrepreneurial spark being lit.  One student, among my best, ventured that people should be paid based on excellence of their performance of whatever they did: the best President should be paid more than other Presidents, and the best craftsman of chairs should be paid more than the other chair makers, but the best President and the best craftsman should be paid equally.  This is not a socialist observation, it was a logical moral expression.  When I countered that under such a system we would end up with many perfect chairs but few viable growth companies, I was answered with a smile and a timid statement that we just were not going to be able to agree.  In sum, the legal system (at least to my limited experience) is not turning out Russian lawyers who are prepared to grow an economy in an entrepreneurial manner with legal support.  I don’t have enough data to draw any conclusions more broadly, although certain unfortunate conclusions are available for consideration: if there is to be business growth it must come from business people unaided by lawyers, yet we here believe that lawyering helps shape business growth; if business people are unlawyered, the lack of rule of law in business will continue and by definition impair business development; the society at large does not see the rule of law as part of the business of law schools. Or perhaps I am too harsh in making this list, perhaps this is just the way it is with 19 and 21 year old students in an emerging economy, and that to expect too much too soon is to experience disappointment.

*Finally, on a personal note: our flights could not match up on our return to the US and we founds ourselves in an airport hotel room at the airport in Moscow at 10 pm Friday night, with our flight West scheduled for 1 pm the following (Saturday) afternoon.  A quick internet search uncovered an English speaking guide who picked us up at 6 am, drove us to Red Square (40 kms from the airport), walked us around, took us on a tour of the incredibly beautiful subway system largely built by Stalin, and several other stops before dropping us back at the airport.  Moscow is totally changed from my last visit (1977, heart of the Cold War); it is a huge city (12,000,000+ people), very cosmopolitan, full of people and bustle, bright lights, stores, etc.  I suspect that our experience in living and teaching in Belgorod would have been somewhat different if I had been posted to Moscow and Moscow State University (the country’s most prestigious school and law faculty).  The degree to which our limited Belgorod experience can be generalized to larger Russian cities, or indeed to the plethora of small towns that make up most of Russia today, cannot be measured by us.  We enjoyed our experience, enjoyed the people, came away convinced that people ARE the same everywhere, and that only the external happenstance of their lives creates the impression of distance.  Hopefully we did some good; surely we had a blast, and we consider the experience a great education, if not for Russian lawyers, at least for ourselves.

To any lawyers following these blogs, I recommend your teaching our law overseas at some point in your careers.  I would be glad to provide further detail if you have an interest, just feel free to email me directly.

We are in our last week here; I taught today, will teach tomorrow and Friday, and Laura will teach on Wednesday and Thursday.  This post reports on our weekend activities, which were fascinating and elucidating; while it would be wildly presumptuous to claim any real knowledge of “Russia” based on such brief anecdotal experiences here in a small corner of such a vast and complicated country, we do feel that we have been given at least a glimpse of some of the nature of things Russian.

We spent Saturday at the home of the Professor on the law faculty who has principal responsibility for our scheduling here in Belgorod.  We were driven by a family friend, in a small Ford, to a somewhat rural setting about 20 minutes from the University.  In Belgorod, you go from town to country pretty fast; no suburbs such as surround Boston.

The Professor lives in what he describes as a modest or typical home and while we suspect his circumstances are not wholly typical, the house was not lavish.  It was however multi-faceted and warm and wonderful to visit.  We were met by the Professor, his wife Lena (a chemist), and several younger friends and a nephew, his wife and two small girls.  The house is not imposing, indeed its facade does not even stay in my memory.  We walked around back and the richness of home life started to become apparent.  We walked past some grape vines (the Professor makes his own wine), past a pen of chickens (maybe a dozen, with home-grown eggs of rich yellow yolks as we learned when we cooked our gift of eggs the next morning), to one of several small out-buildings in the small back yard.  The building, open at one side facing the house, had a shelf set out with salad and cold fish and of course vodka and wine and juice; we stood covered from the  light snowfall drinking vodka and watching the Professor feed the grille with wood and corn cobs until the fire was ready for an appetizer of grilled pork loins and ribs, eaten with fingers and washed down with (too much) vodka.  Further exploration led us to a two-part structure with a cot and a stove, a curtain separating a back room, I believe a Russian bath house.  Somewhere in there was a small underground wine cellar with brick arched ceiling. In the rear, a large open field owned by the Professor, an acre or more of open space up to an edge of woods.  It was explained that in summer a greater number of chickens were kept here.

Into the house for lunch, with two large tables set with benches and chairs in a relatively rustic room, long and wood-panelled running along the back of the house.  Numerous dishes with salads, blinis, cold fish, breads with black cavier, and much more vodka.

To visit the toilet, at this point you take off your shoes, which are pretty caked with the ubiquitous muddiness of a near-rural spring landscape, and step into a small, cozy and modestly decorated living room off which is a small bathroom.  I believe this is the only toilet in the house, and that of the three houses we have visited as of this writing each had only a single bathroom.

After much discussion and revelry and too much food, we were driven back the our dorm (6 hours later) with a supply of fresh eggs, a large portion of stuffed fish prepared by the Professor’s wife that to my best recollection we never even got to start to eat, and the welcome comfort of at least my own bed; I am told by Laura that she and  Matthew stayed awake, skyped with family and friends, etc., but I can only report that I fell immediately asleep and stayed that way for a mere 13 hours.

Sunday: always get back on the horse that threw you.  We are off to Elena’s condo.  Elena is the sister of Olga, one of our English guides at whose parent’s house we were guests last weekend.  Elena, who (as I had reported previously) has had a career as (among other things, she is a university trained manager) a singer in Dubai, had cooked some of the great food we had eaten  at her mother’s house that last weekend, and we were invited to her condo on Sunday for a relaxed afternoon of Russian cooking.  We showed up, arriving by cab at a modern apartment complex about 15 minutes from the university, bearing a gift plant and a box of chocolates; the condo is in a five or six story building, no elevator (as is typical), a bunch of brick buildings surrounding a muddy play area with a few pieces of schoolyard equipment.  Up the four flights, into a “mud room” leading to the apartment itself.

Let me pause to make a point about what we observed about Russian houses (remember please this is anecdotal, I don’t presume to set forth a universal description of Russian homes): the inside of the homes are modest but very warm and personal, but the entry ways are more like the front porch of a farmhouse.  Perhaps the rough-cut general exterior landscape has leaked over into the entry ways, but there is no pretense to establish a grand entrance.  Elena’s mud room held boots, slippers to put on when you take off your boots, some large jars of preserves on the floor, some tools, a couple of boxes of stuff, a metal ladder, etc.

Off with the boots, on with the slippers, and you step into a condo that is modern and decorated in the style of Ikea (it turns out that there is an Ikea presence in some Russian cities, an an Ikea catalog in Russian sitting on a table in the living room).  Elena’s husband,  an attorney and a building contractor of sorts (this partly illuminates one of the questions one of my students asked me, as to what other job I held in addition to being a lawyer, in order to support the family), had moved some walls, installed wooden floors, modern doors and fixtures, and was working on the enclosed front balcony (a ubiquitous fixture in all Russian apartments we have seen); the brick walls were partly covered with drywall, plaster patches,  and there was a smattering of construction tools in one corner).  There were nice Oriental rugs just about everywhere, a bedroom with modern furniture and a TV, a living room with an upright piano and a couch and tables and a large desk with an array of modern computer equipment, and in the middle the kitchen table had been relocated to serve as our dining table in a larger space.  On the walls: one small painting (no house we were in had what we would call any real “art”) and a wall clock.

The kitchen was wholly slick and modern, built to Elena’s specifications by Nikolai her husband.  Laura, Elena and Elena’s sister Olga began cooking several Russian dishes, with Laura taking notes as to ingredients, amounts, etc.  The kitchen had a US brand refrigerator, a Bosch stove and oven, a microwave, and although reasonable compact it was efficient and fully equipped.  No dishwasher or disposal (we did not see a one in the houses we visited).

We started the visit with hot borscht and wine; it was explained to us that borscht is not a soup.  The explanation made no sense to us, so I won’t repeat it. I think it is a distinction merely of nomenclature.  What is clear is that, once you add cabbage to a base broth made with some/any meat or poultry (ours was lamb based), you can add damned near anything else by way of vegetables, potatoes, etc.  You just have to cook the heck out of it.

While Matthew read and I took pictures and just relaxed, Elena and her two helpers then prepared a couple of salads, a chicken dish with vegetables and cheese baked in small pots, some ancillaries.  They cooked for a couple of hours, we walked around the neighborhood for some air, and returned to a delicious meal.  The meal they cooked was supplemented by a rabbit in sour cream sauce, prepared by Nikolai before he left for a business trip.

After dinner, a brief concert on piano with Elena singing, and then a pretty spiritual conversation about people, life, Russia.  At the end, we were presented with a triptych of Jesus, Mary with the infant Jesus, and Saint Nicholas.  Although Elena and Olga described themselves as (in substance) not very observant, they were fervent in their admonition that we display the triptych in a prominent place in our home, and travel with it, and draw from it peace and happiness.  Afterwards, Laura and I agreed that this gift encapsulates our general observation about the role of the Eastern Orthodox Church at least here in Belgorod: it is the only Church (the population, unlike the US, is of course, “native” for thousands of years), people are quietly respectful of the Church, everyone who discusses it expresses fervent belief, and the iconography of the Church is indeed everywhere: in each taxi we have taken, on the walls of virtually all the Court offices I have visited, in the statuary in front of this government-run nonsectarian university, in wallet pictures I have observed when several different people have gone to pay for their food or purchases and I am behind them on line, even in the explanation our principal guide gave to us for choosing not to read The DaVinci Code (its irreverance).  I have read of the deep unbreakable unity between Slavic peoples and the Eastern Orthoodox Church, an affinity that 70 years of Soviet rule did not shake, and it is clear that the sense of separation of religion and government that is an element of at least the Eastern US establishment is not going to be understood by the people here (I had an interesting time on the US Constitution in class, describing the anti-establishment clause to my totally Russian-ethnic students).

One might speculate that indeed the Soviet attack on the Church did nothing except to culturally strengthen it; there are many new Churches we have seen, and whenever someone describes an old Church they seem to apologetically describe its misuse during the Soviet era for some secular purpose.

Bottom line: to our limited experience, the stereotype of the warm and effusive Russian family, welcoming a stranger into the home in complete fashion, driven by not only a desire that different peoples be friends but also by a desire that specific people also be friends– they personally and YOU personally — is not just a stereotype, but rather something that is just plain true.

While I think it important not to get  carried away here — many people are warm and caring when it is one-on-one in many places I have visited, and people as a polity have been able to muster great inhumanities when roiled by politics or religious bigotry — there is no doubt that the Russian people we have met have universally been almost unbelieveably warm and accepting.  It is making our visit memorable in a dimension we had by no means anticipated.

1. The students have asked for a couple of hours of my time out of class on Tuesday afternoon to discuss issues unrelated to the course work. I have been politely warned, or perhaps I should say alerted, to the fact that the questions may be “inappropriate.” On inquiry, I am told that in the past they have asked visitors political questions about foreign and domestic policy. What about Iraq? What about native Americans? I expect inquiry about Libya, as to which my data is limited to day-late Kindle downloads from the Boston Globe, which is not exactly the news source one would want to rely upon. There is no TV in the room, nor in the dorm common areas (which are sparse anyway), nor in the teachers’ lounge. TVs in restaurants play Madonna, Michael Jackson, rap, mostly English music videos.
2. Today we took an hour walk from the campus into the area of town marked by row on row of medium-rise apartment buildings. The level of maintenance is pretty low. There are missing stones from facades, no grass in front (mud), play areas have broken equipment, and there is clearly no pooper scooper for the numerous neighborhood dogs. Doorways are sometimes missing brickwork. Most apartments have glass-enclosed balconies which seem to be used either for storage or lines to dry clothing. There is modest trash in the street, nothing serious and no newspapers blowing around (come to think of it, the kiosks we have seen on the streets have magazines and chocolate, no papers even in Russian). The buildings are 6-8 stories high, no noticeable architectural interest, flat facades of gray or dark brick; there are rows and rows, streets and streets of them. It is all pretty unattractive. There are cars, but not that many; parking is on the street and there are plenty of open spaces. There are few children outside, none in the play areas; it was about 40 degrees and gray, but certainly the streets felt deserted of kids.
3. So we sort of looked into the windows of a few lit apartments on lower floors. Not much to see; small kitchens, hanging chandeliers that were really sort of ornate for an apartment; no light fixture seemed to have all its bulbs, which reminded me of our rooms, where fully half the sockets in the two chandeliers in each of our rooms are empty. Electricity usage under control again.
4. Ate dinner tonight in an Italian restaurant. About 20 kinds of pizza, 10 kinds of pasta. Also chicken wings and some sushi. Ice cream, coffee, lousy wine (all sweet). A few Russian dishes mixed in. Although about a half mile from campus, it was full of students. Only one or two families with kids. Big take-out business for boxes of small pizzas. A word about the pizzas: they aren’t. Flat soft dough, no tomato sauce; cheese including soft slightly sweet cottage cheese. All the pictures show various toppings of differing colors (picture menu). Doesn’t matter, no matter what you order you seem to get the same thing. Dinner (if you can call it that) for three, with 3 wines and one large beer, 2 small milk shakes: $30 including 10% tip. Note on tipping: while all restaurants (and stores) seem to take Master Card and Visa, the charge slips in restaurants do not have a line for a gratuity. We inquired of our keeper: we are told it is indeed expected to leave a 10% tip unless it is a buffet.
5. Daily super market stop: careful review of the shelves is interesting. Foods have Russian labeling by in large. Cleaning supplies, diapers, female hygiene items bear US brand names and English labels. In toy shops and sporting goods shops, a reasonable portion of the stock bears English labels/brands. You can get several types of English language Monopoly here, a Sherlock Holmes mystery game, etc. There is far far more English on the shelves here than Russian in the US.
6. I have been asked to address a dinner meeting of judges about dispute resolution for corporate clients. I have told them I am a business lawyer but it seems any American lawyer is presumed competent to talk for a half hour on just about any US law topic. I will give it a try, from the standpoint of a business lawyer who tries to bridge the communication gap between our litigators and our business clients. I am reminded of the axiom: in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king.
7. They want me to give an exam to my class; I have told them no. I cannot give an oral exam to 50 people. If I give an exam to 50 students in Russian, how do I grade them? I like to think that multiple choice is not really the right way to end off a law class. I have offered to provide a signed certificate of attendance, albeit not likely “suitable for framing.” We will see how this all works out.
8. Lastly, I was invited to go ice fishing. I have noticed that the ice is rapidly melting on the river here. I wonder if I am overstaying my welcome….

This post will discuss observations about the town, university, people and situations we have encountered. It is long and detailed but intends to provide the texture for our visit and other comments.

Foremost, our visit is fascinating and educational in the extreme and the people we have met at or through the university, and many of the people we have simply come in contact with, have been absolutely warm, cordial and forthcoming. Observations in this blog are just that: factual observations, not express or even implicit criticism of the people, university, town or country.

Next, you need some context. We are not in a major city, nor a tourist center, nor a place in which English is commonly encountered. It is not easy to explain overall gestalt without sounding condescending, but no condescension is intended. Picture yourself in Des Moines, Iowa, a flat farm country prone to cold winters, but in a city nonetheless, and a city with a university of serious intent. Now try to assume that that city was occupied by the Nazi army within the memory of the older inhabitants, and that every other person had some relative killed in the war giving rise to that occupation. I think it not possible to grasp the texture of things without this kind of orientation, however contrived it may seem.

How to organize observations? Let me try a couple of lists, then trace three days of experience in some detail.

Things I have never seen nor heard during one week in Belgorod and some surroundings within 25 miles of the city center: a convertible car; a GPS in a car; a traffic jam even at rush hour in this city of 450,000; a subway; an airplane overhead; the word “Communist” (always “Soviet”); the words World War II (always “the Great Patriotic War”); an American style interstate highway; an American newspaper; an American car other than a Ford or Chevrolet; a large car other than a Mercedes or BMW; a house of worship other than Russian Orthodox; a wooden residence (log type) such as was seemingly universal in my prior visit to the then USSR (1977); a student taking notes on a laptop (though you see them in internet cafes on occasion); a Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts or Arby’s or Roy Rogers or any hamburger joint other than a Mickey D’s; a Chinese restaurant; a bottle of Russian wine (other than sparkling wine) in a restaurant; a jogger.

Things I have seen that I did not expect: exactly one McDonalds; French wines on menus (predominant but never anything good); odd use of old car tires (planters, sidelines on soccer fields); numerous supermarkets that are well stocked (the supermarket near us has everything you would find in a Super Stop and Shop, plus wine and beer, with many Western brands on the shelves, as well as large whole frozen fishes in freezer bins, beer to be pumped into your own bottle, and 5 liter water jugs at very low cost for drinking and cooking (no one, even local people, drinks the water in town due to the chalky earth although there seem to be good wells just out of town); clothing stores that are more specialized (you don’t find a Macy’s but) have complete lines of clothing comparable to a mid-market US store, in all sizes; specialty shops that are very deep in inventory (and a sporting goods store better stocked than any I have seen in the US, with gear and clothing for all sports but strangely not a single racing bike within a sea of thick-tired bikes for adults and children); a grand total of one person on a bike in seven days (this was out of town also; granted it is cold, but not that cold and the streets are wholly clear of snow and ice); streets and roads in generally good repair, with larger roads similar to say Route 9 and secondary roads like a three-lane country road with passing lane in the middle; many many gas stations; no obvious extremes in wealth (clearly some houses are bigger, newer and better, but no seeming slums and no McMansions).

THREE DAYS DESCRIBED

Friday. I get up at 8:30, shave, rotate the recharging electronics in their adapters to European two prong plugs, shower and eat a bowl of cereal and milk (we have shopped in the supermarket yesterday, we visit most every day, it is about two blocks away), instant coffee. I leave with Laura and Matthew, who today will attend my lecture for the first time, when I respond to the knock on my door; three of my students are there to walk me to class in the next building. I arrive and lecture from 10:15 to 11:40 (see prior blog for classroom details). My students walk me back to the dorm, I go up the elevator 9 floors to change from my jacket and tie to casual clothes. We go downstairs and walk two blocks to a café which serves a buffet lunch; inexpensive, decent food and you can look and point so no need for language. Soup, three entrees, two drinks, a couple of desserts about $16, no tip. Although we had been told that someone would take us on an excursion at two that afternoon, no one has arrived by 2:30 and since everyone is incredibly prompt we telephone our keeper who tells us this is a free afternoon but we will be picked up at 5:30 for an event. We walk over to the supermarket for light shopping, visit the bowling alley on the third floor (half empty, big ball, we do not play), let Matthew play an electronic game in the arcade, go back to the room to hang out, read, etc. At 5:30 our keeper picks us up and walks us a couple of blocks to the theater within the University building next door for the International Student Jamboree. The hall is filled with several hundred students. They are dressed in typical attire. The men are wearing jeans, zipper jackets, an assortment of shirts. No one in the entire city seems to have a hoodie except Matthew and me. The women (who seem generally tall and almost always incredibly thin)wear skin tight jeans and high heel shoes or high heel boots even during the day. There are students from about 40 countries here and students from about 9 countries danced, sang, spoke, etc. Every student must take two years of Russian first so everyone is fluent in Russian and the student body seems wholly integrated. We were shown to first row seats (we are visiting dignitaries here). There were three hours of presentations by students from Ecuador, Brazil, Muslim countries from the mid-East, Thailand ,China, India; these people are eating our lunch in terms of building cultural bridges and long term relationships around the world, I think; there is high consciousness of international bonding to create peace and trade, etc. The concert ended at about 9pm, we went back to the dorm, ate a light dinner we cooked ourselves on our very slow stove, and Laura and I drank a half bottle of vodka and ate some odds and ends and passed out exhausted.

Saturday. We get up about 8, are picked up at 10 to go on a hike in the woods. (Just to jump ahead, of course we never did get to hike, though the vodka arrived before noon.) We were first driven to the country to see the University’s newly built retreat for students and faculty. Spectacular brick and grass campus, rooms for 600 people, tennis courts, café, indoor pool, sculptures. The faculty uses it for team building and students can use it in good weather without charge. There are rooms and camp shacks for the students. The place is the best maintained facility we have seen in Russia, and the University is very proud of it. A quick light lunch with vodka was served at about 11:30 by the Professor in the midst of all this. We then were taken to a local museum in a small town. Professor Grobowsky, who is generally responsible for us, drove off to find someone with a key to open the museum in this small town about 40 kilometers from Belgorod. Matthew stayed with Laura and our keeper Katya, in the town square, where there was a small playground. I had a chance to wander around what appeared to be a typical local town; narrow streets, few cars, all driveways unpaved, small brick houses with tin roofs and fences of various materials surrounding almost all the yards, etc. The museum had exhibits of the town from Medieval times (it was a fortress against the Tarters and Turks) to date with, of course, heavy emphasis on the Great Patriotic War. Seems half the town was killed and all the town was burned. You can get a feeling for how it was possible to have a tank battle with 1200 tanks and over a million dead in one battle; the lands are flat, barely rolling, open fields, few trees except for some fir and white birch lining the roadways. Interesting sidelight: when Matthew needed to use the toilet in this town museum, an old woman walked him around back to an outhouse, a wooden shack with a hole in the ground and strips of newspaper instead of toilet paper. Matthew’s first experience with how the world really is (“Oh ,gross!”) Then back to the dorm to rest up; we were picked up at 5:25 by our keeper and her friend who is yet another translator (with a cell phone tuned to the Google translation site) and taken to a play in the town playhouse; very elegant, professional, and of course all in Russian. An historical costume piece about Katherine the Great, people in dungeons being whipped, the usual…. Then our family and our keeper and extra translator went to dinner in a nice restaurant, a rarity with an (almost) English menu, fish tank, large TV in the dining room (a standard feature in restaurants here, this one blessedly not turned on), a decent meal with French wine and a tab for about $180 for full dinners with champagne and wine for five people. We walked back to the dorm, arriving at 11:20. Guess what stops running at 11:00? The elevators. Nice hike up nine floors. Too hyped to sleep, we sit up talking until 2 am before we pass out.

Sunday: This was supposed to be a day off. No such luck. We are picked up by the Professor and a new translator (we have worn out our keeper, she gets the day off) and it turns out we are going to lunch at the home of the translator, who is a fifth year language student about to become an English teacher at good old BSU. When we get to the car, we find three cars instead, and a whole bunch of people who are invited lunch guests. We all drive about a half hour to the edge of town, a small house of brick with a mud yard and stone driveway, corrugated tin roof. We meet our translator’s mother and father and aunt, her boyfriend (an engineering student), and the five other people we met in town who were family friends. The first floor consists of a living room converted into a bedroom for the parents, a den-like room, a rough laundry and a small well-equipped kitchen. The second floor has a couple of bedrooms, a small single bathroom and a living room set with a lunch table. It is not possible to explain the food spread, but to suggest that there was soup, four or five appetizers, several main courses, blini and cavier, shashlick skewers of lamb cooked on the spot outside, a couple of desserts. Tea from a samovar prepared outside because the core was heated to boil the tea water and was fired with small kindling wood (so that the core of the samovar was spouting fire and smoke from the top). All the rooms had detailed ceilings with painted designs; some rooms had beautiful light fixtures of crystal and florettes; other rooms had a single hanging bulb. The floors were covered with oriental rugs on top of linoleum. An odd mixture of elegance and some roughness in the finishes. The other guests turned out to be part of a Russian folk chorale of some note, which included the mother of our translator and the translator herself; they gave a concert before lunch and during lunch, replete with Russian costumes, accordion, etc. Suffice it to say that lunch lasted for 6 hours, and we returned home food-buzzed and the adults somewhat buzzed with a mixture of champagne and, yes you guessed it, about 6 vodka toasts. (Details: you must drink your glass of vodka in one slug of course, and the third glass is drunk for love so must be held in your left hand as it is closest to your heart.) So we have invitations to go ice fishing and come cooking in the home of our translator’s sister (a little bit further out of town; the woman was a singer of Russian songs in Russian and European restaurants in Dubai, which frankly is a bit at odds with one’s preconception of a country Russian woman cooking blinis in a primitive kitchen). In the words of the sage, “go figure.” We are driven back to the dorm, where we are now; Laura is skyping with her mother in Florida, Matthew has gone to bed, I have prepared my lecture for tomorrow and of course am now wrapping up this blog post. Just another typical day in Mother Russia.

Final thought: at each event with the faculty, there are formal toasts to world peace and friendship between peoples. The toasts could seem somewhat dated and embarrassing, except that they are heartfelt and sincere and clearly seriously believed by one and all. We do not dwell, in our own minds, on the reasons for our coming here to teach, but those reasons are indeed consistent with the toasts. So here we are in the midst of an exercise in cultural bridge building, while at the same time trying to teach classes, hold down the vodka, and learn something about the country while we go.

When I get back to Boston, I will need a vacation. I will now sign off, go help wash out some underwear (with a possible five day wait for laundry, we cannot afford the risk of sending anything out), finish scraping the mud out of the treads in our outdoor shoes, and then fight with Laura for control of the Kindle.

This entry is in two parts.  The first is for those who want to hear about my first efforts at teaching law here in Belgorod.  The second part relates to the three day effort to establish computer contact through the university computer system (which is the system I am using for this post).

There are about 70 students in my class.  They are somewhat far along in their five year course work as undergraduate law majors.  As they enter university from high school, they are a young group — perhaps 18 to 20.  I did not count specifically but there are many women, over half.

My lecture was filmed  — not sure why and no one asked me about it, but it is of course fine with me.  A law teacher translated as I went along, every sentence or two or three I would stop and the translator would repeat what I said, guided by a text I had sent over by email a month in advance for translation.

I have chosen to use the blackboard rather than powerpoint.  It allows me to write or draw lines of connection when I sense the students need help; some speak little English, some much English but no one I have met is what I would call fluent (English is required in High School).  My first blackboard graphic was a US map to locate information about me personally (where I was born, went to school, where my older kids worked, etc.).  Other graphics included a chart of our court system and information about separation of powers (the first lecture is an orientation in US law and government).

In future lectures I will talk about contracts,business entities, finance, the UCC, securities law, IP, real estate, and the ideal business law system.

I got two questions: the first was about independence of judges (are they named for life?  interest in independence of judges it seems)and the second was whether I thought that citizens in Russia should be a broadly allowed to have guns at home as the US Supreme Court recently held under the Second Amendment.  The student knew about the origin of the “militia” language in the second amendment and its origin in US history — pretty sophisticated I thought.

One final detail: it seems to be an honor to pick me up in my room, walk me to the lecture (3 minutes, next building) and then walk me home; an “honor guard” of several students seems assigned to this task.  I do hope that this practice gets transferred back to my lawfirm, as I enjoy being attended to by a retinue….

NOW, COMPUTERS:

Seems it is a big deal to get on line through the university.  Please understand that everyone is totally polite and tries very hard to be helpful, but that doesn’t make it any easier.  The best way to get on  line is via WiFi in many nearby cafes, where faculty and those students with computers seem to congregate.  But how much coffee can you drink, and how much beer?  Also, it would be necessary in the long run to get on line in the dorm room; Matthew can read or sleep and I can work.

So there is a central registration for use of the university plug-in broad band.  (The library wifi is available only to students who have taken a full computer course.)  You must bring your computer to a central office where they program it for plug-in, check it for virus, inspect your unviersity ID, and collect 400 Euros for unlimited access for me and my wife Laura in our rooms (but only one of us at a time).  We leave our computers for a couple of hours at the office (during this time we visit the nearby museum dedicated to the massive tank battle of Kursk in the  Second World War, which liberated the area of Belgorod from the Nazis and turned back the German invasion, freeing the Town from occupation at the cost of about 830,000 Russian lives just in this one massive 1943 battle).

Back to the office with a Russian brochure about the museum (nothing in any other language), and we pick up our computers and two technicians who come back to our rooms with us, plug in the computers, test the connections, make sure we can log on, and we are now all set.  The total process took us about three days from the time we first inquired of the law faculty about internet, and were then told we could use the computers in the faculty of law offices which we tried without success.

Enough for now.  We have internet, we are registered with the local police, we have found the huge and very well stocked supermarket and the teaching has begun.  More later as our three weeks wear onward.