Space Enough and Time: An Expat's Siberian Experience

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[Another guest post bySandy. There is something deliciously ironic in this story of aformer American corporate efficiency expert transplanting himself toa place where time never goes any place special and patience is toocheap to meter—and being happy there! Here's the executive summaryfor all you "TL;DR" hyper-efficient power web surfers: as youprepare to leave the US behind—whether physically (recommended) or justmentally—you should be ready to slough off you compulsively Americanold self and be prepared to grow yourselves a new, better-adapted,saner one.]
For the past five years Ihave made my home in Barnaul, a town in the Altai region of Siberia.Much about life here initially chafed against some deeply engrainedcultural assumptions that I carried around with me. No matter howhard I've tried, sometimes I just couldn't quite fathom thealienness of the Russian perspective.
I quickly became aware ofan almost palpable sentiment that here in Siberia there is spaceenough, and time, for anything to occur—and a certainresiliency to carry one through it. The immense distances and openexpanses provide spatial and temporal horizons that seem to recedeforever. The endless boreal forests of the Siberian taiga and thebarren steppes are not typical "environments" in the Westernsense. They are not places. They have no frames of reference. Theseenormous expanses seemed to set the rhythm for much of the daily lifehere, which is often spent waiting countless hours, or walkingendless kilometers, or just sitting there. Americans would never havethe patience for any of it.
Given this perspective, Ifound it curious that people here spent so much of their time crammedinto very close quarters in the bustling city of Barnaul, locatedbetween Novosibirsk and the point where the borders of China,Mongolia and Kazakhstan come together amid the snow-capped ridges ofthe Altai mountains.
How do you suppose peoplehere experience personal space and time in their daily life? I willalways remember my first of many trips around town in a publictransport van called "gazelle." Pleasantly named for its size,which is diminutive compared to a full-size city bus, "gazelle"accommodates as many as fourteen passengers, always uncomfortably. Although there are plenty of automobiles in town, the majority ofpeople do not own vehicles or drive. "Comfort" is a term thatSiberians do not appreciate as we do in America; it is not somethingthey expect or particularly seek. They accept certain things asgiven. They can be rather disparaging of our American habit ofwhining over the lack of comfort. They see it as a weakness in ournational character.
The first time I climbedaboard a "gazelle" with my wife Anna, I suddenly found myself invery close quarters with about a dozen complete strangers. Keepingour heads down to avoid bashing them into the low ceiling, we tookoff like a shot through traffic barely before the door was closed.The other passengers took no notice of our assault on their space aswe stumbled across their legs and packages to split between us thelast remaining seat in the back of the van. Here, the phrase "publicintimacy" takes on a new meaning: clearly, close physical proximityor bodily contact is not something Siberians shy away from—not inthe gazelle, or the tram, or the bus, or the theatre. Our fellowriders seemed unfazed by their close quarters during this gallopingride through town, maintaining a stoic and formal outward appearancein the midst of this forced intimacy.
I imagined this to be ahold-over from the Soviet era when there was little expectation ofprivacy. People seemed to understand the importance of keeping up adispassionate public appearance, especially in close quarters. Theywere unruffled by the physical proximity. But their complete lack ofemotional closeness or openness in such circumstances was a bit of asurprise. As an American, my first thought upon entering the womb ofthe gazelle was to introduce myself, and then to apologize forinterrupting their ride, but luckily Anna stopped me before I had achance to embarrass myself. The silence was deafening, with not aword exchanged among any of the accidental traveling companions. Evenspeaking with the person seated on your lap is kept to a minimumbecause others would be forced to listen to your conversation. Theerupting blast of a cell phone's ring tone made everyone reach fortheir purse or pocket. The unlucky recipient answered, trying tospeak softly and to end the conversation quickly.
This was my firstencounter with the different structure of personal space within thepublic domain of the city, and coping with the huge mismatch betweenit and my expectations became more and more difficult with eachpassing day. It wasn't just when taking public transportation that myconception of my personal space was being tested to destruction. Itseemed to be under assault in innumerable circumstances, butespecially when I found myself standing in a queue somewhere,waiting for service.
There is so much idlewaiting in Siberia that, as one Russian writer describes it, here theempty passage of time reveals its "authentic substance andduration." But all this waiting did not seem toinconvenience the local population as much as it bothered me. Itappeared as though our often frantic, Western sense of urgency wasrelatively absent here, and that enormous amounts of time wereregularly squandered without giving rise to frustration. If the busdid not come as scheduled we could idle away another thirty minutesanticipating the arrival of the next one, or just walk home. We couldeasily linger for forty-five minutes in line at the telecom office topay our monthly phone bill. If the hot water or heat in our apartmentbuilding shut off without warning (as it frequently did) we could dowithout it for several days or even a week until it would be equallyunexpectedly restored.
What I found most strikingwas that all this waiting apparently did not upset the locals as itwould Americans. Even as time seemed to nearly stand still, peoplewould just wait it out. Everything seemed to be taken in stride;things would work themselves out sooner or later. I observed thisattitude daily in the behavior of all those around me. There wasalmost never the need to rush; there was time enough for everythingto get done. "Everything will be fine" was Anna's constantrefrain in response to my endless anxiety and frustration.
I sensed an unusualattitude here for ignoring or perhaps for denying time's ploddingpassage, which became particularly apparent during the endlesswaiting in queues—at banks, ATMs, ticket counters, the phonecompany, the post office, the housing registration office, the taxoffice, medical clinics, and at the innumerable public notary officeswhich officially certify all documents. And I too waited, likeeveryone else, because almost everything here must be done in person,and almost nothing here can be accomplished by phone, or by mail, orvia the Internet. It was as if these modern efficiencies have notbeen invented yet, and perhaps never will be. Apparently, there doesnot seem to be any premium on "saving time." The massive statebureaucracies and even the commercial businesses here require thatyou physically present yourself and wait somewhere if you want to paybills or to conduct any other business; and make sure you can pay incash, because nobody accepts checks or credit cards.
Not only was such waiting an assault on my patience, but on my senseof personal space as well. People stand literally breathing down oneanother's necks, in such close physical proximity to each otherthat they are very often touching. Whenit is finally your turn to approach the service window, other peopleoften flank you on either side, watching everything that transpires.They might even interrupt your transaction, finding any opportunityto make contact with the person on the other side of the windowbefore their turn. This seeming impatience, or perhaps a lack ofconcern for others, seemed at odds with the general disinterestednessin time's passage that I witnessed daily, but it turns out to beanother thing entirely: it's just that your time at the counter isnot strictly delineated as yours exclusively but overlaps with thatof others around you.
There was seldom anylinearity to these queues, which look more like rugby scrums thanactual lines. There was certainly no queuing theory informingwaiting, as there is in America, no rope-barriers or otheraccoutrements of control. Something that looks like a queue oftenmaterializes spontaneously. As you approach a service window or entera waiting area, you find that people are not necessarily standing insingle file. Some of them might be sitting idly to the side, oroutside having a smoke, or leaning against a wall, or haphazardlymilling around. You have to inquire who is last in the queue, andoften find out that nobody really knows or cares, or that the personor persons in question just stepped out but will come back later. TheRussian queue is not so much a physical as a mental construct, itsdetails scattered across many distracted minds. When the officecloses for "dinner" for an hour or two in the middle of theworkday, the queue dissolves, then spontaneously reconstitutes itselfafter the dinner break is over.
Back in the USA I alwaysfelt that a queue, like time itself, has to be well-structured,arranged, managed, and always moving forward productively. Space andtime both have to be well organized for us, for we Americans, itseems, are incapable of enjoying so-called "free time." For us,free, unscheduled time is wasted time—time not filled withmeaningful content or purposeful activity. Even American vacationsare routinely crammed full of productive activities, and goodplanning is seen as a crucial element in recreating with efficiencyand purpose.
In America,time-consciousness is run strictly by the clock. Is Siberian time ourclock-time, or is it informed by natural and circadian rhythms ratherthan by a strictly linear, mechanical progression? I surmised thatthere are no unambiguous expectations of strict linear continuityhere. What at first appeared to me as interruptions in the queue, forexample, or a general disregard for overall time management, mightnot have been construed in this way at all by the locals. Was furtherconfirmed in other circumstances. For example, when speaking by phonewith Russian colleagues or friends about arranging a meeting orrendezvous, they would invariably suggest getting togetherimmediately rather than scheduling something for later. I found thisto be true even of busy executives. Trains and government officeshave schedules, and mostly run on schedule—except when they don't,but it doesn't occur to anyone that creating more schedules, and thenrunning on them, is something that they should be wanting to do.
People kept telling me:"Sandy, this is Siberia; you can't plan things here." It washard to absorb the message that the American control of time'spassage is illusory, that the flow of events from past to future cansuddenly be interrupted, come to a halt, or change direction. Afterall, the flow of heat, electricity, and water certainly can, andoften does. If Siberian experience of time is more naturally dynamicthan our artificial clock-time, this might explain their seeminglyparadoxical attitude toward time's passage.
Siberians seem to have asplit consciousness of time, as though there were two concurrentexperiences of temporal movement. One is an archaic, pastoral senseof timelessness, associated with a more feral existence in the taigaand the steppe, lived in close proximity to nature and its cycles.The other is a nascent and constraining sense of clock time, with afocus on punctuality and productivity that is finding a tentative andclumsy foothold in the complex framework of urban bureaucracies here.Is it just the nature of life in the city that creates such temporalincongruities and juxtapositions?
I began to see realchallenges to the deeper cultural transformation that Siberians haveembarked upon. Or was this transformation being thrust upon them,making the incongruities even more severe? Could Russia, couldSiberians, continue to survive in a world rife with suchcontradiction? Should we presumptuously drag them kicking andscreaming into our long-gone twentieth century?
For me this was not simplya rhetorical question. The steady gallop of Western-inspiredprogress is quietly overtaking Siberia, more rapidly each day. "Business lunches" are now advertised by new American-ownedcafes with the promise that they are "served in fifteen minutes."Credit cards are being offered more liberally by lending institutionsadvertising "quick financing." A pricey fitness club calledAurora is all the rage in Barnaul, claiming "fast results."(Of course, my friend Keith and I—the only two Americans intown—are both members.)
I feel that things arefast reaching critical mass here, with what remained of long-standingtraditions eroding while society moves chaotically into ourWestern historical present. What, if anything, could or should bedone to change the course of these events, or to circumvent such acultural transformation? I can hypothesize that the tensions createdby life in the increasingly anonymous urban sprawl of Barnaul, whichstill seemed in some respects so foreign to these people, isbeginning to create fissures between the generations and betweennewly emerging classes of citizens. But I can also imagine that thissense of "quickening" is just part of the ebb and flow—ofSiberia living through its own version of the 1950s, made possible byRussia's sudden prosperity, but that it is just a moment, and that,once it passes, Siberia will once again relapse into its age-oldtimelessness.

[Sandy's book, The Recovery of Ecstasy: Notebooks from Siberia, is available from Amazon.]