Torsello, Davide - Pappová, Melinda: Social Networks in Movement. Time, interaction and interethnic spaces in Central Eastern Europe - Nostra Tempora 8. (Somorja-Dunaszerdahely, 2003)
Interaction, migration and change
258 Melissa L. Caldwell several occasions I have found myself sharing subway cars with young men reading white supremacist literature; and once, while sitting on a park bench with a friend, a young man sat down nearby and, in the course of a conversation with us, casually remarked that he had nothing against "skinheads.” I also discovered to my great dismay that the bucolic neighborhood in which I lived in 1997-1998 was widely known in Moscow as one of the meeting places for members of a neo- Nazi organization. On weekends, members of this organization, dressed in paramilitary clothing, gathered near the metro station and distributed anti-Semitic materials. Thus I would not dispute that racially motivated violence in Russia is problematic. Nevertheless, in this paper, I want to focus on the issue of race as a particularly evocative point of reference for understanding the extent to which Russian social practices are reciprocal and inclusionary and can efface social divisions based on racial and other differences. Exchange: Trust and the Other Relationships that blend social and economic transactions have long been a recognizable and essential way of life in Russia and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (Shlapentokh 1989; Verdery 1996; Ledeneva 1998; Wedel 1998; Berdahl 1999; Pesmen 2000; Caldwell in press). In many ways, the official economy in these regions has survived largely because of the prevalence and strength of informal connections and bargaining in the private sphere. In the Russian case, ordinary citizens cultivated a variety of cooperative survival strategies to compensate for shortages created by the socialist state’s industrial and financial practices. Through collective practices such as shopping with friends and relatives, saving places for each other in queues, barter, and cultivating personal relationships with shop clerks and other individuals with potential access and influence (see also Ledeneva 1998; Fitzpatrick 1999:54-66), Russian consumers generated interpersonal relations that were simultaneously social and economic.
