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
256 Melissa L. Caldwell invoke them to frame their interactions with non-Russians. As I will describe, the ways in which Russians navigate and manage racial and national differences are especially revealing instances of the broader significance and applicability of mutual trust and solidarity. Specifically, I will address the relationships that have been forged between Russian recipients and African volunteers in a food aid community in Moscow. Drawing from a case study of the Christian Church of Moscow food aid program, I describe how the daily interactions among members of this group have shifted participants’ perceptions of each other as unfamiliar and exotic “Others” into reciprocal relationships of friendship and shared membership in a common social group.2 I argue that through the ideologies and practices of mutual assistance that structure the interactions between recipients and volunteers in this food aid program, black Africans are incorporated into the local community around this program as insiders to be trusted and protected. The material that informs this essay comes from ethnographic fieldwork that I conducted in Moscow, Russia, between 1997 and 2002.3 My primary field site was the Christian Church of Moscow (CCM) soup kitchen program, a community that comprised 1500 Muscovite recipients and approximately 300 volunteers and other members of the CCM congregation, as well as other aid workers and local officials in Moscow.4 For the past ten years, the CCM program has worked closely with local social welfare officials and other regional government administrators to serve elderly pensioners, invalids, and other low-income Muscovites in four different parts of the city. Although volunteers include several Russian welfare activists, as well as North American and European expatriates, most are African students and refugees. The nine directors of the soup kitchens are all African. Five days a week, these volunteers serve meals, clean tables, and socialize with recipients. Because the CCM program draws together Russian, European, and African volunteers, officials, and recipients into a dynamic and collaborative community of mutual support, it is a valuable site for
