"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born."
- Anais Nin
Friendship Remains the Second Most Important Value for Russians After Family
A matter of time
“In the last ten to 15 years we have seen what sociologists call the reverse domestication of Russian society,” said Natalya Zorkaya, a research fellow at the Levada Center, a major liberal sociological think tank. “Financial strain and stress force people to divide their lives between the home and the office, leaving very little time for personal contact. In the lives of the older generation television started to play a bigger role than ever as television sets replaced traditional human communication. In the lives of the young, a similar role is played by the Internet.”
There is nothing new in this phenomenon. The philosophers of ancient Greece complained that friendship ceased to be what it had been before. The reason was the rise of towns and travel, which led to the destruction of the traditional community. Western Europe went through a similar process between the 17th and the 19th centuries, when the dignified medieval pace of life was replaced by the constant race of market competition. Then again friendship was one of the primary victims of economic progress. Classic European fiction is full of stories of how the new pragmatic society destroyed friendships in the name of personal success or minimizing financial expenses. For example, Honoré de Balzac’s Lucien Chardon and Eugenie Grandet are both forced to forget friendships. Chardon is forced to betray a childhood friend who becomes an impediment for his career in Paris, and Eugenie is isolated by her voracious father who fears that her marriage to a poorer person could destroy their family fortune. “As the products of consumption rise in value, the value of human relationships diminishes apace,” Karl Marx wrote in the 1850s. “In the hierarchy of values of a bourgeois society, human connections cannot be converted into monetary gains or a show of one’s own power and prestige—such human connections are worthless.”
In Russia of the 20th century, Karl Marx had some strange fans in the figures of Stalin and his followers, who, presumably fighting against these very rightfully described defects of a bourgeois society, in fact returned Russia to a pre-capitalist state. In this sense, Russia in the latter phase of the Soviet history, when one could work at the same place for 30 or 40 years, seeing the same ten to 15 people every day and getting the same amount of “guaranteed” salary, was closer to a community-based feudal society than to the modern individualistic one. Time was not money in Soviet Russia, just like time was not money in traditional societies.
But although bad for the economy, this situation helped to spawn some very close and fruitful friendships. “The friendships that I established in the Soviet period will remain my best friendships for the rest of my life,” said Polad Bul-Bul-ogly, a popular singer in the Soviet epoch who currently serves as the ambassador of Azerbaijan in Moscow. “The intensity of human interaction was somehow higher then.”
Back to basics
Capitalism came back with a vengeance in the 1990s, partially destroying family and friendship on its way. Some of the old, nearly forgotten barriers were reestablished, separating friends by prejudices. Here are some of the most widespread ones: the impossibility of friendship between two women; the impossibility of friendship between a man and a woman; friendship made impossible by a large age gap or a discrepancy in personal income; there can be no real friendship between people of widely varying cultural and religious backgrounds. Experience defies all of these stereotypes. Yes, there are cases when sympathy between friends who happen to be a man and a woman grows into love. And there are cases when two female friends behave like two sovereign allied states who maintain a nice relationship only until their interests do not clash (the usual bone of contention is a man). But the trend is not a rule. There are cases when friends manage to overcome both jealousy and gender barriers. The same is true about barriers set by age or by different cultural and religious backgrounds. And even if stereotypes are strong, it is not really worth declining a friendship if the person offering it does not belong to the social group seen as “fit for friendship” in your milieu.
The new market economy established in the 1990s made time a precious commodity many prefer to keep to themselves
In fact, upon closer examination, the aforementioned stereotypes do not hold much water. Statistics defy both the widespread belief among women that “men are unable to be friends,” and the equally popular masculine stereotype that women are unable to have really close friendships. According to VTsIOM polls, men and women in Russia do not differ much in the utmost importance they ascribe to friendship (91 and 93 percent, respectively). When asked about the preconditions for a good friendship, very few people mentioned gender, ethnic background, age or the material well-being of a potential friend. Instead, territorial proximity, common hobbies, common professional interests and openness made the list. A real friend should live somewhere nearby, it is preferable for him or her to be your colleague or, even better, to work in the same office, he or she should also be open but not importunate. In one-on-one communication Russians expect their friends to be open and share not only the information about their successes, but about their problems as well. However, a real friend should also be able to keep secrets, and abstain from criticizing you to a third party or, heaven forbid, in public. Russians also expect their friends to give advice, but at the same time not to do it in a mentoring way; utter respect for a friend’s autonomy and dignity are required. In that sense, the early Soviet period was destructive for many friendships, since the communist ideology encouraged public criticism of colleagues and public discussion of private lives.
Right behind you
So is it worth the trouble to defy stereotypes, searching for friends in social groups different from your own? Sociologists and psychologists unanimously say yes. Even if you make a mistake, it is better to learn from your own setbacks than to follow blindly the advice of parents or other friends. As the polls reveal, age, wealth and gender differences rarely lead to the severing of a friendship. Among the reasons for an end to a friendship the most common is a change in geographical location (for example, emigration). The second is betrayal, a loss of trust in a friend. Betrayal is followed by a sudden discovery of a moral defect in a friend (jealousy, deceit, unreliability). Very rarely do friendships get severed because of a difference in gender, age or financial situation.
But even if a friendship fails, psychologists do not recommend despairing and quickly starting a fresh one. The ability to be a friend is a sign of strong character. “Only someone with a strong character can share with a friend not only his or her belongings, but also his or her heart and soul. And even if you are afraid that you have a weak character, friendship can make it stronger,” said Natalya, a senior at Moscow school number 548. In Natalya’s opinion, devoting yourself to a friend, and especially facing with him or her such difficulties as ethnic prejudice or misunderstanding, helps to further one’s own development
