Overcoming the metro mentality in Ukraine

“The best cure for one’s bad tendencies is to see them fully developed in someone else.”

Alain de Botton

‘What improvements do you hope to see in your country in the future?’

This is one of the guideline questions that we ask a typical intermediate-level student on our placement tests. In light what’s going in Ukraine these days, it may seem even more appropriate than ever.

But then again, do we really want to ask such a question when we have just a few minutes to talk? Do potential students really want to answer such a question? It’s like, welcome to our language school, what do you think about the situation in Ukraine?

Turns out, I’ve rarely needed to ask it. In the time I’ve been doing placement tests – on average, every other term over the past 3-4 years – a good number of students come to us because they want to boost their English enough to take IELTS and emigrate. In the past couple of months, a rapidly increasing number want to emigrate. On a couple of days, I had over 75% of the potential students wanting to flee. Their desperation and impatience are palpable and somewhat tragic. Sadly, way too many of them are at such a low level that it will be quite some time before they are ready. How to break it to them gently is a delicate affair, and some of them barely understand what I’m telling them.

When I think of my small sample size but then extrapolate to take into account other language schools, other cities in Ukraine, and my colleagues who are also placement testing, I have to think that there’s no way all of these people will be able to emigrate, surely. I’d love to know a reliable statistical average – how many actually emigrate v want to emigrate.

(In the days and weeks after February’s tumult, I was feeling more optimistic about the future, I was genuinely positive and upbeat, as were some of my students. Most, however, have remained more cautious and are biding their time to see what – if anything – will change after this weekend’s elections.)

Naturally, as part of the conversation, when students want to emigrate, I refrain from directly asking them the ‘improvements’ question and instead just throw out a ‘why?’ They mainly have the same reasons – fear, anxiety over the future, a better life for their children, job prospects, etc – but inevitably, the same thing comes up over and over, ad infinitum: ‘I don’t like the Ukrainian mentality.’

Damn it…what does this mean? The mentality thing comes up repeatedly. I ask for elaboration – sometimes, if their level is higher – and get muddled responses. Nothing very illuminating or revealing, unfortunately, and I can hardly press too much since there are other, totally unrelated, questions to ask. And so we move on.

In my more intrepid, ambitious, anthropological, investigative days of blogging, I might have sat down and ‘interviewed’ more people. In fact, before I even started this blog, I did a lot of more formal research when I was working in Riga, interviewing students about Latvian/Russian relations and issues of citizenship and language laws. To keep it as impartial as possible, never my own students, but other teachers’ students, of different ages and backgrounds. I took copious notes in my notebooks but never did much with them, and at this point, I’m not even sure where they are. That research will probably never see the light of day, although a lot of the stuff I can remember is still relevant today.

But that’s Latvia and this is Ukraine.

I’m lazier now with my research. My subjects over the past few years have been my students. In asking this question about mentality, I’ve yet to get a good, firm, concrete answer that will help illuminate things a bit better. There’s hardly anything I can put down here that will shed any further light on this.

Then there’s reading of course. I can’t say there is much that I’ve come across in terms of the Ukrainian (or even Slavic) mentality, but a couple of articles stand out.

However, the challenge is in determining a specific Ukrainian – as opposed to the broader Slavic – mentality, one that is different from the mentality of the world in general. Let’s face it – most of the traits we complain about in a specific people exist worldwide. How many times have you heard that Italians/Greeks/Spanish/Turks/Egyptians/etc are the world’s worst drivers? Every nationality claims that their drivers are the worst. Same with mentality – when people start to characterise certain negative traits, much of the time I think ‘woah, what nationality isn’t like this?’

Stereotypes and generalisations aside, this is the best I’ve got so far – but consider this, potentially, the start of some more in-depth ‘research’. This is only a cursory start.

1. Bribery and corruption

Seriously? So many people say this, but this is ubiquitous everywhere. A lazy answer. The whole ‘we all need to stop giving bribes’ argument falls by the wayside when one person passes the buck – pun intended – and says that ‘other people’ should stop before they stop. Everyone decries paying bribes, but no one wants to be the first to give it up. This is human nature (game theory to a certain extent). Do unto others as they would do unto you (apologies, I’m not much of a Biblical scholar) hardly applies here. No one wants to be the first for fear of missing out.

2. A lack of empathy

Okay, so this is more of a Slavic thing. So says a Russian journalist who wrote an article about the Slavic mentality (though the main subject was homophobia and the Slavic mentality). This is sloppy sourcing and writing on my part, but you’ll just have to take my word for it. It wasn’t a well-written article and I long ago deleted it from my Kindle because of that, and for the life of me I can’t find it again, but it’s general premise was ‘Slavs don’t give a shit about anyone else, it’s about protecting yourself, not thinking or empathizing with others, just to do what you gotta do to get ahead.’

Look, it’s not me saying this, it was a Russian woman.

But…when I think about crossing the road on a green man and the cars not giving a toss and trying to run me down, having the audacity to honk at me as if I’m doing something wrong…cars parking on pavements, running down any pedestrians who have the nerve to get in their way…the constant queue jumping, or the people barging in front of you in shops or at the cheese counter at the supermarket or train station…people routinely just letting go the doors to the metro or supermarket in your face (or walking right through the doors you hold open for them without acknowledging you or holding it open for the next person). Or when I think about my students who so brazenly just get up and turn off the A/C or close the window without asking anyone, as if no one else matters…

In a particularly optimistic mood days after Yanukovych fled, I was immediately brought back to earth as I crossed the road – on a zebra crossing – just outside my flat and was almost mowed down by an irate driver in a dark-tinted SUV. Plus ça change, I guess.

(As for homophobia, it’s rampant here, but I this is definitely an overall Slavic thing – still, Ukraine has a fairly long way to go on this front.)

(Another interesting, highly provocative question to ponder: many people think serial killers lack empathy – I’m merely [lightheartedly] pointing this out!)

3. Materialism

Finally an article I can reference and is specifically about Ukraine, and this is one that my students have confirmed as being fairly on the money – another pun intended. I’ve shared with adults and teenagers and it’s well worth a read:

Peter Singer Why Pay More?

The premise (the article vis-à-vis my students’ take): Ukrainians tend to be guilty of conspicuous consumption, as opposed to more modest and less ostentatious displays of wealth seen in other places, as exemplified by the $165 watch worn by Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski in comparison to the $6,000 - $30,000 watches worn by his Ukrainian counterparts.     

I’m going to throw my good pal Mark, who recently left Kyiv after 5+ years here, under the bus with this one (disclosure: he doesn’t read this and he said I could quote him on it). This, for him, was something he noticed quite a bit, the level of materialism, where people live beyond their means – not getting into debt, mind you, just stretching the paychecks as much as possible to get some visible displays of materialistic wealth, whether in the form of clothes, watches, flowers, technological gadgets or cars. Sometimes this manifests itself in expensive restaurants or clubs, where to be seen out and about, spending money is the crucial thing here. When I ask students about saving for the future, pensions, investments, I get loads of black looks. Cars, houses, flats, yes. Money for the future? No…but then property is a viable investment I suppose.

The glaring question: is this so Ukrainian? I don’t think so. This is characteristic of every aspirational society.

4.  The cold and superstition 

This is perhaps a slight non-sequitur because it hardly reflects on mentality – or does it? Having taught in Latvia and Kyrgyzstan - just to mention two other former Soviet countries – I can hardly recall my students feeling as cold and afraid of draughts as they are in Ukraine. I’ve encountered superstition everywhere I’ve gone – this post detailed some particularly quirky Kyrgyz beliefs – but only in Ukraine are students often cold and terrified of draughts, even in warmer months. It beggars belief. I can actually remember one particular instance in Latvia, on a very cold day when I had the window open and a student very politely asked me if she could close it as she was cold. I was a bit taken aback; I had the window open at all times and students hardly ever said a word.

Here, students have coats on in autumn and spring, complain of the cold when I’m sweltering like a pig, freak out when the window and the door are both open, freak out even further when you attempt to turn on the A/C, which even I’m not a big fan of. Superstition – yes, that’s what it is – abounds. Wasn’t the whole idea that draughts cause lower back pain prevalent back in the 1950s and 60s? And the A/C leading to sore throats and illnesses? Like with homophobia, maybe one day this will all be a part of the distant past.

‘The curse of modern times is that almost everything does create controversy.’

Horace Walpole

Do you remember when we thought draughts cause back pain?! Can you believe how silly we were?!

I don’t get it. Ukraine is a cold place half the year. You figure they’d be used to it by now.

5. Which brings us to the final point on this whirlwind stop of our mentality tour: the Metro

Here’s where we just might finally pin down that elusive quest for the Ukrainian mentality. It’s both literal and metaphorical.

Anyone’s list of pet hates will include something to do with public transport. People worldwide do stupid things on public transport – it really does bring out the stupidity and insolence in humanity everywhere you go. But what happens in Ukraine that doesn’t happen elsewhere?

Now maybe I’ve been here too long and I’ve forgotten what goes on in other places, but people seem particularly paranoid here about not being able to get off at their stop, so much so, that they start moving towards the doors a station or two before, or just as the train pulls out of one station, and people are always asking you whether you are getting off at the next station if you are blocking their way, even when the train isn’t crowded, and they don’t care whether you have to let go of the hand railing or not, causing you to fall over, just as long as they can get themselves well prepared to get off, and they will regularly move into what I call ‘temporarily-vacated space’ meaning I move out of the way so they can get past, and I’m usually in an awkward and uncomfortable position at an angle, my legs twisted, sometimes on my tip-toes and then they ‘permanently occupy’ my ‘temporarily-vacated space’ and they’re so damn aggressive about it. It’s not so much the act of doing all this, but like with the desire to emigrate, the desperation is so palpable and overwhelming. We’re talking extreme paranoia here – God forbid they won’t be able to get off. Just watch people as they stand with their faces plastered up against the doors, awaiting the next stop, as their head moves from side to side to see if anyone might deign to sneak in front of them. You can see genuine fear in their eyes; the older they are, the more fear there is.

Most other places in the world, people are pretty content to get up from where they’re sitting or move from wherever they are standing as the train comes to a stop, with hardly a problem. In London, for all its transport faults, this works seamlessly, people effortlessly gliding through the carriage from the middle of a crowded area and sidestepping people in their paths to get off.

Even more annoying is when I am trying to get off, moving towards the door – after the train has stopped, naturally – when someone moving in front of me stops suddenly just inside the doors, getting ready for the following stop, thus trapping me in as other people come rushing in.

I’m told that this may hark back to the good ‘ol days of queuing up for food, where the smallest gap in the queue was filled by someone and you had to be aggressive and stand your ground or you risked missing out. Whilst waiting for a cash machine, I try and give lots of space to the person in front of me, almost invariably someone fills that space between us without even realising – or perhaps the insolent swines do realise.

These things make my blood boil. Depending on my mood, I either do my best to move to the side or say – in English, usually – something like ‘relax, you’ll get off’ or ‘chill out, be patient’. If I’m in a fouler mood – more often than not while on the metro – I’ll usually insert an expletive or two.

The other aspect that I can’t quite recall occurring in too many other places is the frenetic mad dash to sit down. You almost never see empty seats and people – with babushkas especially egregious offenders – scurry towards empty seats, elbowing others out of the way. There are never empty seats, and I’m not even sure when rush hour is – the damn train is always packed. Lately I’ve taken to walking everywhere, I don’t care if it takes me an hour.

People run to catch trains everywhere – I’ve never understood this when trains come every 2-3 minutes. But here, people race towards trains like it’s the last one of the day. The most comical sight are the women in ridiculously high heels – most of whom struggle to walk gracefully in normal circumstances anyway – stumbling down the stairs, towards the train like baby giraffes. I once had a hard time suppressing my chuckles when a woman broke a heel and fell – served her bloody right.

The running itself is bad enough – quick, emigrate before you miss the chance! – but also rather irksome is the aggressive, rapid bee-line people make to the escalators, ploughing people over, jumping the queue to get on, elbowing people out of the way…and then just standing on the damn thing! I can’t get over this – almost nobody walks up the escalator, and people stand on both sides. Now this is something I’ve never witnessed anywhere else, but surely it happens. People are in such a damn rush all the time, but then they just stand on the bloody escalator? It boggles the mind.

Quick, passed IELTS…check. Got the visa…check. Got the plane ticket…check. Quick, get on the plane…check. Now relax. You’re on the home stretch.

All the aforementioned traits are reflected here:

1. Bribery – I don’t want to be the first to just be patient and wait to get off, because then other people will still move and I’ll get stuck on the train. I’ll wait for others to start before I join in.

2. Empathy – I don’t give a shit if you’re trying to hang on for dear life, I want to get myself amply prepared to get off, tough break if you’re not getting off, but I am and I don’t care about you or anyone else. Move it.

3. Materialism – I have to look important and be somewhere, and I’m not so chilled out as to wait patiently and relax and wait for the train to stop. 'Busyness' has certainly acquired an element of social status - the busier you are, the more important you must be.

4. The cold and the A/C – these modern conveniences make me nervous, get me off this damn thing as quickly as possible before some fumes cause me irreparable harm or I freeze to death (even if the thing is like a sauna in summer), I’m only taking it to get from A to B anyway, what’s the quickest route possible? Why, to emigrate!

But this starts to make some sort of sense – to me, anyway. Get off now or be trapped forever.

Emigrate now or be stuck here forever. Don’t change your mentality, go to where there’s a better one.

Don’t risk being the first to change, let others do it. What, they won’t? Then I’m outta here.

If we can all overcome this metro mentality, then Ukraine might have a brighter future after all.

In the meantime, I’m still searching for better answers.