To western eyes, Russian families appear closer and more intimate. The typical Russian family lives together, fights together, and loves together – all within the confines of 42 or 64 square meters. Everyone knows what everyone else is doing (almost), and for better or worse.
Collectivization is still in full force. In the grandparents’ time, the entire family lived all together in one good-sized room. In my mother-in-law’s time, four families occupied one 42 square meter flat, including two sets of newly-weds who shared a small bedroom with only one window. When Galina refused to help wash dishes on her wedding night, the whole family was in for a treat as they first watched the groom go down on his hands and knees to beg, and then as they heard the mother-in-law’s sagely advice, “Let her go if she wants.” After getting married in Russia, I learnt to appreciate this family intimacy and closeness and have since developed a penchant for small apartment living. A little while earlier, at the age 35, single and lonesome, working the days as a carpenter’s helper, I spent quite a bit of time walking alone in solitary grandeur through the stately rooms of my parents house which was surrounded by a golf-course, and where the usual entertainment was looking out the window as an occasional skeleton went whirring by on a golf-cart on the road out front. Big houses without butlers meant that all of my family in America, myself and three sisters, spent the evenings and weekends doing such things as painting the 55 windows of the house, cutting the grass, weeding the gardens, vacuuming, cleaning, running to the store for supplies, and… In Russia, nothing is so demanding and we have plenty of time to do things together. No roof to fix, no mortgage to pay, and everything is in walking distance. This way of life often makes it easier for a family to be closer and doing things together. In America, differences of opinion or arguments meant that a person could find a different place to live or spend his time privately because the individual was respected as having the right to do what he wanted and choose his own road. As the extended family has shrunk over the last decades, the individual often finds himself, however, on a lonesome road, and no amount of Facebook pictures showing his vacation escapades as a happy and free individual are likely to make up for anything real and tangible in life. The negative side of closeness in Russia is that one marries into a family first, and then of second priority, has his own family. One marries an entire family, meaning the in-laws, who have the ownership to the apartment (for safety in case of divorce or for tax ease). Often, the in-laws consider everything, including the humans, to be their own. Molding the new son- or daughter-in-law is a matter of first importance and hopelessly failing at that, war is declared and then over the years, a precarious truce, and then finally a reluctant acceptance, and then outright dependence. Not all reach that paradise, but the road plan is laid out at any rate.
