To (de)value a people

When I got the news that my grandfather was being hospitalized with a severe case of COVID-19, I felt stuck. I began the fall semester from Russia, where I flew so that I could have access to friends and family whom I hadn’t seen in years. But at that moment, I didn’t feel any more accessible to him—I was far, far away, and unable to do anything but stress. I didn’t know if there was anything I could do to help; I didn’t know what had gotten into the heads of the people around me who had decided the pandemic was over; and I didn’t know what the point of me being in this country even was.

Here is what I did know: my grandfather tested positive for COVID-19 after travelling to work every day since the beginning of September. My grandfather is a schoolteacher. Schools and universities had reopened with barely any attempts at social distancing—my friend had to make plans to live alone in Moscow last-minute because his university, the biggest in the country, announced that they would be having in-person education just under a week before classes began. Schools went just as far as designating separate entrances for different classes, no further.

I also knew about the Russian referendum, which was held in July 2020. This was a range of reforms to the Russian Constitution that citizens could either vote for or against as a singular bulk set. This set included varied changes—a set minimum wage, banning of same-sex marriage, having the constitution take precedence over international law… oh, and nullifying previous presidential terms, allowing Putin to hold office for another twelve years.

Other things I can’t say for certain that I knew, but they were things I had slowly begun to suspect; stories related to me by friends along with interactions I had witnessed fell together like puzzle pieces. In the spring, urban Russian communities went under harsh lockdown at a similar time as the rest of the world. But just as people were beginning to lose it from the stresses of confinement, the quarantine was lifted entirely—right in those July weeks before voting for the referendum. Alongside this, statistics kept all regions below a standardized low bar of infected people—while acquaintances working in the hospitals and ambulances told stories of overwhelmed hospitals and forged records—and numbers only kept dropping as the date of the referendum approached. If the puzzle that came together was to be believed, the plan worked out such that the people would be grateful to the current Putin administration to be released from lockdown, and would feel safe going to vote to continue a barely-coated dictatorship.

Here’s a general observation about the propaganda of the Russian government: it is extremely obvious. No one I’ve spoken to in Russia genuinely trusts it. I can’t even point you to vetted news articles for some of my more conspiratorial claims—the press is distrusted here automatically. Distrust of authority seems woven, perhaps historically, into the Russian psyche; the fact that no government information can be trusted is such a basic belief that it’s often the subject of jokes.

And yet, in this case, the pandemic denial narrative seemed to gain public approval. The constitutional reforms passed overwhelmingly, with 77 percent of respondents voting in favour. As I heard over and over again, the worst was over—and if it wasn’t, the vaccine (released without sufficient trials) would fix it. In the settlement where I lived, people who arrived repeatedly refused to self-quarantine or to wear masks. Moscow, among many other cities like it, was free of any quarantine measures. Schools and universities reopened, with little to no online options. My grandfather taught a class of kids without masks daily, and my family got caught in the quick spike of the second wave.

Thankfully, my grandfather has since been discharged with no detected complications. He was one of the lucky ones. It seems to me now (on the lucky side, I have the privilege of being able to philosophize) that a reason I am in this country is to see this contrast unfold: to see educated, clever people deny the reality of the pandemic because quarantine is hard, even as our family members fall ill. Seeing the political and public response to COVID-19 in Russia has made me realize that despite our awareness of being lied to by power, we are nevertheless vulnerable to lies if they tell a story we want to believe. Quarantine is hard, and lonely, and maddening. But it is important to recognize the difference between wanting it to be over and thinking that it should end now.

Of course, despite any gripes I may or may not have with the Canadian political system, Canada doesn’t have a Putin. There are no blatant propaganda campaigns. The pandemic is taken seriously on a national level. But Canadians, Torontonians, and University of Toronto students are still people who wish for the quarantine to be over, or who hope that the world does not face climate doom, or who want to believe that there is no systemic oppression or any number of heavy and painful things. All I’m saying is to remain skeptical in moments when it seems too easy to let that wish become a belief. You never know what power may be lurking behind that transformation.