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Personal Space
Sovereignty is thought of as a value. The Kuriles are ours. The Caucasus is ours. But it is amazing how the Russian is ready to believe in the sanctity of the country's space, but does not feel that personal space has any sanctity at all. This is especially noticeable in the summer, and especially in stores and banks. Americans and Europeans would run away in horror if anyone got as close to them in a store as Russians do to each other. The store can be completely empty. There may be only three people in the checkout line. But they will always stand close enough to each other to be lightly touching each other.
I am constantly shooing the people around me away in stores, train stations and the Metro. That is, first I draw back from them, then the advance on me, as if they want to hug me, even if there is empty space all around us. And then I move them away by saying, “Would you be so kind as not to lean on me!” As a rule, people don't understand what I am asking of them or, more importantly, why.
Pretty girls I know say that the habit of rubbing up against each other in public is a form of fetishism. But I am not a pretty girl. The elderly say that the disdain for personal space arose from hunger, the blockade, ration cards for bread and vodka, and the rest of the experience of the Soviet people. You had to stand close in lines to prevent others from cutting in. Liberal politicians say that the people forgot respect for private property after 70 years of socialism and this is the same thing. But the same liberal politicians at a conference or, help us God, at a party will press against each other just as though they are standing in a Soviet line to trade a talon for a bottle of vodka or 6 oz. of butter.
So much for them. What kind of respect for private property in a country with such a problem respecting even personal space? The few of my fellow countrymen who have been to America or Europe and heard of sexual harassment and the sanctity of personal space are skeptical of the very idea of it. “So how much space around himself can a person claim?” they ask. “Half a meter, a meter?”
It seems to me that there are two criteria. I think that personal space should be a minimum of the radius of a person's outstretched arms. In Russia, and especially in the summer, there is another criterion as well. I think a person's personal space ends where his smell ends.
My dear fellow citizens, the violation of my personal space does not bother me nearly as much as unwilling being present in someone else's personal space does when it is such that makes me nauseous.
When we compare different Russians' abilities to encompass others in their personal space, extremes meet. Skinheads who decide to beat African students and President Putin, who decided to kiss a little boy on the stomach, are doing the same thing – violating others' personal space.
Watch how many times a day unfamiliar people brush against you like an intimate. The traffic cop sniffs everyone he stops, and it is not disgusting to him. Guards frisk people unexpectedly at the entrances to public places, and you're lucky if they're wearing gloves.
The people who can't be touched can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Major political figures, businessmen and terrorists. Seen in that light, the president of the country, president of an oil company and a terrorist are on an equal footing. Everyone else you can touch. Tradition doesn't provide them with personal untouchability, even when buying groceries.
Valery Panyushkin
All the Article in Russian as of July 31, 2006
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