In the Russian presidential election of 2012 one of my closest friends voted for Putin. This was in the midst of months of protests like my generation had never seen before, tens and tens of thousands in Moscow’s streets. The first big one I went to was on December 10^th 2011 at Bolotnaya Square. It happened days after they arrested Alexei Navalny at a smaller rally protesting rigged parliamentary elections (as a result detaining him for two weeks) and public anger exploded. It was a turning point, as the Telegraph reported "likely to be Moscow's biggest demonstration since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia's biggest state-controlled television station, Channel One, has no mention of the popular unrest on its website.” It was cold, I wore thermal underwear and got a copy of my passport notarized in case they detain me, so they don’t take the passport off me, just the copy. I got a burner phone in case they took the phone away or smashed it. I took no pictures because I only had the cheap button phone on me. My husband was down with the flu, so I went with a bunch of friends. None of us had ever participated in anything like this before and we were ready for the worst. This is Russia, you can’t go around smashing and looting with no reaction from the police because they are scared that you’ll accuse them of hurting your feelings - even a tiny group of scrawny intellectuals with a couple of signs will get got in ways better left unknown to the tender Westerner.

On February 4^th 2012 it was -20C/-4F outside. I stood on a bench with frost on my eyelashes and there were people as far as the eye could see. Old men with coke bottle glasses, university students with flushed cheeks, fancy businessmen in cashmere coats, a mix of everyone. It was indescribably uplifting, humbling and inspiring. Nothing was broken or vandalized, no one was aggressive. I’d never felt so fatefully linked to my fellow countrymen in my life before that day when I stood in the freezing cold with 120,000 of them. I recount this not to demonstrate some unique activism of mine, but to illustrate that I understand your soul and arse being on fire for a cause, I have lived it.

My friend knew I was in the thick of it. She was always apolitical and remained ambivalent about the whole thing. When I asked her who she voted for in the March 2012 election, she said Putin. I demanded to know why the hell. In a few sentences, she texted me her very matter of fact, somewhat esoteric, point of view. I was fuming over his inevitable N-th term and her part in it. I ranted to my husband, to other friends. We had it out in conversation. I understood what she said but I thoroughly disagreed. Her belief was firm and in the end my respect for her was bigger than my indignation. Who was I to tell her what to do? This grown woman with a serious career, who’d made her way in the world in ways others in our group hadn’t, defeating obstacles we didn’t face, living her own life in her own way, who was I to dictate actions and beliefs to her, acting like the singular authority on ethics?

I went to every protest after that first one in December up until June 2012. I got pregnant and was afraid a kick in the stomach by the riot police could have fatal consequences. Walking through a cordon of them and seeing the way they looked at you was unforgettable. June 12th 2012 was one of several “March of Millions” events, when tens of thousands marched through Moscow streets and boulevards in protest of corruption and fraud. The day before opposition leaders’ homes were searched and ransacked, many of them receiving summons to appear for questioning the day of the march. I went to several protests after I had my kid too. I probably kept pestering my friend with my views.

We remained close friends. When I almost died and was on bed rest three years later she was the first one on my doorstep, in a sexy nurse outfit with an enormous syringe to cheer me up, true to her modus operandi. I opened the door and she slowly pressed on the syringe, squirting water and moving her eyebrows suggestively over her surgical mask. In our group, she’s the one with the “a little less conversation, a little more action please” approach, who just shows up, takes charge and saves the day. Maybe she judged my protesting in the years prior, or my fixation on the political, my diatribes, I never knew. I must have been annoying - I’m a passionate person who talks a lot and has fountains of moods and energy shooting out of me if I’m worked up about something. Who am I kidding, I was exactly like today’s insufferable liberal twats, preachy and hysterical. But she was confident and mature enough to say good for you, I think different. More mature than I was. Thank God I could cobble together the maturity to accept that and not sulk or throw tantrums or worse throw away years of friendship over something ultimately so trivial. Today we can talk about our different viewpoints, neither having to tiptoe. That’s precious to me.

I have another very close friend who has always held views different to mine on everything from relationships to geopolitics. To me, a large part of growing up was understanding that people are different, and your world view isn’t some sort of Biblical blueprint for everyone else to follow. She thinks my fears about going in and out of the Motherland even now are asinine and Western-fueled paranoia – she couldn’t give a lesser shit and will ride in on a donkey through Estonia if she feels like it, and does. Having that opinion in my life, someone telling me that I’m delusional because x, y, z, is a great way to stay grounded and not live in a padded candy pink room inside my head. Confirmation bias, seeking out information that supports your existing beliefs while ignoring contradictory evidence, locks you in the echo chamber for good.

These two friends are bighearted people with moral clarity who walk the walk and remain good, kind individuals no matter our differences. There were others in my outer orbit who I disengaged from not over internal political strife but the war. There were people who had no empathy or love for either side but egged things on from the comforts of abroad, which was too much for me. There were people whose Russia-hate acid was burning holes in them and their surroundings, whom I also didn’t want to interact with. As these weren’t best friends, they didn’t leave a hole in my heart, rather peeled off like onion layers, unmourned. Our differences were greater than what we shared. Meanwhile, polls say that over a ¼ of US adults have had a friendship end because of disagreement over politics.

“I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend. During the whole of the last war, which was trying enough, I never deserted a friend because he had taken an opposite side;”

From Thomas Jefferson’s letter to William Hamilton, 22 April 1800

My parents and I have different views on politics past and present, mainly past as present is more like an absurd reality show to them at their age. What I understood as I grew older is that I love them more than our difference of opinion matters. Before I would get so worked up about the Soviet Union debates, they would leave me feeling like a tractor had ridden all over me. Now I listen, say a bit of my part if I feel like it, we rave and agree to disagree. The political debris with blow over like a tumbleweed traveling down the road, the wind will smooth its dusty trail like it was never there. My parents don’t have that many years left though. They’re the only parents I have. Sometimes I learn something in these exchanges, because for one they actually lived in the Soviet Union for over half their lives, unlike me, and sometimes I tell them something they don’t know. I understand that it’s not just a time period to them, it’s their youth they’re talking about.

I have been shockingly lectured and berated for my opinion recently by someone close to me, over American politics of all things, in which neither of us participate as voters, as if there are mandatory views you cannot veer from, with any evidence I offered shouted over with insults. I tried to scrape together all the patience, empathy, persuasion and logic I could muster to contain myself and attempt a civil debate. It was very draining. I woke up the next day with muscle pain of the kind you get when you’ve had stress wring you out like a tattered rag. Those other automated relationships, coated with politesse and devoid of meaning and feeling, are one thing but if this is someone you really allow into your life, I believe you cannot censor yourselves with each other and must be capable of discussing any topic, hearing the other side and trying to understand. I can’t imagine what must be going on with the locals with their friends and family if this is the kind of thing that happens among onlookers. Though that’s not true, I can, and I hear about it from local friends. It’s heartbreaking.

“Never have things of the spirit counted for so little. Never has hatred for everything great been so manifest - disdain for Beauty, execration of literature. … I have always tried to live in an ivory tower, but a tide of shit is beating at its walls, threatening to undermine it. …   I can no longer talk with anyone at all without becoming furious, and everything I read by my contemporaries makes me quiver with indignation.”

Gustave Flaubert writing to my dear Turgenev,  November 13, 1872

As Russians we are used to upheaval. The 20^st century alone saw tens of millions of us die in wars, fellow citizens kill each other in a nightmarish civil conflict, complete erasure of culture and social norms, terror, reformatting of language, hunger, fear, hope, another societal collapse - a boiling cauldron of never-abating intensity. People look back on generations in their own family and they know that “this too shall pass”. There has been so much loss, grief, grinding down of lives and dreams without afterthought, that people seem to have absorbed that this is, when all is said and done, a meaningless stage set and in the end, it’s other things entirely that matter. Even with this historic inoculation, I have seen Russian parents and children estranged over current events. Some have found their way back to each other and every time I hear a story like this, it gives me wings for a second. Politicians and regimes come and go, but a parent or a sibling are a once in a lifetime occurrence. A karmic sibling you find along the way may be a once in a lifetime jackpot.

People from countries with longer histories tend to be more oriented towards the long-term. The US appears to be very short-term oriented. Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory, beloved by marketing managers worldwide, supports this. According to Hofstede and his measurements of long-term orientation (LTO) across countries on a scale of low to high, the United States has short-term orientation. This means that people are more likely to value immediate results and quick gains rather than long-term planning. Russia in his research is closer to Eastern countries, where long-term orientation is traditionally high (the most long-term oriented country is China), than the West. Long-term oriented cultures tend to be more collectivist, focusing on group rather than individual goals and needs. This certainly affects how relationships are managed – one might wonder (or not) how he will survive years down the line, having shunned interdependence and loyalty for immediate satisfaction.

I think the inability to even hear views other than your own, let alone engage with them, points to a very fragile sense of self-worth and identity. This acts as a defense against looking at or considering different perspectives that could cause you to reevaluate your own. This also seems very juvenile and unsustainable. Take all those much-publicized studies about what people regret most on their deathbeds, for instance. A large part of the regrets is neglecting relationships, people wishing they had maintained closer contact with friends and family, wishing they had been more present in the moment. Another significant theme is the desire for forgiveness, wishing that they had shown more love and forgiveness toward others, longing for reconciliation and deeper emotional connections. The advanced age of people in these studies comes with something of the astronaut effect, zooming out and seeing the bigger picture, of how connected we are and how trivial the bickering is. Only by then some things are sadly irreversible.

Are we defined by who we bet on in a game of political fantasy football, when we choose a team with our fingers crossed and hope for the best? Gloating about being better than someone else as a human being, better in your everyday life, kinder, more consequential to those around you, simply because you hold a certain view is a costly mistake. There is a reason you loved this person and had them in your life and usually that reason is much greater than a momentary flare up of difference, much more grounded in every day reality rather than abstract slogans or campaign promises. No political party will hold you when you cry, know some pure, essential part of you, take your child in if you die, hide you if you’re on the run. I am horrified by the destructive narcissism and tragedy of cutting people out of your life over a political spat. It impoverishes the landscape of your life and leaves you a bleak, lonely totalitarian.

With American Thanksgiving round the corner, it may be worth considering that you get a finite number of people in your life who will come to your rescue if said life is crumbling. They are a gift to be grateful for, not something to throw away impulsively.

As Leonard Cohen sang to us,

I've seen the nations rise and fall
I've heard their stories, heard them all
But love's the only engine of survival