american spy well people joke about it i've been told that i'm a very nice spy while most of the spies are usually very nice they have to go into group races with it's never been a problem in the arc of part of it maybe my topic the constitution isn't particularly political right now and my current work for this is on collective farms which again is not sensitive if i was doing something on the secret police or even the second world war it may be a little bit different but here they've been great with access. much of samantha research focuses on the correspondence between the locals and the central authorities in moscow which was more direct than some would expect while the newspapers of the time filled with the praise of sylvia the chairman's individual letters often focused on the failures. we have there she really stop her from all the people who are kind of retaining the prophecy but they want to be very good research and benefiting from yes if the soviet union didn't like to document

everything i wouldn't have anything to work with and everything that they've documented lets me see various aspects of people's lives for example this fellow people there feel the ridge here in one thousand nine hundred four he's given a prize of a thousand roubles for his good work but later nine hundred thirty six he's considered a suspect person so you can see how the standings change based on their successful implementation of economic plans different changes in policy and you can see you know these people rise and fall in fortunes these documents what is it like as a researcher to work around with documents like this i mean it wouldn't be fair to describe them is it a treasure trove or is it something pretty mundane well i'm always excited by them . it's sometimes people think i'm odd because michael michael cook this beautiful document and they're like it's about harvest to sticks. do you think anyone is for you or you're worth. ok not on this one but on this one this is actually

larry he's the guy that invited me to cure up and he put his book on education called this in documents so you can see right here in the front everybody has worked on it and even sometimes which pages they've used and his own way of the americans who come here and look at this one or is it that this fellow is russian. nine hundred seventy nine.

people think just stand out in this business you need to be the first one on top of the story or the person with the loudest voice or the biggest read in truth to stand is and you just leave as the right questions and demand the right answer. questions.

we knew that already. in fact. he had us. right. so it's over by. having a native english speaker as both are buried in a curiosity for a provincial russian university samantha's class is also rebuilt many cultural differences in how the russians and the americans approach that world spent the last six years trying to get those claims and early soviet life but i also assume you had to america yourself and the current realities of russia what are some of

the cultural and behavioral patterns that carry over. you know from from that time till now. i mean things that shock me that the so i won't things that shock you on things that are persistent. may reappear you know decades later oh you mean the what russia doesn't really have much of respect for law it's very interesting because americans are generally rule followers if there's a rule we don't even question it we simply get we stand in line we pick up our garbage. we just you know if there's a rule that says you need to have students do an evaluation then we don't even question it we just can't at the student evaluation i remember here for student evaluations teachers were scandalized the idea that students who didn't know anything would be evaluating them it would turn the entire system on its head and russians like to get around laws that they find annoying or inconvenient part of it is that i think because to do things the correct way is often very difficult if not

impossible there is sometimes i'm reminded of the novel catch twenty two when i live in russia because you know you need the sprawl to get this piece of paper but to get the piece of paper to get now one of the characteristics of contemporary russia is how an event in its development is you've got some regions like to look at for example where the local correction corruption has been brought to a minimum but at the same time you have regions in the caucasus where you can i do anything without the bribe and that reminded me of of the research you're involved in right now about the differences between the collective farms. that are gone from your research is that what matters in russia the most is not they had what you call framework but you know the actual person in charge is that still the case. in russia i think very much so i think that personal networks are very important i

think you know my students looking for jobs now it's often more important who they know than the qualifications that they have it's also you know if you're friends with somebody they maybe protect you they help you get resources that you don't have access to but you know the sort of good old boys' network exists in a lot of american small towns too and that's what it reminds me of the good old boys network and it's because the normal channels of communication often don't work certainly in the soviet union the only way to get things done was to ask your friend who you know paid someone with some falling key to get you some seed you know you see this most acutely during the war we have shortages of everything you have this barter system in the. chairman chairman become sort of the go to fixer and one more carlo i found interesting was you mentioning that stalin wanted to have. competent technocrats staffing the state system and there is a similar desire on the part of the current putin administration to have the

technocrats in charge prefer some reason and i have this felon and ministration of the president mr quinn find enough of those people do you think they. perhaps do they have a problem with the recruitment system or do they run against this informal system of relationship if you mention what's what's been the style of this era the level of education was a huge problem you know you have people that have i have one guy he's the head of the. district land organization in the district he's a chronic alcoholic with a second grade education you know at some level you cannot expect competence from these people most people only had a elementary school education some people did have university but it was very difficult and so just getting the level of education up so they could can you deal with the volume of paperwork and just regular work that they were expected to do they also expected an awful lot from these. and i feel deep deep sympathy for my rikon chairman because they were expected to organize harvest on the collective

farm they were expected to go out and do propaganda work they were expected to study leninism and marxism and they were expected to have all of these different meaning some of these people had like eighty four different meetings a month. they simply couldn't keep up and i think that modern russia faces a lot of the same problems that you have chronic understaffing of a lot of bureaucracy and even when you get staff it just seems like it doesn't work particularly efficiently because of this desire to fill out all of this paperwork with soviet union try to fix things a lot of the reforms involve more paperwork and more paperwork and i think this reliance on fixing things through paperwork reform is a problem of the putin administration. you said before the eve of the hive to tell me tara is my russia was on to govern in other words the central authority didn't have enough manpower resources technology how much is that still an issue today i think it's a huge issue particularly in provincial areas because you have i've been to

villages where it feels like you've gone back into the nineteenth century some of them don't have electricity most of them don't have indoor running water or indoor plumbing. you know health care transport are all very difficult you know if there's a bus it's you know far away out on the road it only comes occasionally while the roads are still mud. now polls and in russia consistently show that people's attitudes towards stalin changing from negative. to more neutral and even positive how do you interpret that well i think. russia took a real blow to its sense of self during the. yeltsin years it lost a lot of power a lot of prestige the economy was terrible and i think under putin russia has sort of come back into a sense that it's a global player that its voice matters the economy has picked up russian people are

becoming more proud of being russian i remember even six years ago when i first came here people kept apologizing to me for how terrible everything was that this wasn't like america and i had to finally tell them to stop i'm like i knew when i came here that this wasn't going to be like america and that for me was we are because americans never apologize for a country like welcome to america enjoy. and for people to be ashamed of their country was so different and now i don't really see that i see people are more proud of their country and i think putin has you stalin in particularly the great patriotic war in the victory there as a way to inspire nationalistic pride now you said before that the russian people a generally good at gaming or circumventing the system and i wonder what's been your experience in dealing with the bureaucracy and the red tape which i'm sure you run counter. quite extensively i find it very frustrating. and it's often very counterintuitive for an american because we're expecting that

it should be easy people should be hot for you if i have a problem you shouldn't yell at me you shouldn't send me to a different department. things are very difficult to fix here for example i have two bank cards from burbank one of them is issued to the name of some month long without the h. and the other one is some month and law and they cannot merge the two accounts because neither one is how it's written on my passport even though i have my passport and clearly the same person is issued by the same organization but they can't fix it in the us you would but since you've stayed here for such a long time six years already i assume the you perhaps also gotten into the habit of. and that's creating the rules but perhaps being a little bit creative with how you apply them i am not sure that i've noticed you but some of my friends have remarked that i have become. fully risky. but you know the reason i'm asking these questions is because obviously through the

american perspective this country may have major issues with corruption its legal structure. i wonder what's your gut feeling about how to fix it do you think the american system would work in this country or would russians have to come but their own understanding of what the rule of law is and with the understanding be different from oh i think it was absolutely be different you haven't completely different history at the rule of law i mean russia doesn't really have much in the way of rates even citizens or the rule of law up until about one thousand nine hundred five when you get this are making some concessions then you have the jim is and i think you were moving towards the rule of law you know you have these stablished and of independent bar you have elected representatives even though these are increasingly manipulated the franchise to get more and more conservative monarchists in the duma but then the soviet union blew that out of the water even in new york adamic work i think there is. a bit more understanding of the

complexities of this country that. we would normally expect from american scholars because some of them do come. with a degree of what the russia is supposed to do and where it's failing i wonder how challenging do you find this balance between. looking at your own country and of this country. with an open mind i guess a degree of compassion i don't know that i find it challenging where it gets challenging is trying to get other people to listen to and accept your work there are certain narratives. that it's difficult to break out from my work the idea that stalin could have been interested in democracy has hit a wall with a lot of people you know a lot of comments stalin was a dictator the u.s.s.r. was to challenge scary and it was really a ruse. look at the one nine hundred thirty seven repression and even you know within academia putin is often a joke this idea that. he's some sort of evil dictator who oppressed people.

not only in the. challenge some conventions. but the locals have quickly gotten used to the american lady. i certainly get a lot of attention but most of my neighbors think my cats are pretty. questions about how. difficult was it. just to your life not just in russia but. you know in perenchio russia it's a challenge the first six months were really kind of hard in part because i was alone in the dormitory once i got a cat and start making friends and i had people to meet.