April 1999
Krasnojarsk, 7 April 1999
Dear friends!
In Krasnojarsk one goes at present as if on eggs. We had several days above zero Celsius (above 32 F) and then the winter returned with power. That is, because of the lack of drains the condensation water was on the roads; now could one say in the "warm days (3 C)": "Krasnojarsk on ice!" In addition a very unpleasant wind is blowing.
One can get the impression that I had not much to write if I begin with the weather, but the opposite is the case. At present I am so filled with thoughts, insights, and emotions that I had better begin in the everyday manner in order not to overwhelm you.
It is late; I sit with Pink Floyd in the living room and try to come to peace. Kirsten is in Omsk at a seminar about children's work and the leading of the congregation, and the children are already lying in bed. The trainee from our theological seminary from St. Petersburg arrived this morning by air, and due to the short night and the time change is still somewhat sluggish. He will be with us for one month and hopefully be able to accomplish something. I am meditating on several sermon texts at the same time. I plan to fulfill the desire of the congregation and to write some sermons for them for the summer, when we are in Germany. Otherwise they would read the sermons of Carl Blum for the fourth year in a row. They know these now and want something new, alive. In the afternoons I spoke with Tatjana, my woman interpreter and Lena, our musician, about our work together. Both are also members of the church board, and lately there were some collisions there, which I could hardly straighten out. I learn much in recent weeks, but, as so often, by very painful experiences. But about that more later. Eduard caught an ugly virus, but nevertheless comes regularly, in order not to interrupt again the new project that we have begun. We have installed him as driver and caretaker, and our project looks like providing a type of meals on wheels. Also more about this later. You notice, I am full of thoughts.
To understand our situation I must return to last summer. In August 98 there was an economic and financial crash. Whether this was now a delayed consequence of Communist mismanagement, a consequence of the inability of the present so-called democrats to get the situation under control, or a even direct chess move in a cruel power play in the country - this time shook Russia to the foundations, and the consequences of this crash are not yet foreseeable, which again gives to the country a proper measure of fear of the future, distrust in government, and doubt about free-market economy.
If one lives some years in Russia, one learns to deal daily with situations which would constantly lead to court processes in the West, because of fraud, office abuse, violations of human rights, or also crude negligence. I would not say that one gets accustomed to it, but on a visit Germany seems to one more and more as such a type of overdeveloped feeling of security, in which one is concerned with fears and neuroses, having do to with needs which are far distant from life. I sometimes want to cry and ask aloud, whether there are no other problems, though not because I do not take the problems in Germany seriously.
Since the last summer the circumstances here increased to a pain threshold, which can lead my judgment daily to an explosion. This estimate may be because of the fact that I still experience as Westerner, and still have no notion of the tenacity, but also the powerlessness of people here in Russia, to endure or become angry. Already before summer many salaries were not paid, or only rarely. Now the ruble is worth less than a third and the prices constantly rise. Even basic food costs more than doubled. Also my bank went broke in the summer. That means, officially it is insolvent. When I confronted the deputy director, who drove an S-class Mercedes and now sat before me in pin-stripes, I asked him whether he regularly gets his salary, on which he answered me with a smirk - naturally! On my comment that that would be not be his income, but mine, he leaned over the desk to me and said, that I simply had not yet been in Russia long enough, to be able to understand that. Russia is like that. That makes one here be like that. This place was always like that. So I am full of these words. They have something satanic, something that seems to hold this country in the dark.
Tanja is young mother and lives with her daughter in the highest 12th floor of an apartment building. From the quarter where she lives, it takes at least an hour with the bus to get to the center of the city. A few days ago people cut the steel hawsers off elevators in their house and pilfered them (such things give a few rubles with the scrap iron trade). Now Tanja must use the stairs with buggies, so she has to consider carefully each Church service and visit to the congregation. Also telephone cables are cut here constantly by the meter, in order to sell the metal. But I tell myself that it always was like that.
Elsa Steinert, our congregation leader from Busim, related that her sister was here from Germany on a visit. As she told of her first hospitalization after her departure there, Elsa broke out in tears. Elsa had been hospitalized at the same time here in Krasnojarsk, after an accident. After sitting on the floor for several hours in pain, she asked someone sitting beside her, to wipe the blood from her face, since she could hardly see anything. It was a charwoman, who took a rag from the cleaning water and wiped her face. She had to creep to the desk and collapsed in front of it. When she was situated in her room in the evening after the "medical treatment", she asked to get to a toilet. There is no toilet here, was the response. Because someone wanted to help, she were given an empty mayonnaise jar. Naturally that was not sufficient, and Elsa had to lie for two days in a wet bed, since over the weekend no one was there who made up the beds.
It is normal that everyone brings along their own bedclothes, food, and medicine in the hospital. Many understandably prefer to stay at home, because the diagnoses of the physicians are also often strange. There is a shortage of everything. As long as one does not have a comparison with the West, things seem to many here to be "normal". Elsa and her husband are the last from their large family, who have not received their departure permission yet. "Here one is treated like an item of cattle", and then comes the obligatory, "That was always like this in Russia", and then they tell again in many tears of the time of the work army...
In November 98 we sent the head of our Diakonia station to Moscow to a seminar of the LWB. Topic: Winter assistance for Russia. Two days before the seminar we were asked by Fax to write a detailed requirement list for Krasnojarsk, concerning food assistance and other help needed. So Elena sat at the the whole night before her takeoff, finished what turned out later to be one of the few concrete descriptions of the project, and took it along. At the seminar huge sums were promised, and so after Lena's return we tried to prepare everything, contacted the Governor and also the Catholics, in order to cooperate with them. Now we are in the middle of March and we have not yet received a penny of the promised winter assistance. Obviously the organizers began concretely only after the seminar to collect cash for this project. If it had concerned winter assistance 2000, I could have understood that.
Now we ourselves became active, have installed Eduard and three times a week fetch warm in the large kitchen facility of vocational school 33, in which our Diakonie station was located. We distribute the meal to people, who are too old or too ill to prepare meals for themselves. These people belong at present to those who completely fall through, and so after one week we can hardly resist the demands. We wanted to begin small, in order to gain experience. First there were seven, then 15, today 18. More than 20 we can not handle yet with our means, since Eduard can prepare the meal only for an hour in the kitchen, and we pour tea and cut a piece of fresh bread for the people. He is accompanied in each case by a congregation member, who helps with the distribution and perhaps has good word for usually very lonely people. On first attempt 12 volunteers from our congregation and some from the Catholics came forward for this service. So far this project is starting very well; I must now in the summer worry about a regular financial source (a good warm meal plus disposable tableware costs approximately 13 rubles = 1 DM). Today I learned that in two weeks we must look around for a new kitchen. In the vocational school 33 a school girl hanged herself, and now the police came and very strictly cross-examined everyone. As I understood it, the head of the kitchen thereupon had a nervous breakdown and now needs a longer hospital stay. Thus the kitchen must simply close. Somehow one is confronted daily with such messages, and I can only hope that I do not become dulled and let everything roll off me. Ever more I find the way to take refuge in the Lord, in order to unload everything which becomes a burden to me, which I cannot carry.
Purely outwardly our congregation grows and prospers very well. At the beginning of this year we began the second house circle, because first became simply too large. These house circle evenings are for me often source of living water, and I notice also how others blossom there. Nevertheless I felt particularly an increasing aggressiveness in the last weeks toward me by my closest coworkers. I brooded for a long time and again inquired, but could make no sense of it for myself. Meanwhile I had a set of long discussions with several coworkers and the picture begins to become clearer to me. I have come to regard all of this as a typical case of collision of different cultures and customs. To me it became clear that there were only two forms of handling a superior in the Soviet Union: say yes and nod a type of obedience (I am often reminded of the dogs on guard in autos), or ice-cold confrontation. In the long conversations, which were often connected with many tears, it became clearly that I had simply not noticed what particulars did not fit, where the other meanings were or where I had trampled. To me it was clear with my Western customs, when one has critics, one can open his mouth. That was a big error. They cannot. And then I could not arrange at all, as cynical barbs and hurtful attacks accumulated, out of what for me were not at all comprehensible reasons. Talking together is an art, which is only very rudimentarily practiced here in Russia, above all if it concerns a relation to a superior. A large task lies before us. To me in the entire problem it became clear how much this conversation together is a gift of God, to which he releases us. I was shocked at how long it took, until we came to this point. How long I ran around in the neighborhood of this point naively, and simply didn't get it. There is much to regenerate and address. Somehow this whole process for me is enervating and refreshing at the same time.
In the meantime Yugoslavia has exploded, and there comes to me a whole complex of impressions, concerns and fears. There was shown in the series "Russian evenings" the director of the vocational schools of the Krays and interviewed on the topic. He condemned the attacks of NATO sharply, like at present all Russian politicians and he called the attacks "aggressions not only against Yugoslavia but also against Russia." Then he told in detail of good and friendly contacts on occupation school level with the Serbs. (Our diaconia work is based on the occupation school relations between Germany and Krasnojarsk. Naturally he did not mention these today.) The whole contribution was filled with folk music, quotations of Dostoyevski and Tolstoy, and beautiful pictures from Yugoslavia. In between it had Bolero music underlaid again and again: wolves, which are in the snow on search for booty, pictures of Clinton before the public, of flying combat aircraft, bombs, mangled corpses and mountains of rubble. Always beautifully interspersed with radiant impressions of the vocational school and cultural life here and there. That is most primitive propaganda, as in the worst Soviet times. It is stupid that the people here are so receptive to such a thing.
I want to say it to you honestly: If I were a representative of a German company here or if I would follow any other occupation, I would have packed my bags a long time ago. This country does not make it easy for one. It sounds so paradoxical - just as it makes our work makes here so valuable. So often here I get the acknowledgment, how important it is, to speak the Gospel in this often so hopeless world. It is ever more important to me to get clear signs from God, of what our mandate here is. And ever more frequently I have the impression that God shows paths and opens doors. I was never in my life so thrown on God and determine, that it is that which I missed, which was missing to me. Last week I preached about Abraham, who gets the task to sacrifice his son. His "I am here" was very close to me. That sounds probably very pious for many in the West. If it is that which is pious, I am gladly pious.
I am far from knowing, or even suspecting, solutions for Russia. Sometimes it sounds for people in the congregation, as if I would know and then they ask me, what they are to do, with it.. I must always think in these cases of the Johannes on the Isenheimer altar. His finger cannot be long enough, with which he points to the Lord. Many responses from the West, also from the Western churches, simply do not grasp this. The Word must prepare the way; traditions help here only little. The Christian traditions of the German Russians are very honorable and have performed greatly in the hard years of pursuit and terror. For many they were the only footing, the only one, which still defined life. Today these traditions become pale, not only by the mass emigrations, but also thus that young people simply find no more access there. What can align Lutheran faith here in Russia? We are about to discover. Usually very fundamental reflections, and then one also comes into conflict with the proper church, with the proper customs. What moved me from the outset here, is for example the lack of mission consciousness of our Lutheran church. (I have here Baptists, charismatics, Catholics in addition, of the Missouri Synod Lutherans before my eyes).
A few days ago the current mission newsletter about "What is mission" came into our house. Entranced I read it page for page. Many very worthwhile ideas and insights. I miss someone writing of the battle in which the mission is engaged, or do only I experience it in such a way? Mission is for me that "nevertheless faith" against all mockery and scorn, "nevertheless trust" also against the lies and the fraud which surround us, "nevertheless speak with one anther" despite all experiences of speechlessness and misunderstanding. Whether this is not present in the West any more, I can hardly remember.
Meanwhile we not only walk on eggs, we hide them and find them also in the living room. It is so far, Easter is here. Both Good Friday and Easter were particularly close to me this year. If I could not believe Jesus' victory on the cross and His Resurrection, I would be back in Germany before the end of May.
I will be brief with our summer plans. This year I have promised my family and also myself, to be consistent and to let vacation really once be vacation. Thus I will not go from congregation to congregation and report. You will understand that. As said we will be at our General synod in St. Petersburg at the end of May. Until then, loving greetings from Rudi, Kirsten and the children. The Lord is Risen!