Getting to Know England Arriving from Russia

From MemoryArchive

Who: Natasha Assa
What: Living Abroad
When: June 2006
Where: New York

For the first time I was able to leave Russia in 1990 when I presented a paper at the IV World Congress of Slavic Studies. I wasn't leaving Russia for good, but the very possibility to go abroad for a major academic event has been definitely the sign of changing times. The Congress was held at the tranquil resort town of Harrogate (England), a place that impressed me no end with its picture perfect settings. I have never seen such manicured lawns, so many flowers and so beautifully preserved old architecture, not to mention cleanliness, friendliness and easy going atmosphere. At the Congress I spoke about my recent experience in the first free elections in Ukraine, where my father took part as a an independent candidate. There was not many surprises in my story: the elections were fixed and the votes went to a military man clearly preferred by the local ruling elite. But I was thrilled to have been my father's helper and to have taken part in so many events of his campaign. Though at the Congress most people were also thrilled to see an entire delegation of Russians (some 200 scholars) and seemed to absorb every word they had to say, I began to suspect that our stories could not resonate too deeply with broader English audience which I quickly came to admire. I did not know at the time that the difference between my place of origin and of destination could not have been greater, but I was about to find out.

I had a 6 months long visa and a little money and desperately wanted to explore the new country and its people, so I decided not to get on the plane with the Russians but to go south to London, where I could find a casual job and improve my English. For the first three weeks I stayed with a new friend, a girl who I met at the Congress who was a student of Russia and who seemed to be fascinated to meet anybody Russian. I thought it was very generous of her to offer me to stay, but not extraordinary because this is exactly what I would have done for her in Russia. Quickly I found out that English hospitality had its boundaries. Sarah, as was her name, soon asked me what my intentions were, to get a sense of how long I was going to stay. I was impressed with her polite but firm inquiry, which would have been difficult for me as a Russian to stomach in similar circumstances. I assured her that I would be out of her way very quickly, as soon as I can find a job. She also asked me very nicely too if I could put a 10 pound note in the jar every Monday morning, so that the cost of food could be shared between us. Again, very quickly I became aware that one has to buy one's meal ticket even as a guest. Of course, I reckoned, she was a student, and did not have much of a budget, but all the same in Russia a guest would not have been asked to pay for their own food. I obliged and did not resent it.

I began to look everywhere for a domestic job so I could pay for my stay in London while I was going to study English and search, as I hoped, for post-graduate study opportunities. At first I had little luck, because of course I asked in all the wrong places, but then somebody, a total stranger, told me of a popular British magazine for upper-class women "The Lady" where I could find ads for domestic jobs. This piece of information given by a total stranger seemed like a real blessing because my English, though passible, was not enough to find things out by muself. I bought the current issue of "The Lady" and started calling for a job. At first I thought that all I needed to do was to tell people that I needed a job and to expect them to give me the address for one. So when I was asked to come for an "interview" I politely declined thinking that this was a polite way of saying "No" and that I might waste my fare and get lost in the city.

When such requests began to repeat I had finally realized that to be asked for a interview was a vote of confidence from the prospective employer and that I should do my best to meet them. For the first time I understood that jobs in England were competitive, totally new concept for a Russian in 1990. When I began to travel around the city for these interviews, Sarah told me how to save money. She told me that I should buy a day travel card with access to all subway (tube) stations. With the hindsight I wished that she told me that I could save even more if I bought a weekly or a monthly card, which were even cheaper. Travel at the time cost real money in London, unlike in Moscow where public transport was still heavily subsidized (5 kopeks (cents) could get you anywhere). So I learned that Englishmen, though generally helpful, might not help you manage your money to the full extent, which I would have most certainly done for them in Russia.

When I first got on the tube, I was amazed how old and ugly it was, or better to say "utilitarian". Moscow metro is of course famous for its architectural splendour, but not London. There is nothing glamorous in travelling under the ground and the trains were so small that in the hot summer days you could almost pass out during delays, which were quite common. One other thing that amazed me no end was that instead of solid rails that you could firmly grip if you were standing, the London tube had these silly loops which could be held only by one person at a time and which gave you little support. I thought of them as a wonderful symbol of English society: people were not held together by great tubes of authoritarianism, but by lose and not very secure personal devices, the greatest of which was of course, money.

After several interviews with families in London, I was hired by a fairly middle-middle class family, whose father was a great grandson of Mary Stopes, who pioneered birth control in England. Jonathan served in the National Health Service (NHS), the ailing state healthcare system in Britain, while his wife Christine was a teacher by profession, but currently a homemaker with two children. They lived in the not so very prestigious part of town, but in a great restored Victorian house, which had plenty of room for their two young daughters, a Japanese student-tenant and me, their nanny. Despite the long family tradition of professional success and, I am sure, wealth, my homeowners lived below their means. Jonathan did a lot of house decorating and gardening himself. Christine, however, tried to live a life of a leisured lady, taking piano lessons and drawing at her leisure, while I read stories to her children or took them to the park. This was a poor strategy I thought for her and for her children. She was not going to achieve anything too great in the arts while children who certainly could develop skills and interests in those fields, were deprived of their mother's attention.

At a playgroup, I shared my thoughts with the manager, who was a native Pole, and she looked at me in amazement when I said that my mistress should take care of her children or go to work if I was with them anyway. I sensed, that I was wide off the mark in my understanding of the English values. Being a leisured lady was also a "profession" and you had to have enough skill to fill your day with nonsense so that to be fresh in the evening when your husband arrived from work. Nanny was not supposed to free the mistress of the house to do more productive work, but rather to give her more leisure time. I found it hard to wrap my mind around it and felt that she was living in a sort of self-imposed time warp. Teacher by training, she could certainly do usefull things with herself, but chose not to.

While there, I enrolled into the evening classes to study English as was customary for domestic workforce in England. I found the Kingsway College, near Kings Cross station very affordable (about $60 for the course), and again it was a total stranger who recommended it to me, for which I am grateful to this day. In college I expected a lot of grammar drilling and dry text translation, the sort of thing I was used to do in school in Russia. To my surprise, our teachers taught us to recognise the peculiar expressions of the English language so that we could see them as a block in text or oral communication. Every time I left class I immediately heard these expressions on the radio or saw them in the papers and felt that they instantly stuck to my mind. I was thrilled with my snowballing proficiency.

Of course, I have to say, that my ease in English acquisition was largely due to years and years of uninspiring grammar drilling with my teachers in Russia, and so when I came to England I already had excellent "bones" in my understanding of English, so it was the combination of the two approaches that helped me master English within less than 6 months. At the same time I began to look for opportunities to study at a post-graduate school, since I have already graduated from Moscow State University. I needed information, and again Sarah's mother, another total stranger to me, mentioned that British Council would be an excellent source of information on programs and funding available to foreign students.

Immediately I went and was given a whole bunch of photocopied pages from the British Universities guide. I remember a very energetic and efficient woman civil servant who asked what I was interested in, I explained, and in a matter of minutes served me a whole packet of information totally free of charge. This would have never happened in Russia, I thought. From there I found out which Universities were accepting applications and in which fields and which ones might have funding for foreign students. Of course, I did not think at the time of applying to Oxford or Cambridge, it seemed like another planet to me, but Sarah, who that year went to Oxford for her PhD encouraged me to aplly there as well. Moreover she mentioned that her Russian teacher was now up at Cambridge and that he might be very helpful.

I asked her how to get there and how to meet him, and went there at the first opportunity. Later on this young man turned out to be the bestselling Russian historian Orlando Figes. He gave me what seemed like a grand reception. Not only did he meet me at the gates of Trinity College, where Newton read physics and mathematics, but he also booked a guest room for me in the Queens bedroom, a grand Tudor space, where I was served breakfast on silver and where I couldn't find the bed's ends. Not only was the college absolutely breathtaking in its Tudor and baroque splendor, but I could not believe that I walked on the same grass as did Byron and Tennyson, Reserford and Newton, and too many others to mention. Anyhow, Orlando helped me shape a dissertation proposal for my application and two years later I was admitted to study for a Master's Degree in European Studies. This was a truly miraculous turn in my life which came about from the enormous goodwill that Gorbachev's reforms had generated towards Russian people all over the world. I have certainly reaped its results: England forever became my second motherland.