The Cataclysmic Shift
When I crossed the border from Mongolia into Siberia at the
beginning of the month, I got 150 rubles for one of my American dollars.
By the end of the month, the same dollar was worth 200 rubles. They were
experiencing a 500 percent annual inflation rate during the month of
August. You can imagine how anxious that might make any one of us were it
reversed.
The shock of the overnight switch to a market economy has affected
our friends considerably. The schoolteachers were impoverished overnight.
Among the university professors, our own friends still have jobs, but
others have been terminated from their positions.
To cope, our psychologist friends have developed a wide range of
consultation possibilities. With the current rate of inflation, they have
to work a lot to make enough money for the high-priced commodities.
However, there is no point in making more than it literally takes to
support the family, because the ruble is shrinking as one holds it in
one's hand.
The Russians have reached a level of acceptance of the state of
instability. Knowing they have no control over what happens in the
economy, they seem to have adopted the philosophy of taking each day at a
time. It is unrealistic to do otherwise. It is impossible to plan under
such uncertainty. It is not useful to dissolve oneself in anxiety about
"what is going to happen." The Russian simply "carries on" What amazes me
is that they do it with such graciousness.
Healing Exchange
Misha Ivanov is a psychologist and his wife Elena
Starostenkova-Ivanov is an economist. Elena is one of the members of the
Academy of National Economy originally appointed by Gorbachev, now
advisor to the new government. Misha is chairman of the Institute for
Professional Development (IPD) in Moscow.
Elena is a part of a team of economists whose job is to help
government officials understand free-market economy with all its
implications for rebuilding the country. For all practical purposes,
Russia has been asleep for the past 70 years.
Elena also writes articles for Moscow newspapers to help educate
the Russian public about their shifting, trembling economy. Her most
recent is "I, Banker, and You, User of Bank."
The institute Misha chairs is a Russian sister organization to the
Institute for International Connections (IIC) in Denver, created in 1989
to facilitate exchange between Russia's new profession of clinical
psychology and psychotherapists from the United States. The IIC, working
alongside the IPD, sponsored this conference as well as conferences in
1990 and 1991. We are working together to find the ingredients conducive
to the welfare of individual human beings in a context of
community.
Since the first joint meeting in 1990, there has been a great deal
of work between Russian and American schoolteachers and business
consultants, as well as between Russian and American psychotherapists.
Although, as anyone might imagine, there is considerable mistrust of and
resistance to "government involvement" among the Russians, the school and
business committees hope to take their model programs to the national
councils so that what works may be applied on a national level. Ongoing
work with Tahir Basarev, deputy chief for the Department of Human
Resources (it includes all personnel working for the Russian government)
is an example of the successful work of the business committee toward
that end.
Basically, psychology as a discipline that cares about the
individual and not simply the work group seems to have been born in
Russia 15 years ago when Viktor Frankl came to the USSR. Until 1985,
psychology was strictly an academic subject taught in universities. Only
since perestroika has clinical psychotherapy - work with clients - been
possible. In 1988, under the auspices of the Association of Humanistic
Psychology, Virginia Satir - pioneer in family therapy and in the
application of the healing principles to larger systems - came to the
Soviet Union. The seeds of our two groups were planted with her
arrival.
As chairperson of the Institute for Professional Development, Misha
organized this third annual meeting in Moscow to bring together Russians
and Americans for joint training and cultural exchange. The unique
feature of the IPD and the IIC is the emphasis on joint training. We of
the American organization feel the Russians have as much to offer us as
we have to offer them, that very difficult-to-describe depth of soul
being a major gift.
Our broadest aim is continued commitment to each other toward the
healing of both our cultures. The Russians are virtually a whole nation
in bereavement or post-traumatic stress; their Afghanistan veterans had
experiences similar to our Vietnam veterans. Americans are suffering a
narcissistic orientation to life that engenders the addiction epidemic
rampant in the United States. We are committed to a long-term
association.
Elena is a research fellow of the Institute for Studies of U.S. and
Canadian Economies as well as a member of the Academy of National Economy
and the Graduate School of international Business. This school trains
ministers and deputy ministers - managers who would be in charge of state
production enterprises. In Russia, business has, of course, been
government-run until the very recent shifts. It is Elena's job, as
research fellow in her institute and as part of the team of her academy
to provide training to improve the Russian economy, to teach the people
at the top what works and what doesn't.
Tags:
black marketeers,
communism,
communists,
culture,
current state,
day train,
fades,
lake baikal,
living in paris,
market economy,
massive scale,
mentality,
psychology,
psychotherapists,
Russia,
russian economy,
russian families,
russian soul,
russian woman,
siberia,
society,
stalin,
train compartment,
train ride
