Writer Julia Ioffe on Drinking Rituals and Surprising Friendships in ‘Sharp-Elbowed’ Moscow

Russian-born journalist Julia Ioffe spent much of her childhood in Moscow.

When she was seven-years-old her family upped stakes and headed to the US as Jewish refugees.

In 2009, she went back to Russia on a Fullbright scholarship.

Now after three years in Moscow she’s returned to America and she’s writing and talking about what drove her mad about life there, and what she’s pining for now that she’s back home.

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Marco Werman: Julia Ioffe knows what it’s like to live away from home. The ‘where home is’ is complicated. Ioffe was born in Moscow and spent part of her childhood there, but then her family moved to the United States in 1990. In 2009, she went back to Russia on a Fulbright and worked as a journalist. Now, she has returned to America and is writing about what drove her mad about life in Moscow and what she’s pining for. For starters, Ioffe says drinking customs in Russia aren’t just about the alcohol.

Julia Ioffe: When you drink vodka there, there’s a whole ritual to it that’s really quite delicious because you have things on any Russian menu that go with the shot glass. So, cured lard, pickled vegetables, salted mushrooms of all sorts, herring, all these delicious Russian snacks that you chase vodka with, I miss that.

Werman: Hmm. You’re gonna have to prepare that at home. I don’t know if you’re going to find that in D.C. Writing about the Russian bureaucracy, you say “I won’t miss needing my passport for everything including returning a pair of flip-flops to the store.” Did that really happen to you? They asked you for your passport when you took a pair of plastic thongs back?

Ioffe: Absolutely.

Werman: Why?

Ioffe: Russia is kind of a police state and Russians have…

Werman: Even today?

Ioffe: Yes, but it’s one that’s not based on [a master???]. It’s just mass inconvenience and corruption and incompetence. Russia is not that evil. When I returned that pair of flip-flops, I remember I had to write out the passport number and when I asked the cashier whether or not they needed a blood sample from me, they were a little confused.

Werman: You were being sarcastic, but maybe they thought, “Um, maybe we do need blood sample.” [Laughs]

Ioffe: Yeah.

Werman: You also write that you won’t miss the fact that Jewish culture and Jewish people have mostly disappeared from Moscow, nor the casual racism and, as you write, the relax-I-was-just-joking anti-Semitism. How pervasive is that still today?

Ioffe: It’s not as bad as I expected. Again, my parents left and I left with them as Jewish refugees. When they left, they were kind of overwhealmed by institutionalized anti-Semitism. Now it’s kind of on the level of Freudian Slips; you know, jokes about your cheapness or that you’re good with money from friends that you thought were cosmopolitan and well traveled and educated.

Werman: What do you think it says about our understanding of Russia that so many of the things you will miss are not actually things we almost expect from Russia?

Ioffe: What I’m surprised by is these stereotypes or these things that you expect to see coming out of Russia, I’ll actually miss them. I’ve become really sarcastic and very mean in my 3 years there. Otherwise, cashiers will eat you alive. I have a feeling I’ll get a lot duller in D.C.

Werman: Why did you become mean? Just because of the cashiers?

Ioffe: It’s a pretty hostile, sharp-elbowed town. I had two friends come visit me shortly after I moved there, one of whom is from New York and one of whom is Swiss-German – very polite, very level-headed, even-keeled. By day 10 of their visits, somebody in the Metro bumped into my Swiss-German friend. He, without dropping a beat, wheeled around and hurled a very, very loud expletive at her.

Werman: Wow!

Ioffe: So, it does it to everyone.

Werman: Yeah, you got to get that tough skin going early on. So, throw us off-balance here. What is a non-stereotypical thing that you will or will not miss about Moscow?

Ioffe: Because you don’t trust people there, when you do come across somebody you trust, you bond with them very, very closely. The way that Russians do friendship, nobody else does friendship. Again, I know that’s a cliche but they are really good at being friends. Partly, they need to be because there’s no social safety nets that will catch them. So, if you’re in trouble, you’re probably not gonna call the police because the police might make it worse or, at the very least, they’ll try to get some money out of you; you’re gonna call your friends. When you do come across that really good friend or that really wonderful night where you have a couple glasses of wine or a few shots of vodka and have some really good conversation, to really, really savor that because the rest of the city around you is very harsh, very inconvenient, very tough to live in. So, when you do come across those really lovely moments they’re especially sparkling in contrast to the rest of it.

Werman: Julia Ioffe is staff writer for The New Republic. She’s just returned to the U.S. after spending 3 years in Russia. Julia, thank you very much and welcome home.

Ioffe: Thank you.

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