Kazan — summer 2010

Today's English lesson with Lena was about the various isms of English: racism, sexism, ageism, weightism, religious intolerance.

To my surprise, she said, "I never think about racism." This is a woman who has a law degree, quite educated. When I mentioned to Aygul my surprise at the comment, she replied that probably most people on the street in Kazan don't think about racism. I wonder if that is true of just the Russians, or of the Tatars, too?

The Russians don't seem to harbor any negative emotions toward the Tatars, but among some older Tatars I've detected some negative feelings about the Russians. No great surprise, of course, since the area has been dominated by the Russians for so long.

One of the conditions of my renting an apartment here was that I would meet with Lena for English lessons regularly. Today our subject was freedom. We talked about freedom as an abstract concept, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to bear arms. We discussed whether perfect freedom was possible, how laws are made to try to provide freedom as much as possible to the majority.

We also discussed what are to me some of the most powerful words from America's founding fathers. They are words that can still raise goose-bumps on my arms when I hear them or read them, and they are of course known to almost every child in the US:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Мы исходим из той самоочевидной истины, что все люди созданы равными и наделены их Творцом определенными неотчуждаемыми правами, к числу которых относятся жизнь, свобода и стремление к счастью.