Stephan Orth: Behind Putin's Curtain: Friendships and Misadventures Inside Russia [aka Couchsurfing in Russia]

People who want to learn something positive about the largest country in the world can fall back on the propaganda agency Sputnik. Sputnik was the name of the first satellite to orbit the Earth, in October 1957—a technological milestone that showed the world how advanced Russia had become. Nowadays, things are simpler and news is sent around the world to achieve the same aims.

Even more effective is the RT TV network, formerly known as Russia Today, until they came to the conclusion that it was easier to spin-doctor news without explicit clues about its source. With claims like “Telling the untold” and “Find out what the mainstream media is keeping silent about,” Sputnik and RT feed those who feel they aren’t being truthfully informed by conventional channels. From the perspective of an extraterrestrial, it would be very funny to note that many people knock the Western media as “liberal” or “corporate” propaganda while gleaning some of their information from Russian propaganda sources (sometimes without even realizing it).

In the West, people with opinions about Russia tend to fall into three categories. Those who no longer believe anything in the “Western media” about Russia because the press criticizes everything anyway. Those who read everything about Russia and are in the know. And those who no longer know what to believe about Russia. Most likely, the last group are a large majority.

There’s no other country where the information situation is so confusing. That means there’s no destination that needs visiting more urgently, at least for those like me who see travel not as a pursuit of fun but as a quest for insight. I realize that it’s tricky to find such a thing as objective truth. People who consider themselves its guardians and owners are almost automatically populists, particularly in a country in which a newspaper called Pravda , Russian for “truth,” has served as a propaganda tool for decades. But I still want to try to unearth at least a few certainties among the hundred thousand pieces of information that are sold as truths.

The number one drug of the people and the main reason Russian men have an average life expectancy of 64.7 while women, statistically, live almost twelve years longer. In no other country in the world is there such a great difference between the sexes. Nevertheless, the situation is improving since the implementation of a nationwide ban on selling alcohol between 11:00 PM and 8:00 AM. In Novosibirsk, however, clever entrepreneurs have found ways around the law. Some of them “rent” high-proof alcohol, meaning that anyone returning an unopened bottle before 10:00 AM the next day would in theory be entitled to a full refund (of course, nobody ever returns a bottle). Others sell spectacularly overpriced key chains, with customers receiving a free bottle of vodka with purchase.

As preparation I took a number of Russian lessons and wrote some fifty emails asking for a place to crash.

My ten-week trip is an open-ended experiment. I want to spend time with normal people doing things that they normally do and not focus on politicians, activists, or intellectuals, as is the usual practice of journalists.

Each new encounter should add a new piece to the jigsaw puzzle. In the end I don’t expect to have a complete picture with no pieces missing, but I hope at least to be able to see some sort of picture. I’ll also be traveling to places where few other tourists venture, to become acquainted with the diversity of this country from west to east. I want to discover what’s on young people’s minds, what dreams they have. And I want to become a Putinversteher : someone who understands Putin, not in the sense of admiring him, but simply to comprehend the Putin phenomenon and its effect on people. Because understanding is never a bad thing.

The idea of this trip came to me on the morning of March 3, 2014. That was the day the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said: “Putin is living in another world.” I’ve been around a bit, but hadn’t taken a trip to a foreign galaxy up to that point. It could be interesting. What makes Russia tick, what do Russians want, where is this baffling country heading? Finding out for yourself is always better than reading the news; a fool who travels is better than an armchair sage. So I quit my job at Der Spiegel and booked my ticket. Who knows, maybe in my search for normality, I’ll stumble across something that evaded those on a quest for the sensational.

COUCHSURFING WORKS LIKEthis: after registering on the website by that name, you type in a destination you wish to visit. This leads to a page with a list of members offering a corner of a carpet, a living-room couch, an inflatable mattress, or, if you’re really lucky, a whole room with a king-sized bed, a view of the sea, and a private beach (I was lucky in Australia). Host and guest introduce themselves in profiles. The friendlier your self-portrayal, the greater your chance of being accepted. According to rumors, being female and pretty also helps. Couchsurfing differs from Airbnb in that, one, it’s mostly free of charge, and two, people try to present themselves—not just their bedrooms and kitchens—in the best light.

When I spent one long afternoon studying profiles of hosts in Moscow (in the capital alone there are more than a hundred thousand of them), I couldn’t help thinking of Herzblatt , the German version of the TV matchmaking show The Dating Game . At the end of each episode, an offscreen voice sums up the attributes of the show’s candidates, followed by the question: “Who will be your match?” The format would perfectly fit the process of sorting through couchsurfing profiles.

Who will be your host?

Will it be Anastasia, twenty-four, who speaks fluent Lingala, who in “rare circumstances and on special occasions is not an enemy of alcohol,” who can’t sit still for long although she likes yoga, and who poses in her profile photo in a full-length, shocking-red dress next to a predatory cat on a side table?

Or is it Nastya, twenty-five, who loves esoteric literature and comics, who says of herself, “I am Love. Our World is Love. The World is One,” and who, instead of a photo of herself, has one of a tiny dog next to a teacup with a cartoon duck on it?

Or Alexander, twenty-seven, with plenty of muscles and no hair, who describes himself as a “scientist, writer, and alcoholic,” submits a photo of himself with a trumpet in some sort of laboratory, and lists his interests as “literature, science, alcohol, and sex”?

Or Olya, twenty-four, who likes Manowar and Britney Spears, works for a fashion magazine, has a “very cute cat called Adolf,” and as a joint activity suggests “watching ballet and drinking vodka”? (In her photo she is wearing a white face mask, with her lips forming a kiss.)

Or Vadim, twenty-nine, who likes to discuss “all kinds of topics with intelligent people,” knows all about martial arts, and can teach guests how to use Russian saunas? (The accompanying photo: a serious-looking guy next to an H.R. Giger–style alien sculpture made of bits of metal).

Or Natalya, thirty-eight, sitting on a quad bike in a black bikini, who is unemployed at the moment, prefers men as guests, is “cheerful, active, positive, and adventurous,” and enjoys cooking borscht?

Or Alina, twenty-eight, who has a “small zoo” at home consisting of a cat, a dog, a rat, an Australian turtle, and a bird that all get along very well, and whose declared motto is: “Just do it, you can regret it later.” (In her profile photo she is posing with two camels. Hopefully they are not part of her small zoo.)