Russia and the U.S.: And so, we grow apart?

"Why are you Americans fighting with us Russians in Ukraine?" This and many other absurd questions are still ringing in my head after recently returning home to Minnesota from a three-week teaching trip to Russia and Ukraine.

Actually, Moscow still feels very much like home to me when teaching trips take me there, despite my living in the United States for the last 24 years. Moscow has changed a lot in those years, but then, so has Minnesota (although maybe not as drastically). In some respects, my two countries have been transformed in opposite ways.

Back in the early 1990s, it was the Soviet Union that was pulling its troops back after a decadelong war in Afghanistan. It was the time of a big "change" — aka "perestroika" — in the USSR, which was expected to turn the mind-set of Russians away from the idea of redistributing a limited national product toward creating an environment for more productive industry and agriculture. Those were the times when walls along countries' borders were being torn down, not built up, and even the newly coined term "global warming" — after several decades of the "Cold War" — still carried some positive connotations.

One other thing is also different. Americans' interest in what is going on in Russia is no longer even close to what it was back then. One of my first and most shocking memories of Minnesota, from 1990, was a billboard on Hwy. 280 with Mikhail Gorbachev pictured in the act of advertising — and seeing his portraits everywhere around the Twin Cities, which he had visited to great acclaim earlier that summer.

Russians in that era got used to being in the international spotlight. Even today they expect that Americans are up to date on important events in Russia and are deeply intrigued by its internal affairs. The Russian media, which in the course of the last decade have fallen under complete control of the central government, is to blame for the big surprise of many of my counterparts all over Russia when I tell them that most Americans haven't heard much about Russia since the Winter Olympics of 2014 and maybe something about the shooting down of a Malaysian airliner shortly afterward.

I am sure many Minnesotans will be just as surprised to learn about the prominent role they are playing in the life of Russians. According to the official line of thought, Americans are responsible for pretty much every recent misfortune in Russia, starting with the fall of world oil prices and the consequent plunge of the ruble and including the conflict in Ukraine and consequent economic sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States. Even the annexation of Crimea, in President Vladimir Putin's own words, was a measure forced upon ("vynuzhdenny") the Russian Federation by U.S. and NATO actions in the region.

No wonder then that so many of my colleagues all over Russia — teachers, scholars and clergy — now regard my lectures and presentations with suspicion.

I argue that I actually teach stuff that is 2,000 years old (New Testament history, archaeology and paleography) and that it does not change much with the latest political winds and ideological currents. But it doesn't fly. Anything coming from the West these days, especially from America, is met with resistance, even though I have been successfully teaching the same class at both Christian and secular universities all over Russia for the last seven years.

It was back in 2008 when the Russian academy and public education officially opened their doors to the religious history, culture and philosophy that had been banned from schools and universities by the Bolsheviks almost a century ago. The Communists cruelly persecuted faith and church — hundreds of thousands of clergy and lay believers were murdered for their faith during Stalin's purge of the 1920s and '30s. One of them was my grandfather, a village priest in the Oryol region of Central Russia, the Rev. Aleksandr Voskresensky. It has been a special joy for me to see Russia gradually turning back to its religious roots and values in the last several years.

Here, by the way, is yet another area where our countries seem to have been developing in opposite directions. A recent Pew Research Center study shows a sharp decline in religious affiliation in America, whereas Russia is making every effort to strengthen its spiritual and religious culture, education, practice, etc.

Russia, of course, has a long way to go to approach the level to which America is "declining." According to the semi-independent Levada Center poll of 2011, only 3 percent of the Russian population is practicing the Christian faith by, for example, attending Paschal (Easter) church services. (Compare this with the recent "drop" from 78 to 70 percent in American Christians' church attendance, according to the Pew data.)

One of the steps toward spiritual revival in Russia has been a new elementary school class called "Intro to the Religious Culture" which was introduced to all public schools, giving fourth-graders' parents a choice from six modules to sign their student to for one year: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, world religions or secular ethics. A one-year class is not much for a country that has been plagued by lawlessness, corruption, lies and disrespect for human life and for the very concept of personal choice and personal responsibility for nearly a century — but it is a beginning.

Where, then, is the Russian Federation going — politically, economically and spiritually? From traveling Russia all over its 11 time zones and from the subtropics to the Arctic Circle five times a year, meeting with and encountering many people, I have a feeling that it is about to change its direction at any moment. The oil-and-resources-dependent economy of the last two decades is converting to a more self-sustaining model that would have not been possible or even necessary without the export sanctions imposed by the West last year. Visiting a beautiful, newly built Far East Federal University campus on Russkiy island near Vladivostok on the Russia's Pacific coast really impressed me. It definitely is a statement of Russia's interest in more eastern- and Asia-focused development in contrast to the traditional European academic orientation.

Yes, the government in the Kremlin is desperately trying to toughen its grip over the population, but the omnipresent Russian sense of humor tells me that nobody is taking it too seriously. Yes, President Putin enjoys an 84 percent approval rating in the country. But whoever takes his place tomorrow will get 94 percent.

Historically, Russia has rarely changed its course by nice, peaceful democratic processes, and it may not happen this time, either, as all possible successors and opposition leaders are being shot or imprisoned by the current regime. I personally do not have much hope for peaceful change, as unfortunately there is very little respect for the rule of law in Russian politics, or in the Russian culture at large.

This disregard for the law shows everywhere — in the way people drive without any consideration of lanes or speed limits and in the way they park their cars across the parking lines; in the constant breaking of agreements and appointments (a concept that is almost untranslatable into Russian) without their being confirmed, reconfirmed and re-reconfirmed; in the setting of unrealistic goals and then expending unrealistic amounts of money and effort to achieve them (like a Winter Olympics in subtropical Sochi or the above-mentioned university on an inhabited island to the east of Vladivostok, when the above-mentioned 11 time zones of mostly empty land lies to the west of the city), and, of course, in grabbing chunks of foreign land here and there.

Do I still have hope for Russia? Of course I do, and the more I travel there and the more I share my own "inner perestroika" experience since moving to Minnesota and devoting my life to Christian ministry, the more I see in my Russian audiences' eyes that same hope and that same excitement.

I have now met dozens of Russians whose lives were changed forever by their one time visit to America, their staying in an American home for a few days and seeing what life can be like if people live it freely and responsibly. They often come down to me after my lecture is over and ask me one of those questions, like: "What has happened to you, Americans? Why are you hating us Russians so much?"

What can I do to counter the powerful brainwashing machine of state propaganda? I usually open my laptop and show them photos of my family and friends in Minnesota, of our community picnic in a park on the Mississippi River, of our Russian Orthodox Church Sunday service. And then I ask them if they can see any signs of hatred in these faces, or any reason to believe that these people would have to blame Russians for their life circumstances.

And, if I want to completely win their hearts, I tell them that I actually did not vote for President Obama and do not agree with many of his policy decisions.

"Oh, Oleg, you are still a true Russian!" they say.

I'm glad, they never ask me if I voted for Mr. Putin.

Oleg Voskresensky, of Shoreview, is an author, professor and missionary with FaithSearch International.